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.
Photographer Unknown, (Morning Coffee and a Cigarette), Photo Shoot
“Coffee is a lot more than just a drink; it’s something happening. Not as in hip, but like an event, a place to be, but not like a location, but like somewhere within yourself. It gives you time, but not actual hours or minutes, but a chance to be, like be yourself, and have a second cup”
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Rudolf Tewes, “Self-Portrait”, 1906, Oil on Canvas
Rudolf Tewes, born on September 3 of 1879, was the son of a respected merchant and consul. He studied at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts, one of the oldest and most prestigious academies in Munich..After 1904, Tewes toured extensively in Italy, Spain, France and South America. He resided in Paris from 1919 to 1927, moving once again to become a resident of Berlin and a member of the Berlin Secession, a part of German Modernism and an alternative to the existing art conventions.
Tewew intensely studied the paintings of Vincent van Gogh. His self-portrait, seen above, was exhibited for the first time under an exhibition held by the Berlin Secession and clearly showed Van Gogh’s influence upon Rudolf Tewes. The parallels in the brushwork, choice of color and picture object led to a joint presentation of twenty Tewes paintings with seven paintings by Van Gogh in 1910 in the Kunsthalle Bremen, an atrt museum exhibiting French and German art from the 1800s to the 1950s.
In 1913 the Kunsthalle Bremen acquired Tewes’s “Self-Portrait” as a gift from the gallery association. Tewes moved to Bremen in 1939, living there until his death in 1965. The Bremen Kunsthalle dedicated a special exhibition to Rudolf Tewes in 2000 entitled. Rudolf Tewes- A Painter under the Late Impresssionism”.
Photographers Unknown, A Collection of Photos to Stimulate Your Mind
“You and me are real people, operating in a real world. We are not figments of each other’s imagination. I am the architect of my own self, my own character and destiny. It is no use whingeing about what I might have been, I am the things I have done and nothing more. We are all free, completely free. We can each do any damn thing we want. Which is more than most of us dare to imagine.”
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Paul Cadmus, “Gilding the Acrobats”, c 1935, Pen and Ink, 24.8 x 13.3 cm, Private Collection
Paul Cadmus, “Gilding the Acrobats”. 1935, Tempera and Oil on Masonite, 93 x 47 cm., Metroopopitan Museum of Art, New York
Paul Cadmus is best known for his erotic depictions of nude male figures, charged with satire, social criticism, and a strongly idealized sexuality. Cadmus first gained recognition for his 1934 painting “The Fleet’s In”, where the controversy of a group of sailors he pictured carousing among prostitutes and homosexuals inspired a public outcry. Cadmus’s work is informed by themes of surrealism, compositions of the Renaissance era, the Neo-classical works of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres with their expressive distortions of form and space, and the sharp, figurative verisimilitude of Magical Realism.
However, Cadmus’s greatest influence was from fellow painter Jared French with whom he had a life-long relationship, studying and traveling extensively. French instilled within Cadmus the traditions of the old master painters such as an egg tempera technique that became an integral part of Cadmus’s process. French’s influence also furthered Cadmus’s drive to transcend these methods and define his own artistic legacy.
A renowned satirist, Cadmus was one of the most accomplished draftsmen of the twentieth century. Featuring a circus acrobat who, with help from two companions, covers his muscular body with gold radiator paint, “Gilding the Acrobats” reenacts literally the experience of painting the figure with thinly veiled homoeroticism. In an era when homosexual behavior was criminalized and homoerotic imagery was intensely policed, Gay artists like Cadmus and Richmond Barthé turned frequently to circus performers and athletes as the few socially permissible subjects that offered the opportunity to lavish attention on the male body.
For more extensive information on the censorship of Paul Cadmus’s paintings, please visit Anthony J. Morris’s dissertation entitled “The Censored Paintings of Paul Cadmus, 1934-1940: The Body as the Boundary Between the Decent and Obscene”, 2010, Department of Art History and Art, Case Western Reserve University. The dissertation can be found at:
https://etd.ohiolink.edu/!etd.send_file?accession=case1270569282&disposition=inline
Philip Gladstone, “Alone”, Acrylic on Panel, 2016
Born in Philadelphia in 1963, Philip Gladstone now lives and works in the highlands of Maine, creating his works in a renovated barn studio. He is known for his story-telling, evocative and also provocation works featuring an assembled cast of nude men. His work is an ongoing pursuit of a personal and allegorical exercise in self-portraiture, fables populated by figures invented to express a state of mind or to lure the viewer into a multi-layered subjective story.
Four Photos by Milan Junek
Milan Junek is a Gypsy photographer whose background reflects uniquely in his work and viewpoints. His photographic work, specializing in figurative art photography including nudes, is becoming known in the Czech Republic and abroad through exhibitions and periodicals. Junek currently lives and work in Chomutov, a city in north eastern Czech Republic.
Junek’s photographs are set in interesting natural scenery or in the recesses of abandoned industrial architecture. The models he uses are usually acquaintances and friends from his immediate neighborhood.