Courtesy Bruno Gmunder

It hasn't been so long since nude or partially nude images of the male form were taboo. In the 1940s and 1950s, artists, photographers and illustrators tried to sidestep the laws and the censors by keeping a model's genitals covered, or by posing him in such a way as to suggest some classical work of art - often accompanied by suitable props. Even so, many a pioneer of male erotic went to jail, saw his work destroyed or paid huge fines for daring to put the masculine body on view.

Then Tom of Finland came along, and it was as if the age of male erotica suddenly switched from B.C. to A.D. Cock, ass, jism, sucking and fucking, fetish: Tom paraded it all in front of the viewer and the world never looked back.

That was, unbelievably, half a century ago. Today, erotic depictions of the male form, whether hard-core or not, are flowering, with hundreds of artists contributing to an international collective body of work that demands attention. As Durk Dehner, president of the Tom of Finland Foundation says in his introduction to the book about to be discussed, we are on the cusp of being able to look at such works and call them, simply, art.d

Germany's Bruno Gmunder has been publishing art and photo books with gay themes, for gay readers, for 25 years. About five years ago, the publisher launched a new line of books devoted to today's illustrators and comic artists. Stripped: The Illustrated Male is the publisher's first gay comic art anthology.

More than 50 painters, artists and illustrators are represented in full color in the book's very generous 352 pages. Apart from the preface written by Stripped's unnamed editor, there is no other written text, so if you want to know more about any of the artists, you have to do your own research. At the end of the book, eight pages of color thumbnails of the included images and a two-page list of artists, including a personal e-mail address or Web site, helps to jump-start any further exploration.

The breadth of the collection is astonishing. Ross Watson riffs on classical themes, updating famous works with a contemporary gay sensibility. He takes the famous black-winged Caravaggio cupid, for example, and replaces the flotsam of musical instruments with a cute undressed boy with earphones plugged into his head.

Angel de Castro's well-defined male nudes echo the red pencil works of Da Vinci, while the sexually explicit images of Player are touched with some of the anger and madness you see in the works of Francis Bacon or Pavel Tchelitchew. Michael Breyette's males are archetypal all-Americans: cowboys, athletes, surfers and blue-collar workers who flaunt their furry pecs and perfect tan-lined buns while provocatively staring you in the eye and inviting you into the picture with them.

Steve Walker's hyper-real to surreal paintings also evoke classical themes, such as the painter's model who might have stepped off the Sistine Chapel ceiling, the Grecian wrestlers transported to ancient Greece or the extravagant foreshortening in the depiction of the wide-eyed young man staring straight up at the scrotum of Michelangelo's David.

Ian Hanks draws late-adolescent males and gets it just right: the kid who's unaware of just how hot-as-hell his burgeoning sexuality is or of the fantasies he inspires in others.

Other artists tell us stories comic-strip style, including Mioki's "Another Year Older, Another Inch Longer," in which the gay boy in love with his straight friend gets a special birthday present.

There's perhaps too much that's reminiscent of Tom of Finland. Giant that Tom was, it's time to stop reinventing his wheel. But for a crash course in the 21 century erotic male, Stripped is a terrific primer.

Each artist is given from four to 10 pages in the anthology, and there are sure to be several contributors whose work you will want to explore further, or even to own.

Stripped: The Illustrated Male
Bruno Gmunder Verlag, $29.95, hard cover

Bookmarks

RSS   |    Email This Page   |    Print This Page

Recommend It:

Not at All Somewhat Moderately Highly Very Highly

1 Vote total vote