Andreas Leissner

Paintings by Andreas Leissner

Born in Berlin in 1978, Andreas Leissner is a figurative painter of the realist style, who documents the isolation of humans in the modern world, using strict, controlled, almost stolid images. In his more recent works, he finds his points of reference in the great works of European occidental culture, recognizable in the themes of his paintings.

From 1996 to 1998, Andreas Leissner studied with figurative realist painter André Krigar. He later studied, from 1999 to 2004, under painter and graphic artist Volker Stelzmann at Berlin’s University of the Arts. After graduating with his MFA in 2004, Leissner began a career as a freelance artist.

Andreas Leissner has exhibited solely and in group shows in galleries and museums including: the Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum in Hagen; the Art Association of Plön, Germany; the Art Association of Mainz; and the historical Spandau Citadel in Berlin.

Based in Brandenburg, Germany, Andreas Leissner is represented by Gallery KK, founded in 1983 by Klaus Kiefer and located in Essen, Germany. The gallery is focused on figurative contemporary art. It is located at: https://www.galerie-kk.de

Andreas Leissner’s website is located at: https://andreasleissner.com

Ken Kesey: “Dragging Men Up by Their Hands”

Photographers Unknown, Dragging Men Up By Their Hands

“It’s like… that big red hand of McMurphy’s is reaching into the fog and dropping down and dragging the men up by their hands, dragging them blinking into the open. First one, then another, then the next. Right on down the line of Acutes, dragging them out of the fog till there they stand, all twenty of them, raising not just for watching TV, but against the Big Nurse, against her trying to send McMurphy to Disturbed, against the way she’s talked and acted and beat them down for years.”

—-Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Born in September of 1935, Kenneth Elton Kesey was an American novelist, essayist, and countercultural figure of the 1960s. Graduated from the University of Oregon in 1957, he began writing “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” in 1960, following the completion of a graduate fellowship at Stanford University in creative writing.

While at Stanford University, Ken Kesey participated in an Army-funded experiment at the Veterans Administration Hospital, which involved hallucinogenic drugs. The discovery of the effects of the drugs prompted Kesey to study alternative methods of perception. To further his study, he later made the decision to work as an orderly at the Menlo Park mental hospital in California, where he encountered questionable treatments for patients.

From these observations, Ken Kesey concluded that society makes ordinary people crazy and that society, itself, prevents people from functioning in it once again. This conclusion inspired Kesey to write “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, a book he considered to be a rail against the unspoken repressive rules of society.

“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” is one of America’s most challenged and banned novels. In 1974, residents in Ohio, considering the book pornographic and glorifying criminal activity, sued the local Board of Education to remove the novel from classrooms. Between 1975 and 1978, several school districts in New York, Oklahoma, Maine and Idaho removed the novel from the schools, with the Freemont High School in St Anthony, Idaho, firing the teacher who assigned it. Challenges against the novel being in school curriculums periodically occurred until 2000.

Note: The film adaption of the 1962 published novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, starred Jack Nicholson and was directed by Miloš Forman. It was released in 1975 by United Artists. The film went on to win five Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay.

Cornelius McCarthy

Cornelius McCarthy, “The Waiting Room’, Date Unknown, Oil on Canvas

Born in Stepney, London, in 1935, Cornelius McCarthy was among the top painters of the male form working in the United Kingdom during the second half of the twentieth- century. Greatly influenced by the work of Pablo Picasso and Keith Vaughan, his own unique style makes his works instantly recognizable.

In 1950 Cornelius McCarthy entered Goldsmiths College School of Art, studying under Sam Rabin, who taught him the importance of line in defining form. His pursuit of art did not falter even during the time he was called to National Service for England; he continued drawing on whatever material was at hand, even military forms. After demobilization, McCarthy took a position at the Stepney Public Libraries where he met Alec Ayres, who would become his life-long partner.

After seeing the 1962 Keith Vaughan retrospective at the Whitechapel Gallery, McCarthy decided that painting the male nude was a subject to pursue. McCarthy conveyed his subjects as real men, strong and unapologetic in their private reveries. His work is characterized by a solid sense of composition and the use of still-life elements that often lends itself to Cubism.

