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, (Tattoo Man Leaning Over the Water)
“The time of the photograph is [always] after. This imprecision accommodates the numerous successions, the end upon seismic end, in a time without time, un[re]countable: still. In this, it is a perfect crime, “l’anéantissement anéanti, la fin… privée d’elle-même.”
—Nathanael, Sisyphus, Outdone: Theatres of the Catastrophal
Image reblogged with many thanks to : https://jimbo1126.tumblr.com
Alphonse Mucha, “Slavs in Their Original Homeland”, From “Slovanská Epopej”, 1910-1928, Oil on Canvas, 8.1 x 6.1 m, Moravsky Krumlov Chateau, Moravia
The “Slovanská Epopej (Slav Epic)” is a series of twenty monumental canvases, depicting the history of the Slav people and civilization. Alphonse Mucha conceived it as a monument for all Slavonic peoples and devoted the latter half of his career to the realization of this work.
Mucha formed the idea for this work in 1899, while he was working on the interior design of the Pavilion of Bosnia-Herzegovina for the Paris exhibition of 1900. He had travelled widely throughout the Balkans in preparation for the assignment, researching their history and customs as well as observing the daily lives of the Southern Slavs in the regions annexed by Austria-Hungary twenty years earlier. From this experience Mucha developed the inspiration for the creation of an epic of the Slavonic people that would portray both the joys and sorrows of all the Slavic national areas.
Between 1904 and 1909, Alphonse Mucha visited the United States five times seeking support for his ambitious project, eventually securing the sponsorship of wealthy Chicago=based businessman and philanthropist Charles Richard Crane on Christmas Day in 1909. Crane was intensely interested in the developing political affairs in Eastern Europe and the Slavonic culture, giving Mucha both financial and emotional support for almost twenty years. Mucha traveled back to his homeland in 1910, eager to begin his project.
From 1911 to 1926, Mucha’s total energy was engaged with the creation of the “Slav Epic”. He rented an apartment in Zhiroh Castle and an spacious studio space there, large enough to work on his enormous eight by six metre canvases,. For the epic, Mucha depicted twenty key episodes from the Slavic past, ancient to modern, ten depicting episodes from Czech history and ten on historical episodes from other Slavic regions.
The first canvas in the series, “The Slavs in Their Original Homeland”, was finished in 1912 and the entire series was completed in 1926 with “The Apotheosis of the Slavs”, which celebrates the triumphant victory of all the Slavs whose homelands in 1918 finally became their own.
With the “Slav Epic”, Mucha wished to unite all the Slavs through a common history and their mutual reverence for peace and understanding eventually inspiring them to work for humanity. Mucha and Charles Crane officially presented the complete series in 1928 as a gift to the nation, coinciding with the tenth anniversary of its independence.
During the World War ii and the early communist period, the twenty paintings of the “Slav Epic” were hidden to protect them from the Nazi Party and the Communists, not being exhibited again until 1963 in Prague. The paintings are now being shown until October of 2024 at Moravsky Krumlov Chateau in southern Moravia;, awaiting a new exhibition space currently underway in the city of Prague.
The painting “Slavs in Their Original Homeland” starts the history of the Slavic people in the fourth to sixth centuries. At this time, the Slavic tribes were an agricultural people who dwelled in the marshes between the Vistula River, the Dnepr River, the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea. With no political structure to support them, their villages were under constant attack by Germanic tribes from the West who would burn their houses and steal their livestock
The couple shown hiding tin the bushes in the forground, as their village burns on the horizon are the survivors of one such attack. The fear and vulnerability, expressed in their faces, beseeches the viewers to help. A pagan priest flanked by two youths, symbolizing war and peace, floats in the top right of the compostion. The figures fortell the peace and freedom that will come to the Slav people when their independence is gained through the war effort.
Photographer Unknown, “Trees at Slope Point, New Zealand”
Lying in the south-west Pacific Ocean, New Zealand consists of two main islands, the North Island and the South Island, in addition, Stewart Island and many, smaller islands lie offshore.
