A fine art, film, history and literature site oriented to, but not exclusively for, the gay community. Please be aware that there is mature content on this blog. Information on images and links to sources will be provided if known. Enjoy your visit and please subscribe.
Olly Moss, Art Deco Style Batman Poster: The Dark Knight Rises
Olly Moss is an English artist, graphic designer and illustrator, best known for his reimagining of movie posters. His work is regularly featured in Empire magazine.
Moss was commissioned by Marvel Entertainment executives Craig Kyle and Kevin Feige to create a poster for the cast of Thor. Other notable works include the cover artwork for the Resistance 3 video game, which prompted a trailer to be created in similar style.
Two Illustrations by Kai Carpenter
Top: “Beer and Friendship”, Detail
Bottom: “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”, Detail
Kai Carpenter is a freelance illustrator working out of the New York City area. His list of clients include Wizards of the Coast, LEGO Systems, ReelFX Animation, and HarperCollins publishing.
Jose Maria Sert: Details of Lobby Murals of Rockefeller Center, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York City
Like the surrounding complex, the art at 30 Rockefeller Plaza has a rich history. A committee set up by John D. Rockefeller and his son, John D. Rockefeller Jr., decided that the artworks there should have a unifying theme, New Frontiers, encompassing aspects of a modern society: science, labor, education, travel, communication, humanitarianism, finance and spirituality. Because 30 Rockefeller Plaza, near the Channel Gardens, where the Christmas tree stands every year, was considered the center’s flagship, it was to be the most elaborately decorated.
The dramatic ceiling mural depicts heroic-sized, Titans who symbolize the three aspects of time: Past, Present and Future. By exposing their bodies and making them muscular, Jose Maria Sert implies that time is both part of nature and is powerful. The Titans are portrayed evaluating man’s achievements, with the mural integrating the architecture into the subject matter—both the scales and the Titans’ feet are shown resting on actual marble columns that support the lobby ceiling, creating a panoramic vision of the weighing of man’s deeds.
If you are in New York City, this should be on your list to see.
Photographers Unknown, ‘Jai Courtney”, Photo Shoots
Jai Stephen Courtney is an Australian actor and former model. He started his career with small roles in films and television series before being cast as Charlie in the action film Jack Reacher (2012). He then went on to star in A Good Day to Die Hard (2013) and I, Frankenstein (2014).
Courtney had a recurring role as Varro in the television series Spartacus: Blood and Sand (2010). He played Eric Coulter in the science fiction action film Divergent (2014), and in 2015, he reprised the role in the sequel, Insurgent, and also played Kyle Reese in Terminator Genisys. Courtney is also set to play DC Comics villain Digger Harkness, AKA Captain Boomerang, in the 2016 supervillain film Suicide Squad.
Dimitris Theocharis, “Chris Perceval”
Dimitris Theocharis is currently based in Covent Garden, London. Born in San Jose, California to Greek parents, Theocharis is both a photographer and video director who works inthe fields of fashion, advertising, and fine art photography. His approach to his work tends to be poetically narrative often with a sense of nostalgia.
Artist Unknown, (Entry into Desire), Computer Graphics, Animation Gifs
“My desire and wish is that the things I start with should be so obvious that you wonder why I spend my time stating them. This is what I aim at because the point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.”
― The Philosophy of Logical Atomism
Collection: Black and White Photography: Smoke in the Air
Sebastian Stan: Love for Chris
George Bellows, “Dempsey and Firpo”, Oil on Canvas, 1924, Whitney Museum of Art, New York
Dempsey and Firpo, one of George Bellows’s most ambitious paintings, captures a pivotal moment in the September 14, 1923 prizefight between American heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey and his Argentine rival Luis Angel Firpo. The frenzy lasted less than four minutes, Firpo going to the floor nine times and Dempsey twice. Although Dempsey was the eventual victor, the artist chose to represent the dramatic moment when Firpo knocked his opponent out of the ring with a tremendous blow to the jaw.
At the match on assignment for the New York Evening Journal, Bellows portrays himself as a balding man at the extreme left of the picture. His geometrically structured composition also creates a low vantage point that includes the viewer: looking up at this angle, we find ourselves among the spectators pushing Dempsey back into the ring. The excitement is further heightened by the chromatic contrast between the fighters bathed in lurid light, and the dark, smoke-filled atmosphere around them.