Basically a retired man in 1997, McCarthy visited Mexico in search for inspiration. The artwork he produced there was included in a special “Mexico” exhibition in 1998 at the Adonis Gallery. McCarthy continued to exhibit works at this venue until 2007. when he began to experience increasing health problems, but still continued to paint.

Cornelius McCarthy died peacefully at his “Willow End” home on November 19th of 2009. Upon his death, Alec Ayres donated his sketchbooks, containing the sum total of McCarthy’s rough works, to the Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives in Bethnal Green, London.

Note: An inteesting read is McCarthy’s lide-long friend Peter Dobson’s 2015 illustrated book “Radiant Affinities: The Life and Work of Cornelius McCarthy”. It highlights the significant developments in McCarthy’s life and his sensibility to the male form in art.

Deux Couples au Déjeuner

Artist Unknown, Deux Couples au Déjeuner (Two Couples at Lunch), Computer Graphics, Film Gifs, “El Juego de las Ilaves”, 2019

“The boys were amazed that I could make such a poem as that out of my own head, and so was I, of course, it being as much a surprise to me as it could be to anybody, for I did not know that it was in me. If any had asked me a single day before if it was in me, I should have told them frankly no, it was not.

That is the way with us; we may go on half of our life not knowing such a thing is in us, when in reality it was there all the time, and all we needed was something to turn up that would call for it.”

—Mark Twain, Joan of Arc

Note: The film gifs are from the Mexican comedic television series “El Juego de las Ilaves ( The Game of Keys)”. The series revolves around the lives of four couples who decide to be swingers among themselves, and addresses the issues of monogamy in long relationships, self-realization and desire. Sebastián Zurita, in the role of Seergio Morales, and Horacio Pancheri, as Valentin Lombardo, are the male actors in the gifs.

Jaques Augustin-Catherine Pajou

Jaques Augustin-Catherine Pajou, “Mercure ou le Commerce”, 1780, Detail, Marble, 196 x 86 x 82 cm, Richelieu Wing of the Louvre Museum, Paris

The son of famous sculptor Augustin Pajou, Jacques-Augustin-Catherine Pajou was born in August of 1766 in Paris, France. He was a painter, both of portraits and historical scenes, and a sculptor in the Classical style, with the emphasis on form, simplicity, proportion and the clarity of formal structure. In 1784, Pajou became a student at Paris’ Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture.

Pajou’s devotion to Greco-Roman art, developed by his later studies in Rome at the Académie Française, was evident throughout his career. For his diploma work at the Royal Academy, he sculpted his “Pluton Tenat Cerbere Enchaint (Pluto Enchanting Cerebus)”, which was approved by the Royal Academy in 1759 and submitted for admission in 1760. This sculpture is now on view in the Louvre.

Jacques Pajou received a directive from King Louis XVI for the creation of statues to honor great Frenchmen. This led to a succession of work in the 1770s which included busts of naturalist Georges Buffon: Madame Du Barry, the last mistress of King Louis XV; and mathematician and scientist René Descartes. During this time, Pajou also sculpted a statuette of clergyman Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, a master orator known for his sermons.

Jacques Pajou was appointed keeper of King Louis XVI’s antiquities in 1777, and commissioned by the King to complete the Fontaine des Innocents in Paris, constructed by architect Pierre Lescot and sculptor Jean Goujon. Originally scheduled for destruction for sanitary reasons in 1787, it was saved, largely by the efforts of writer Quatremère de Quincy, and moved to Paris’ square Place Jaochim-du-Bellay. Pajou’s commission was to create a fourth façade for the fountain, in the same style as the other three, so that the fountain could be free standing.

John Keith Vaughan

Paintings by Keith Vaughan

Born in August of 1912 in Selsey, England, John Keith Vaughan was a British painter and photographer who was one of the leading proponents of Neo-Romanticism. Britain’s foremost painter of male nudes before David Hockney and Patrick Procktor, he created muted depictions of anonymous male nudes set in abstract landscapes that expressed his internal struggle with his homosexuality. Due to legal laws against homosexuality, Vaughan was compelled to self-censor and veil his imagery due to legal risks and possible charges from obscenity laws.