Slope Point is the southernmost point of the South Island, located just south of the small settlements of Haldane and Waikawa. The land around Slope Point, with its eroded cliffs dropping to the sea, is devoid of houses and is primarily used for sheep farming. There are no roads going to Slope Point; access is reached by a fifty-minute walk following fading yellow markers. There is no public access allowed during the lambing season which extends from September to the end of November.
In the images above taken in Slope Point, the trees, hit with such persistently violent southern Antarctic winds, forcibly grow in the leeward direction. Unlike in the northern hemisphere, the westerly winds in the Southern Ocean are effectively uninterrupted by continents, often reaching speeds over one hundred miles per hour.
Images reblogged with thanks to : https://nubbsgalore.tumblr.com
Luke Austin, “Self-Portrait”, 2018
Australian-born and now living in Los Angeles, Luke Austin started out as a photographer doing photo shoots of bands and musicians, later moving to portraits representing his own gay community. Working with his Instagram app, he has traveled the world and shot many photo shoots of over a hundred men in different cities. Austin has gone from a large Instagram following to becoming a published photographer with his series of “Mini Beau Books” and his latest book “LEWA”, a photographic study of race, masculinity, and sexuality.
Austin has recently shown at a solo 2018 exhibit “LEWA” at PT Gallery in Berlin, the 2018 “Queer Biennial” group show at Navel in Los Angeles, and the 2017 “Home” group show at the Stonewall National Museum and Archives, in Florida.
His work can be seen at his gallery in Los Angeles and at his site: www.lukeaustinphoto.com,
Image reblogged with many thanks to https://doctordee.tumblr.com
Various Photogrphers, A Collection: Memories Frozen on Paper
“The scenes in our life resemble pictures in a rough mosaic; they are ineffective from close up, and have to be viewed from a distance if they are to seem beautiful. That is why to attain something desired is to discover how vain it is; and why, though we live all our lives in expectation of better things, we often at the same time long regretfully for what is past. The present, on the other hand, is regarded as something quite temporary and serving as the only road to our goal. That is why most men discover when they look back on their life that they have been living the whole time ad interim, and are surprised to see that which they let go by so unregarded and un-enjoyed was precisely their life, was precisely that in expectation of which they lived.”
–Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms
Images reblogged with many thanks to :https://newloverofbeauty.tumblr.com
Sean Lìonadh, “Homophobia in 2018: Time for Love”, 2018
“Time for Love” is a short film written, directed and performed by Sean Lìonadh, It is taken from his written poem that explores homophobia in modern society, and also the concept of normality. It questions whether the pressures of convention turn us against one another, at the cost of love. This visually poem won a Royal Television Society Award in 2019, has acieved extensive viewing online, and has been translated into five languages.
Sean Lìonadh is a poet, writer, filmmaker and musician from Glasgow, Scotland. He worked with the Royal Opera House as the libretist on the modern opera”Honest Skin”. His band ‘Lìonadh’ creates dark pop music which explores the themes in his film. Sean Lìonadh is currently working with producers Alfredo Covelli and Ross McKenzie to develop his first feature film “Nostophobia”, exploring the adolescent intimacy and trauma through a gay relationship. His first book, a poetry collection entitled “Not Normal Anymore”, was published in 2019 by Speculative Books.
Sean Lìonadh has written and produced several films dealing with struggles and strengths in one’s life, including the 2017 short film for the BBC The Social series “Social Circles, “The handover” in 2018 dealing with the distance between parents, the 2018 “The Oppression of the Left”, dealing with the stigma of left-handedness, “Us and Them-Rhys’ Story” in 2019, and the 2019 “I Wonder if She Smiles”, the winner in 2020 of a John Byrne Award, Scotland’s online exhibition and competition.
Many thanks to http://irreverentpsychologist.blogspot.com
Digital Artwork by Ouzo Kim
Ouzo Kim is an illustrator, graphic designer, and a creative director living and working in Seoul, Korea. His work, done with expertise, consists of Renaissance mixed-media collages presenting dark but interesting visions.
