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.
Photographers Unknown, The Bath
“Okay, this is the wisdom. First, time spent on reconnaissanse is never wasted. Second, almost anything can be improved with the addition of bacon. And finally, there is no problem on Earth that can’t be ameliorated by a hot bath and a cup of tea.”
―
Andreas Feininger, “Skeleton of Gaboon Viper”, 1952, Silver Gelatin Print
Son of the late acclaimed artist Lyonel Feininger, American photographer Andreas Feininger was born in Paris in 1906, and graduated with highest honors in architecture from schools in Germany. At that time, Feininger was using a camera as his mechanical sketchbook for a reference aid in creating his building designs.
After a year’s work in France for architect Le Corbusier, followed by a struggle to find employment in Stockholm, Feininger turned his attention full-time to photography. He sold his first photos in 1932 and moved with his family to the United States in 1939. Feininger became a staff photographer in 1943 for LIFE magazine where he completed more than 430 assignments in a twenty year span.
Feininger’s works are known for their technique and panoramic grandeur. Such timeless images as the “New York Landscape Seen From Eight Miles Away in New Jersey”, taken in 1947, are notable for their harmony, balance, and grand scale. Through Feininger’s trained eye, the intricacies and beauty of both the natural and man-made world were magnified and intensified. His images revealed a new aesthetic of order and geometric perfection from the span of bridges to the symmetrical perfection of the skeleton of a carbon viper.
Photographers Unknown, Any Love is Natural and Beautiful
“Any love is natural and beautiful that lies within a person’s nature; only hypocrites would hold a man responsible for what he loves, emotional illiterates and those of righteous envy, who, in their agitated concern, mistake so frequently the arrow pointing to heaven for the one that leads to hell.”
―
Luigi Bonazza, “Contributo dell’Operaio all’Esercito Combattente” (The Worker’s Contribution to the Army Fighter)”, 1914-1915, Oil on Board
Luigi Bonazza was an Italian artist born in the provence of Trento. He studied under Luigi Comel, a professor of drawing and painting, at the Royal Elizabethan School in Rovereto. He returned to Trento in 1912, at which time he and other artists founded the Artistic Circle Trentino. Bonazza lived in Vizzola Ticino between 1916 and 1918, working for Italian aviation pioneer Giovanni Caproni and producing watercolors and engravings of aircraft and flight. Later in his life, he decorated the Palazzo delle Poste in Trento and painted mostly landscapes and portraits.
Reblogged with thanks to http://doctordee.tumblr.com
Photographers Unknown, Faces of Man: WP Photo Set One
“A fleeting moment can become an eternity. From a past encounter everything may disappear in the dungeon of forgetfulness. A few furtive flashes or innocent twinkles can survive, though. Some immaterial details may remain marked in our memory, forever. A significant look, a salient colour or a unforeseen gesture may abide, indelibly engraved in our mind.”
―
Lara Zankoul, “The Unseen” Series, 2013, Color Photograph #13
Lara Zankoul, is an interdisciplinary artist and self-taught photographer based in Beirut, Lebanon. Her work captures everyday human behavior and issues that occur within society through photographic media. The aim is to invite the viewers to come up with their own interpretation and understanding of the photographs and the stories behind them.
Lara Zankoul’s images often explore the mysteries of the human psyche, combining unusual elements with ordinary life. Her 2013 ” The Unseen” series features contemporary scenarios literally immersed in pools of water that occupy their living space, creating playful narratives. Zankoul does not use any kind of digital manipulation; all these artworks are done strictly through the sole use of camera.
Photographer Unknown, Title Unknown, (The Circle)
“In a swamp, as in meditation, you begin to glimpse how elusive, how inherently insubstantial, how fleeting our thoughts are, our identities. There is magic in this moist world, in how the mind lets go, slips into sleepy water, circles and nuzzles the banks of palmetto and wild iris, how it seeps across dreams, smears them into the upright world, rots the wood of treasure chests, welcomes the body home.”
―
Francis de Erdelry, “The Welder”, 1942, Oil on Canvas, 51 x 41 Inches, The Wolfsonian-Florida International University
Born in Hungary in 1904, Francis De Erdely grew up during the first World War. Depicting the atrocities of war in his sketches and early paintings, 
the artist was eventually banished from Hungary by early Gestapo members. After his studies were completed at the Academy of Fine Arts, Budapest, he studied at the Real Academie de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid and at the Ecole du Louvre in Paris.
In 1944, Francis de Erdely made his way west, settling briefly in New York and then, finally in Los Angeles, where he found his place as an American artist. Along with fellow Modernist painters Bentley Schaad, Sueo Serisawa, and Richard Haines, De Erdely became instrumental in the West Coast 
Modernist movement. Depicting the regional minorities of African and Mexican heritage, he was interested in conveying a sense of strong social commentary.
Francis de Erdely exhibited widely across the U.S. as well as in Australia and Belgium, gaining local as well as international recognition. After serving as Dean of the Pasadena Art Museum School in 1945, he became a faculty member at the University of Southern California. His academicism always emphasized awareness and sensitivity to the fragilness of the human condition, often showing humanity’s suffering in harsh, angular, distended compostions.