Keith Vaughan attended Christ’s Hospital school. As an intending conscientious objector during the Second World War, he was conscripted into the Non-Combatant Corps, providing physical labor to the army. In 1942, stationed at Ashton Gifford in Wiltshire, Vaughan had his first exhibition of paintings at the Manchester Art Gallery.

During the war, Keith Vaughan became friends with painters Graham Sutherland, notable for his work in glass and fabrics, and John Minton, an illustrator and stage designer. In 1946 after leaving service, the three men shared living and studio premises. It was through their association that Vaughan became part, for a brief period, of the Neo=Romantic movement of the immediate post-war period. Upon his leaving the genre, his work, concentrating on studies of male figures, became increasingly more abstract.

During the years of the mid to late 1940s, Keith Vaughan produced around twenty-five paintings of male bathers, as well as scenes and drawings in gouache and other media. At Pagham, on the south coast of England between 1947 and 1948, Vaughan met John McGuinness, an ill-educated, working-class orphan from Liverpool. In some ways, the young man reminded Vaughan of his younger brother Dick, who was killed in the war seven years earlier, which led Vaughan to provide clothing, meals and an education for McGuinness.

McGuinness, with his large hands and athletic body, represented something raw and honest, embodying all the qualities that Vaughan was attracted to. McGuinness’s gentle, unaffected character allied him with nature in Vaughan’s imagination. John McGuinness’s broad, broken nose, fringe and rugged look make their appearance in several works from this time onwards. The 1947 oil painting “Standing Male Figure”, with its blue background, and the 1949 color lithograph “The Woodsman”, both shown above. are two of the works featuring McGuinness.

An art teacher at the Camberwell College of Arts and later at the Slade School, Keith Vaughan is also known for the journals he kept, published in 1966 and posthumously in 1989. A gay man who was troubled by his sexuality, Vaughan’s life is mostly revealed to us through these daily journals. Diagnosed with cancer in 1975, John Keith Vaughan committed suicide in London on November 4th of 1977, writing in his diary as the drug overdose took effect.

For more extensive information on the life of Keith Vaughan, I suggest the Keith Vaughan Society which is located at: https://www.thekeithvaughansociety.com

An article by award-winning poet and art critic Sue Hubbard on Keith Vaughan’s life and his photographic work on Pagham Beach can be found online at The London Magazine located at: https://www.thelondonmagazine.org/review-keith-vaughan-pagham-beach-photographs-collages-1930s/

Top Insert Image: Francis Goodman, “Keith Vaughan”, January 1947, Gelatin Silver Print, National Portrait Gallery, London

Middle Insert Image: Keith Vaughan, “Les Illuminations de Rimbaud, Parade”, 1975, Gouache on Wove Paper, 48 x 43 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Keith Vaughan, “Seated Bathers on the Shore”, 1945, Ink Charcoal Crayon and Gouache on Paper, Private Collection

David Abram: “They Spill Rain Upon the Land”

Beguiling the Senses and Enchanting the Mind: Photo Set Thirteen

“Each thing organizes the space around it, rebuffing or sidling up against other things; each thing calls, gestures, beckons to other beings or battles them for our attention; things expose themselves to the sun or retreat among the shadows, shouting with their loud colors or whispering with their seeds; rocks snag lichen spores from the air and shelter spiders under their flanks; clouds converse with the fathomless blue and metamorphose into one another; they spill rain upon the land, which gathers in rivulets and carves out canyons…”

—David Abram, Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology

David Abram is an American ecologist and philosopher best known for his work bridging the philosophical tradition of phenomenology,the study of the structural experiences of the ‘self’, with ecological and environmental issues.

David Abram introduced the term “the more-than-human-world” in his 1994 book “The Spell of the Sensuous”, which received the Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction. This term was gradually adopted by other scholars and theorists, and became a key phrase in the broad ecological movement. Abram has also referred to this concept more recently as “the commonwealth of breath”.