The artist’s website is located at : https://ouzokim.tumblr.com
Photographer Unknown, (The Turning Point)
“Memories are made of peculiar stuff, elusive and yet compelling, powerful and fleet. You cannot trust your reminiscences, and yet there is no reality except the one we remember……”
–Klaus Mann, The Turning Point
Photographer Unknown, (Tiny Universes)
“That’s what it feels like when you touch me. Like millions of tiny universes being born and then dying in the space between your finger and my skin. Sometimes I forget.”
―
Photographers Unknown, A Collection in Black and White, (To Plunge Head Foremost)
“Who then was the orthodox, who the freethinker? Where lay the true position, the true state of man? Should he descend into the all-consuming all-equalizing chaos, that ascetic-libertine state; or should he take his stand on the “Critical-Subjective,” where empty bombast and a bourgeois strictness of morals contradicted each other? Ah, the principles and points of view constantly did that; it became so hard for Hans Castorp’s civilian responsibility to distinguish between opposed positions, or even to keep the premises apart from each other and clear in his mind, that the temptation grew well-nigh irresistible to plunge head foremost into Naphtha’s “morally chaotic All.”
—Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
The Monument to the Battle of Nations, Frontal View, Leipzig, Germany
The “Monument to the Battle of Nations” is a war memorial in Leipzig, Germany, to the 1813 Battle of Leipzig. It was completed in 1913 for the 100th anniversary of the battle, at a cost of six million Goldmarks, paid for mostly in donations and by the city of Leipzig.
The monument commemorates Napoleon’s defeat at Leipzig, a crucial step toward the end of hostilities in the War of the Sixth Coalition, and was seen as a victory by the inhabitants of the area. The coalition armies of Russia, Prussia, Austria and Sweden were led by Tsar Alexander I of Russian and Karl Philipp, Prince of Schwarzenberg. There were German soldiers fighting for both sides, as Napoleon’s troops also include conscripted Germans from the French-occupied left bank of the RhineRiver as well as from the Confederation of the Rhine.
The structure is ninety-one meters tall, containing over five hundred steps to a viewing platform at the top, from which one can view the city and environs. The structure makes extensive use of concrete, with its facings consisting of granite. Regarded as one of the best examples of Wilhelmine architecture and one of the tallest monuments in Europe, it is said to stand on the spot of the bloodiest fighting, from where Napoleon ordered the retreat of his army. It was also the scene of fighting in World War II, when Nazi forces in Leipzig made their last stand against US troops.
Shortly after the battle, Ernst Moritz Arndt, a leading liberal and nationalistic writer, called for a national monument to be built at the battle site. Several small monuments to veterans of the war as well as memorial stones marking key points in the battle were placed. On the fiftieth anniversary of the battle, a cornerstone for a future grand monument was placed, and twenty-three German cities pledged money for its construction. In 1894, the Association of German Patriots was founded, which raised by means of donations and a lottery, the funds necessary to construct the monument for the 100th anniversary of thee battle.
German architect Bruno Schmitz, due to his previous works in monuments, received the commission. The city of Leipzig donated the ten acre lot and construction began in 1898. Over twenty-six thousand granite blocks were used and the resulting total cost was twenty-eight million in 2020 Euros. On the 18th of October 1913, the ‘Völkerschiachtdenkmal’ was inaugurated in the presence of one hundred thousand people, including Wilhelm II, and all the reigning sovereign rulers of the German states.
Armand Amar, “Maryam”, Featuring Hamza Shakour, From the Movie Soundtrack Album “Bab’ AzĀz”
Born to parents of French-Moroccan origins in 1953, Armand Amar was born in Jerusalem and spent his childhood in Morocco. Extra-European music, imbued with the sounds of instruments considered exotic at the time, fascinated him. A self-taught personality, he was constantly searching for physical experiences in the early years of his musical apprenticeship; in the following years, his searching became a commitment. He discovered the zarb and congas, learned to play the tablas, and studied under masters of both traditional and classical music.