Photographer Unknown, (Poolside)
“Perhaps swimming was dancing under the water, he thought. To swim under lily pads seeing their green slender stalks wavering as you passed, to swim under upraised logs past schools of sunfish and bluegills, to swim through reed beds past wriggling water snakes and miniature turtles, to swim in small lakes, big lakes, Lake Michigan, to swim in small farm ponds, creeks, rivers, giant rivers where one was swept along easefully by the current, to swim naked alone at night when you were nineteen and so alone you felt like you were choking every waking moment, having left home for reasons more hormonal than rational; reasons having to do with the abstraction of the future and one’s questionable place in the world of the future, an absurdity not the less harsh for being so widespread.”
―
Bodhisattva Padmapani, Mural Painting, Late Fifth Century, Ajanta Cave One, India
This extraordinary mural painting of Bodhisattva Padmapani survives from early medieval India, likely dated to 477 AD, and is preserved in the interior of the rock-cut Buddhist monastery of Ajanta. It provides the earliest visual evidence of elaborate crowns being worn as signifiers of both princely and divine status. The crowns depicted are the antecedents of those used in Buddhist ritual today by the Vajracharya priests in Nepal.
The Ajanta Caves system has been described by the government Archaeological Survey of India as “the finest surviving examples of Indian art, particularly painting,” and consists of about 30 rock-cut Buddhist cave monuments dating from approximately the 2nd century BCE to about 480 or 650 CE.
In Buddhism, Avalokiteśvara, also known as Padmapain, is the Bodhisattva who embodies the compassion of all Buddhas. He is depicted and portrayed in different cultures as either male or female. An English translation of the Bodhisattva’s name, Avalokiteśvara, means “the lord who gazes down at the world”.
This segment from Helen Gardner’s 2009 “Art Through the Ages: Non-Western Perspectives”, originally published in 1926, describes the scene shown:
“The Bodhisattva Padmapani sits among a crowd of devotees, both princesses and commoners. With long, dark hair handing down below a jeweled crown, he stands holding his attribute, a blue lotus flower, in his right hand. […] The artist has carefully considered the placement of the painting in the cave. The bodhisattva gazes downward at worshipers passing through the entrance to the shrine on their way to the rock-cut Buddha image in a cell at the back of the cave.”
Note: There is very limited lighting done inside the caves to protect the paintings from heat and no flash allowed.
Artist Unknown, Roman Bust of Antonius as Osiris, Marble, 130-138 AD, Collection of Thomas Hope
The Rouen Cathedral, Rouen, Normandy, France
The Rouen Cathedral, the tallest building in France until 1880, contains a tomb of Richard the Lionheart which contained his heart. His bowels were probably buried within the church of the Château of Châlus-Chabrol in the Limousin. It was from the walls of the Château of Châlus-Chabrol that the crossbow bolt was fired, which led to his death once the wound became septic. His corporeal remains were buried next to his father at Fontevraud Abbey near Chinon and Saumur, France. Richard’s effigy is on top of the tomb, and his name is inscribed in Latin on the side.
The Cathedral also contains the tomb of Rollo (Hrólfr, Rou(f) or Robert), one of Richard’s ancestors, the founder and first ruler of the Viking principality in what soon became known as Normandy.
The cathedral contained the black marble tomb of John Plantagenet or John of Lancaster, Duke of Bedford, one of the English commanders who oversaw Joan of Arc’s trial. He became a canon priest of the cathedral after her death. His original tomb was destroyed by the Calvinists in the 16th century but there remains a commemorative plaque .
Photographer Unknown, (A Small Space: The Airplane), Selfie
“To some people, there is no noise on earth as exciting as the sound of three or four big fan-jet engines rising in pitch, as the plane they are sitting in swivels at the end of the runway and, straining against its brakes, prepares for takeoff. The very danger in the situation is inseparable from the exhilaration it yields. You are strapped into your seat now, there is no way back, you have delivered yourself into the power of modern technology. You might as well lie back and enjoy it.”
―
Photographer Unknown, (The Wooden Staircase)