Abram advocated a reappraisal of “animism”, the belief system that all objects, places, plants, and creatures possess a distinct spiritual essence, as a complexly nuanced and uniquely viable worldview. He held that this view, a belief system of many indigenous people, is one which roots human cognition in the sentient human body, while affirming the ongoing entanglement of our bodily experience with the remarkable sentience of other animals, each of which perceives the same world that we perceive yet from a different perspective.

David Abram, a student of traditional, indigenous systems of ecological knowledge, gave voice to the entwinement of human subjectivity not only with other animals but also with the varied sensitivities of many plants upon which humans depend and the bioregions that surround and sustain our communities.

In 2010 Abram published “Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology” which was a finalist for the 2011 Orion Book Award and the runner-up for the PEN America Edward O. Wilson Award for Literary Science Writing. Using his knowledge of indigenous cultures, Abram explores our human entanglement with nature and shows that awareness, or the mind, is not an exclusive possession of the human species but a clear aspect of the biosphere itself, one in which we, along with other living things, steadily participate. This book has since become a classic of environmental literature.

Hugh Ramsay

Hugh Ramsay, “A Student of the Latin Quarter”, 1901, Oil on Canvas on Board, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Insert: Hugh Ramsay, “Self-Portrait in White Jacket”, 1901-02, Oil on Canvas, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Hugh Ramsay was an accomplished Australian artist whose portrait paintings achieved success in Australia and in France before his untimely death at the age of twenty-eight. Born in Scotland in 1877, he relocated with his family to Melbourne, Australia, in 1878. Ramsay enrolled at the National Gallery of Victoria School in 1894 under the tutelage of impressionist Frederick McCubbin and artist Bernard Hall, who tutored him on the importance of tone through careful study of Spanish master-painter Diego Valázquez.

After unsuccessfully applying for the 1899 Traveling Art Scholarship, Ramsay was encouraged by portraitist John Longstaff to travel to Europe in September of 1900, which he financed by selling his paintings through the Art Union sales and with support from his older brother. Ramsay arrived in Paris in January of 1901, where he enrolled at the Académie Colarossi and was exposed to the Louvre collections and exhibitions of the work of his American and French contemporaries.

Hugh Ramsay’s 1901 “Portrait of James S Macdonald” was accepted by the conservative Paris Salon and, in 1902, three portraits and a still life were accepted by the progressive Société Nationale des Beaux Arts and displayed favorably. With his reputation increasing, Ramsay’s art connections permitted him access to the important social circles in London, particularly that of opera singer Dame Nellie Melba, who gave him a commission for a portrait.

Unfortunately, due to long hours spent working in the impoverished conditions of his studio and living quarters, Ramsay contracted tuberculosis and was advised to return to the warmer climates of Australia. Forced to abandon his international career, he returned home to Melbourne in August of 1902. In December, Dame Melba, on tour in Australia, organized Ramsay’s first and only solo exhibition at Myoora house in the Melbourne suburb of Toorak.

Despite his worsening condition, Hugh Ramsay continued to paint and exhibit at the Victorian Artists Society. The last paintings he produced are considered among his greatest, including “The Sisters”, a portrait of his own two sisters, seated and dressed in white, and painted in 1904. Gradually becoming weaker, Hugh Ramsay died at his family’s estate, Clydebank, in Essendon, Victoria, on March 5th 1906, a few weeks before his twenty-ninth year.

Ramsay’s realist portraits were characterized by Velazquez-inspired tonalism, prevalent in Melbourne during the 1890s. His quick and confident handling of oil lent his portraits a wonderful candidness which were indebted to the influence of American painter John Singer Sargent. Ramsay also worked within other genres, including narrative and mythological subjects, still life, urban scenes and landscapes.

A memorial exhibition of Hugh Ramsay’s work was held at the Fine Arts Society in 1906 and a retrospective at the national Gallery of Victoria in 1943. Ramsay’s achievements overseas and impact locally are remarkable given his short period of activity and relative inexperience. The fact that he had not yet matured fully affirms his exceptional artistic talents.

