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.
Artist Unknown, (The Sailor on Leave), Computer Graphics, Film Gifs
The film gifs of Chris Evans, who plays the character Me, are from director Justin Reardon’s 2014 American romantic comedy “Playing It Cool” written by Chris Shafer and Paul Vicknair. Cinematography was done by Jeff Cutter and the soundtrack by Jake Monaco. The film premiered at the Dallas international Film Festival in April of 2015 with a full release to generally lukewarm reviews.
Great Horned Owl in the Grand Tetons
Gifs reblogged with thanks to http://naturegifs.tumblr.com
Photos are by Mike R Jackson, a nature photographer with a Master Degree in Fine Art. He resides in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
Photographer Unknown, (Claw)
“No intellect is needed to see those figures who wait beyond the void of death – every child is aware of them, blazing with glories dark or bright, wrapped in authority older than the universe. They are the stuff of our earliest dreams, as of our dying visions. Rightly we feel our lives guided by them, and rightly too we feel how little we matter to them, the builders of the unimaginable, the fighters of wars beyond the totality of existence.
The difficulty lies in learning that we ourselves encompass forces equally great. We say, “I will,” and “I will not,” and imagine ourselves (though we obey the orders of some prosaic person every day) our own masters, when the truth is that our masters are sleeping. One wakes within us and we are ridden like beasts, though the rider is but some hitherto unguessed part of ourselves.”
―
Mogwai, “Take me Somewhere Nice”, 2001, “Rock Action” Album, Chrysalis Music, Ltd.
Mogwai is a Scottish post-rock band which was formed in Glasgow in 1995. The band consists of Stuart Braithwaite on guitars and vocal; Barry Burns on guitar, piano, synthesizer, and vocals; Dominic Aitchison on bass; and Martin Bulloch on drums. The band is known for its lengthy guitar-based instrumental pieces which contain melodic bass lines, strong contrasts, and use of effects and distortion.
Mogwai’s work has appeared in several film soundtracks, including the 2006 French documentary film “Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait”, Michael Mann’s 2006 film “Miami Vice”, Darren Aronofsky’s 2006 film “The Fountain” as well as the soundtrack for the Canal+ French television series “Les Revenants”. In August of 2018, Mogwai released the soundtrack for the Jonathan and Josh Baker’s science-fiction action film “Kin” and, in May of 2020, the soundtrack for the Amazon Prime’s Italian crime-drama series “ZeroZeroZero”.
Painted Ceiling of the Temple of Hathor, Egyot
Seen here is the incredibly well-preserved, painted ceiling at Egypt’s Temple of Hathor. It is the main temple at the Dendera Temple Complex which was built around 2250 BC and is regarded as one of the best-preserved temple complexes in Egypt. Dendera covers an area of about 40,000 square meters and is one of the most tourist-accessible ancient Egyptian places of worship.
The ceiling of the main hall has retained much of its stunning original colour despite being painted thousands of years ago. According to Tour Egypt, the ceiling is “decorated as a complex and carefully aligned symbolic chart of the heavens, including signs of the zodiac (introduced by the Romans) and images of the sky goddess Nut who swallowed the sun disc each evening in order to give birth to it once again at dawn.”
Ceramics by Eric Astoul
Associated with the ceramicist community of La Borne in central France, known for its distinct stoneware, Eric Astoul creates decorative earthenware vases and pots, as well as stone sculptures that contain rough geometrical forms and shapes. Astoul has traveled extensively throughout Europe and Africa, and is influenced by both the ancient and modern ceramics he has encountered in those continents. To create his stoneware, which features textured surfaces and both angular and curvilinear forms, he fires each piece for eight days in a wood-burning “Anagama” kiln, only the second of its kind in La Borne.
Illustration by Harry Bush: Kiss a Marine
Photographer Unknown, (One of My Favorites: Tayte Hanson (with Petals)
Photographer Unknown, (Raised Right Foot), Selfie
Animated Gifs by Robin Davey
Based in London, Robin Davey works as a freelance illustrator, animator, designer and director. Recently he’s been working with Wired Italy,
“Warring Godzillas from this month’s Wired Italia. For a column discussing the shifting symbolism of the franchise from its roots in post-Hiroshima nuclear fears, to the environmental allegory of its current big-budget incarnation.”
– Robin Davey
Sculptures by Joe Brubaker
The wooden carved figures of Joe Brubaker echo sources of inspiration from Spanish colonial Santos and retablo objects to Egyptian tomb figure and Buddhist stone carvings. In recent works, Brubaker has gone beyond these early influences, crossing cultures on a broader basis. He has included forms reminiscent of ritual costumes and body decorations from indigenous peoples all over the world.
Incorporating scraps of metal and found materials, he has created a cast of characters that are at once strikingly universal and absolutely unique. For Brubaker, there is a moment when the work takes on its own personality. “I almost imagine myself as channeling some soul that’s out there and wants to come back”, he says. “It’s really an eerie moment, a Geppetto moment”.
His work is available for purchase through the Seager/Gray Gallery in Mill Valley, California.
Paintings by Mariano Rodriguez
Mariano Rodriguez was born in Havana in 1912. Since boyhood, he was interested in drawing and painting. In 1936 he went to Mexico where he studied for a year and a half with the muralists Manuel Rodriguez Lozano and Pablo O’Higgins. When he returned to Cuba his technique bore a close resemblance to that of the modern Mexican masters. In 1938 his painting “UNIDAD” received top honors at the National Exhibit of Painting and Sculpture in Havana.
Mariano is part of that generation of Cuban artists who felt the urgency to break with the influences of the Academics. Constantly and tirelessly in search of a vehicle by which to express his personality in the context of a truly “Cuban” expression, in 1941 he started to elaborate on his theme of the roosters. In the early 40’s he was influenced by the great European masters, especially Picasso and Matisse.
In 1967 he started his series of “Fruit and Reality”; in 1980 he began the series of the “Masses”, and in the mid eighties, the final “Feast of Love”. Through it all he faithfully continued to strive for essentially “Cuban” elements, the most consistent of which was the virility of the rooster, master of the domestic patio. In every one of these phases Mariano painted a rooster.
Artist Unknown, (The Wrestler), Computer Graphics, Film Gifs
Jean Reno, “Leon: The Professional”, Directed by Luc Besson, 1994
One of my favorite movies starring Jean Reno as a professional hitman taking care of a 12 year old whose parents were murdered. She becomes his protege and learns the hitman’s trade.