Armand Amar’s discovery of dance in 1976 was a decisive moment in his life, brought on by an invitation from trained anthropologist and South African choreographer Peter Gross. In dance, Amar found a direct relationship to music, free improvisation, and the advantages of real, immediate exchanges. Amar soon became involved in two ventures: his involvement in Patrice Chéreau’s acting school and his teaching at the Conservatoire National Supérieur, both focusing on the relationship between music and dance. He has since worked with various choreographers including Francesca Lattuada, Russell Maliphant, Carolyn Carlsson, and Marie-Claude Pietragalla.
Amar’s musical and spiritual influences show in his films scores: film director Costa-Gavras’s 2000 “Eye Witness” and 2009 “Eden is East”; Radu Mihaileanu’s 2009 “The Concert”, winner of the César for Best Soundtrack of the Year; the 2006 “Days of Glory” by Rachid Bouchareb; the 2008 “The Maiden and the Wolves” by Gilles Legrand; and many other notable films. In August of 2014, Armand Amar received the Amanda Award for Best Soundtrack of the Year for the music of Norwegian director Erik Poppe’s movie “A Thousand Times Goodnight”.
In 1994 in partnership with his friends Alain Weber and Peter Gabriel, Amand Amar founded the record label Long Distance for traditional, classic, and world music, producing more than sixty titles. Amar’s own work is released through the labels of Long Distance, Naive, Universal, Sony, and Warner. In June of 2011, at the Fes Festival of World Sacred Music in Morocco, he created his first ‘oratorio mundi” entitled “Leyla and Majnun”, which consisted of forty singers and musicians from around the world.The performance played at Salle Pleyel, in Paris in April of 2014.
Paintings by Jeffrey Smart
Influenced by the Australian modernism of the 1940s, Jeffrey Smart dedicated himself to the representation of the modern city. He executed each painting with classical precision and included repetitious architectural motifs, referencing the Renaissance perspective. Smart painted stark portrayals of contemporary life, choosing
as his subject matter the highways, trucks, factories, and even the vacant lots of everyday scenes.
Jeffrey Smart was born in Adelaide, Australia, in 1921. He studied part-time in the late 1930s at the South Australian School of Arts and Crafts under painter Marie Tuck and Rupert Bunny, a master of figure composition. Beginning in 1939, Smart also trained at the Adelaide Teachers College for two years. In this period, Smart visited the studio of Adelaide-based artist Doritt Black, who introduced him to the rules of dynamic symmetry, as seen in the work of the Old Masters and developed by avant-garde artists such as Braque, Cézanne, and Léger.
The 1940s were a period of artistic growth and raise to fame for Smart, who started to exhibit in group shows alongside other emergent Australian artists, including Jaqueline Hick and Horace Trennery, and was given in his first solo show at Kosminsky Gallery
in Melbourne in 1944. In 1945, Smart painted “The Waste Land I” and “The Wasteland II”. These desolate rural views, inspired by T.S. Eliot’s poem of the same name, point to the development of the artist’s distinctive hyper-clear and timeless version of landscape painting.
Between 1948 and 1950, Smart travelled to America and Europe, and then moved in Paris in 1949 to study at the Académie Montmartre under Fernand Léger. His several visits to European museum collections in this period will bring Smart to become particularly fascinated with the art of Giorgione, Giovanni Bellini, and especially Piero della Francesca, whose clarity of forms and rigorous use of perspective would greatly influence Smart’s works. In 1950, he lived on the island of Iachia in the bay of Naples, painting alongside contemporaries Donald Friend, Michael Shannon, and Jacqueline Hick.
Upon his return to Australia in 1951, the artist settled in Sydney, where he will remain for the next twelve years. In the same year he won the Commonwealth Jubilee Prize for his 1951 painting “Wallalroo”, a scene from the daily life of that copper mining town. During his years in Sydney, Smart also worked as an art teacher and art critic at the Daily Telegraph 
while continuing to paint landscapes. Works from this period, such as the 1962 “Copper Park” and “The Cahill Expressway”, painted also in 1962, mark the beginning of Smart’s mature style, characterized by an increased hyper-clarity and meticulously crafted compositions.