More of Hugh Ramsay’s work can be found at the National Gallery of Australia site located at: https://nga.gov.au/ramsay/works.cfm

Baker’s Dozen

Photographers Unknown, Baker’s Dozen

“Because bread was so important, the laws governing its purity were strict and the punishment severe. A baker who cheated his customers could be fined £10 per loaf sold, or made to do a month’s hard labor in prison. For a time, transportation to Australia was seriously considered for malfeasant bakers. This was a matter of real concern for bakers because every loaf of bread loses weight in baking through evaporation, so it is easy to blunder accidentally. For that reason, bakers sometimes provided a little extra- the famous baker’s dozen.”

—Bill Bryson, At Home: A Short History of Private Life

The Gaddi Torso

Artist Unknown, “Gaddi Torso”, Second-Century BCE, Greek Marble, 84 cm, Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy

This Hellenistic marble male torso was purchased in 1778 by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Peter Leopold I, from the Florence’s Gaddi Collection. There is no historical record of this work prior to the sale date; however, it was already in the collections of the Florentine Gaddi family in the early sixteenth-century, as Florentine artists and sculptors knew of it.

The “Gaddi Torso” is derived from an earlier original work of the second-century BC. Although only the torso exists, it is clear that it was originally a Centaur whose hands were bound behind its back. What remains of the torso exhibits a young, muscled body with a twisted torso, straining against his bonds. This theme was represented several times in Hellenistic art, serving as an emblem of civilized control of Man’s baser nature.

The “Gaddi Torso” was used several times as a model for future works of art, particularly in the period between the sixteenth and seventeenth-centuries. An example of this is Italian Renaissance painter Amico Aspertini’s 1515 oil painting on panel, “Adoration of the Shepherds”, also at the Uffizi Museum, which shows the torso on the far left side, pictured resting on a marble base. Inspired by careful study of the “Gaddi Torso”, painter Rosso Fiorentino used it as the model for his body of Christ in the 1526 “Dead Christ with Angels”.

The “Gaddi Torso” remained with the Gaddi heirs until it was sold, still in its untouched fragmentary condition, to Grand Duke Leopold I. Like the fragmentary marble “Belvedere Torso” in the Vatican Museum, it was never restored by being completed, something previously undergone by most other Antique fragmentary sculptures.

Toshihiko Okuya

Artwork by Toshihiko Okuya

Born in November of 1955 in the Gifu Prefecture of Japan, Toshihiko Okuya started his art career in 1981 doing illustrative work for children’s and picture books, and magazines; he also produced illustrative puzzles and mazes for books and periodicals. Okuya became a lecturer in 1983, specializing in education for children. In 1989, he entered his paintings in the “Illustration in Japan1988” exhibition held by the Seibu Art Forum in Tokyo.

Toshihiko Okuya began work, starting in 1996, in the fields of graphic design and web design. In 2001, he began to combine his oil painting with computer graphics, first scanning his work into digital images and then adding effects on his computer. Okuya entered the 2001 Mikuni Town Exhibition, becoming a special prize winner in puzzle art. He won a prize for his oil paintings at the 44th Kanagawa Prefectural Art Exhibition in 2008 and a prize at the 2009 Epson Color Imaging Contest for Digital Art- Ink Jet Print Works.

The artist’s site is located at: http://quinbaya.com/okuya/#

Haruki Murakami: “. . .From the Distant Past”

Photographer Unknown, From the Distant Past, Photo Shoot

“Most things are forgotten over time. Even the war itself, the life-and-death struggle people went through is now like something from the distant past. We’re so caught up in our everyday lives that events of the past are no longer in orbit around our minds. There are just too many things we have to think about everyday, too many new things we have to learn. But still, no matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away. They remain with us forever, like a touchstone.”

—Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

Frank Yamrus

Photography by Frank Yamrus

Born in 1958, Frank Yamrus attended Wilkes University, earning his BA in 1980, and Drexel University in Philadelphia, earning his MBA in 1986. A sensitive observer of his life and surroundings, he works in series to produce intimate, introspective photographs, creating suggestive visual narratives focused primarily on himself and his place in the world.