Francis de Erdely’s work is in the collections at the Chicago Institue of Art, The Melbourne National Museum, and the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh.
Top Insert Image: Francis de Erdely, “Self Portrait”, Date Unknown, Oil on Canvas, 69.2 x 64.1 cm, Private Collection
Bottom Insert Image: Francis de Erdely, Untitled (Worker in Hard Hat and Gloves)”, 1945, Oil on Canvas, 111.8 x 86.4 cm, Laguna Art Museum, California
Photogaphers Unknown, And Then–The Glory
“Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. You can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite. It is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves, of the forearms. The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet. Its beginning has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and the whole world glows outside your eyes. A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, even the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then -the glory- so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished. And I guess a man’s importance in the world can be measured by the quality and number of his glories. It is a lonely thing but it relates us to the world. It is the mother of all creativeness, and it sets each man separate from all other men. ”
―
Dennis Wojtkiewicz is Professor of Art at Bowling Green State University where he has taught painting and drawing since 1988. He received his M.F.A. degree from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale in 1981 and also studied at the Atelier Neo-Medici in France under the direction of Patrick Betaudier in 1978 and 1983.
Wojtkiewicz is best known for his distinctive large-scale oil paintings of fruit and flowers in which the subject matter is encapsulated and transfixed by a heightened approach to realism. His work has been shown in international art fairs in Bridgehampton, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Palm Beach, Santa Fe, Taipei and Toronto as well as in numerous galleries and exhibitions throughout the U.S. Wojtkiewicz is a past recipient of two Ohio Arts Council Individual Fellowships with paintings and drawings represented in major public, private and corporate collections.
Photographers Unknown, The Darkness and The Light
“For those who can see well in the darkness, there is no darkness and for those who cannot see well even in the light, there is no light.”
― Mehmet Murat Ildan
Photographer Unknown, Title Unknown, (The Dividing Lines)
Reblogged with thanks to lookingfortheorthodoxanswers
“Samurai Champloo” is a Japanese anime series developed by the Japanese animation and production company Manglobe. The production team was lead by director Shinichiro Watanabe, character designer Kazuto Nakazawa and mechanical designer Mahiro Maeda. This series was Watanabe’s first directorial effort for an anime television series after his critically acclaimed “Cowboy Bebop”. “Samurai Champloo” ran for twenty-six episodes from May of 2004 until March of 2005.
The series blended historical Edo-period backdrops with modern styles and references. The show dealt with the Shimabara Rebellion in Edo-era Japan, the restriction of Japanese foreign relations exclusive of the Netherlands, the art of ukiyo-e painting, and fictionalized appearances of real-life Edo-era personalities. Artistic license trumped accuracy and the music score used contemporary music.
Photo Set by Vladimir Snezhin, Model Unknown, Date Unknown
Vladimir Snezhin is a Russian photographer who does figurative photography around the world. Images reblogged with thanks from the artist’s site: https://www.pintaram.com/u/snezhinphoto
Many thanks also to a great tumblr site: http://doctordee.tumblr.com
Paul Jacoulet, “Boy with Dragonfly”, Date Unknown, Woodblock Print
Paul Jacoulet is renowned for his stunningly intricate designs, his eloquently romantic subjects and his complex printing techniques. He was born in Paris in 1902 and moved to Japan with his family at the age of four. He developed skills in drawing, 
music and languages early on, speaking Japanese, French and English fluently. World War One and the devastating 1923 earthquake that effectively leveled Tokyo had a profound effect on Jacoulet.
Jacoulet left his job as a translator and resolved to focus entirely on his true passion: art. Having been intensely moved by the works of Gauguin on a recent visit to Paris, Jacoulet departed for the South Seas, visiting Saipan, Truk, Rota, Titian and dozens of small atolls, where he filled up several sketch books with copious drawings and notes of the local people and landscapes. By 1930, he had added subjects from Korea, Mongolia and Manchuria.
Jacoulet produced his first woodblock print in 1934. His technical requirements for the craftsmanship of his prints were so demanding that he could only work with the best, most talented printers. He employed some very elaborate techniques and materials, including features such as embossing, lacquers, micas and the use of metal pigments 
and powdered semi-precious stones. Jacoulet was involved in very facet of the production and published many of his prints himself, selling them by way of subscription. To keep costs down, he would print only enough to fill the subscriptions, and so often printed far less than the proposed edition number would suggest.
Jacoulet was a self-promoter and sent prints to famous people to enhance his reputation. Mrs. Douglas MacArthur received an annual Christmas gift, and Jacoulet’s work hung in the general’s headquarters in Tokyo and later at the Waldorf-Astoria. Jacoulet was flamboyantly and openly gay at a time when that was not accepted. His sexual orientation and gender fluidity are clearly reflected in his work. Near the end of his life Jacoulet was barred from entering the U.S. due to his “undesirability” as a gay person. Undeterred, he dressed up in a white suit and, carrying a silver-headed cane, walked into the U.S. at Niagara Falls.
In Jacoulet’s best work, images of the most extravagantly aristocratic exoticism stand beside spare studies of the very poor. This balance of sentiment and objectivity, spiced by imagination, is the life work of an eccentric and passionate artist who was influenced by both the East and West, yet stands firmly and defiantly outside of both traditions.