The year 1963 was crucial in the artistic and personal life of Jeffrey Smart, who resumed his travels around Europe and permanently moved to Rome with Australian artist and partner Ian Bent. Thoughout the 1960s and 1970s, Smart’s artistic career gained momentum thanks to prominent solo shows and exhibitions in his homeland of Australia and around the world, including the 1967 solo exhibition at the Redfern Gallery in London and the American touring group show “The Australian Painters 1964-1966”.
In 1971, Smart purchase a farmhouse in the countryside of Arezzo, a small town in Tuscany, where he would remain for the rest of his life. This move marked the start of the most prolific period in the his 
career. Starting from the 1970s, Smart dedicated himself to interpreting the landscape of modern Italy, mixing his own personal and imaginary relationship with the land with his precision details of climate, life, and landscape. While most of his work includes landscapes, in the 1980s and 1990s, Smart produced a small number of portraits and self-portraits, contrasting the accurate likeness with visionary urban settings.
Jeffrey Smart’s last work entitled “Labyrinth” was completed in 2011, at which time he officially retired. The artist died in Arezzo in 2013 at the age of ninety-two. Even though he lived as an expatriate for most of his life, the majority of his works is now housed by Australian museums and galleries.
“My only concern is putting the right shapes in the right colors in the right places. It is always the geometry” —Jeffrey Smart
Top Insert Image: Robert Walker, “Jeffrey Smart in Studio”, 1967, Print from Negative, 2.4 x 3.6 cm, Art Gallery of New South Wales
Second Insert Image: Jeffrey Smart, “The Picnic”, 1980, Oil and Acrylic on Canvas, 106 x 70.7 cm, Private Collection
Third Insert Image: Jeffrey Smart, “Labyrinth, 2011, Oil on Canvas, 100 x 100 cm, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Bottom Insert Image: Jeffrey Smart, “The Surfers Bondi”, 1963, Oil on Canvas, Private Collection
Photographer Unknown, (Seated with Flowers)
“I ran into pagodas, and was fixed for centuries at the summit or in secret rooms: I was the idol; I was the priest; I was worshipped; I was sacrificed. I fled from the wrath of Brama through all the forests of Asia: Vishnu hated me: Seeva laid wait for me. I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris: I had done a deed, they said, which the ibis and the crocodile trembled at. I was buried for a thousand years in stone coffins, with mummies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed, with cancerous kisses, by crocodiles; and laid, confounded with all unutterable slimy things, amongst reeds and Nilotic mud.”
―
Photographer Unknown, (The Earth Swirls Down)
“The Earth swirls down through the ominous moons of preconsidered generations.”
—Mervyn Peake
Born in July of 1911, Mervyn Laurence Peake was an English writer, poet, and illustrator. He is best known for what are usually referred to as the “Gormenghast” series of books. The three works were part of what Peake conceived as a lengthy cycle, the completion of which was prevented by his death. Sometimes compared to the work of his older contemporary J. R.R. Tolkien, Peake’s surreal fiction was influenced by his childhood love for Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson rather than mythology and the structure of languages.
Peake also wrote poetry and literary nonsense in verse form, and short stories for adults and children, including the 1948 “Letters from a Lost Uncle”. He also wrote stage and radio plays, and in 1953 “Mr. Pye”, a relatively tightly-structured novel in which God implicitly mocks the evangelical pretensions and cosy world-view of the hero.
During the 1930s and 1940s when he lived in London, Peake made his reputation as a painter and illustrator, receiving commissions for portraits. At the end of World War II, he received commissions by newspapers for illustrations depicting war scenes.
Peake gained little popular public success during his lifetime; however, his work was highly respected by his peers and friends which included Welsh poet and writer Dylan Thomas and English novelist Graham Greene. Peake’s works are now included in the National Portrait Gallery in London, the Imperial War Museum in London, and the National Archives of the United Kingdom. In 2008, the British daily newspaper “The Times” named Peake among the list of ”The Fifty Greatest British Writers Since 1945”.