In series form, Yamrus has addressed environmental issues in his carefully composed photographic still lifes of flowers, blocks of ice, and plastic water bottles. He frequently shoots self-portraits amid the natural landscapes that formed his experiences, allowing the insertion of himself into the scene to serve as proxies for his emotions.

Frank Yamrus leaves his open-ended images largely unexplained, explaining that his photography has always been about process and not about resolution. Two of his previously shot series are the 1994 figurative-nature “Primitive Behavior” and the 2000 “Rapture Series” of facial- expressive portraits. In 2008, to mark the milestone of his fiftieth birthday, Yamrus shot ” I Feel Lucky”, a poetic series of self-portraits, at once overt and ambiguous, which conveyed the pivotal experiences that shaped his identity.

Man and Flower

Photographers Unknown, Man and Flower

“The moon is beautiful partly because we cannot reach it, (the sea is impressive because one can never be sure of crossing it safely). Even the pleasure one takes in a flower — and, this is true even of a botanist who knows all there is to be known about the flower, is dependent partly on the sense of mystery.”

—George Orwell, Pleasure Spots, The London Tribune, January 11, 1946

Antonio Botto

The Poet: Antonio Botto

Born in Concavada, Portugal, in August of 1897, António Botto was one of Portugal’s first openly gay writers, a ‘poète maudit’, cursed poet, whose unapologetic and candid verses about homosexual life and passion were both praised and reviled.

Antonio Botto was born in a working class neighborhood, and lived by working a series of menial jobs. He was poorly educated, gaining most of his knowledge from the books in the bookshop where he clerked. In his mid-twenties, Botto entered civil service as a administrative clerk in the state’s offices. He worked briefly in Zaire and Angola, before returning to Lisbon in 1925, where he worked as a civil servant.

Botto’s first book of poems “Tovas” was published in 1917, followed by “Cantigas de Saudade” in 1918, “Cantares” in 1919 and “Cançōes do Sul” in 1920. Botta’s fourth book of poems, entitled “Cançōes (Songs)”. was first published in 1921 and was largely ignored until his friend, the poet Fernando Pessoa, published a second edition in 1922 under his own publishing company and publicly praised the work.

Conservatives reacted strongly against the poems and denounced them as ‘Sodom’s literature”, leading authorities to ban the book in 1923. This public scandal in the Lisbon society granted Botto a life-long notoriety. After the scandal subsided in 1924, the ban was lifted, enabling Botto to publish several revised editions of his “Cançōes “.

On November 9, 1942, Antonio Botto was expelled from the civil service for disobeying a superior’s orders; wooing a male co-worker, addressing him with ambiguous words with tendencies condemned by social morals; and for writing and reciting verses during working hours, thus disrupting workplace discipline. After this dismissal, Botto attempted to earn his livelihood by the royalties from his books, and writing articles and critiques in newspapers.

With little funds and deteriorating health from refusing treatment for syphilis, Antonio Botto raised funds through recitals for passage to Brazil in 1947. Well received upon arrival, he attended banquets and tributes throughout Brazil. He resided in Sāo Paulo until 1951, when he moved to Rio de Janeiro, surviving on royalties, writing articles and columns in Brazil’s newspapers, and doing radio shows; but gradually his situation deteriorated.

Rejected in his attempts for repatriation to his home country of Portugal, Botto fell seriously ill in 1956 and was hospitalized for a time. On March 4, 1959, he was run over by a motor vehicle, with the result of a broken skull, and went into a coma. Antonio Botto died on March 16, 1959. His remains were transferred to Lisbon and have been buried since 1966 in the Alto de Sāo João Cemetery.

In his writings, Botto’s poetic voice, personal and intimate, revels in eroticism while expressing the ache of longing, silence, and suffering. Gaining acclaim and notoriety, he was both hailed as one of the great Portuguese poets of his day and condemned for his frank depictions of male to male desire. Antonio Botto and his work fell into oblivion after his death in 1959. However, within the last ten years with the rising interest in gay history, his works, including biographies of his life, have been issued in new editions available both in Portuguese and English.