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.
Frederic Vayssouze-Faure, “Moon Dust’
Frederic Vayssouze-Faure is a French artist interested in wave phenomenons and harmonic theory. He focuses on creating dynamic artworks in which each cell has its own periodic motion, or oscillation.
Image reblogged with thanks to the artist’s site: http://wavegrower.tumblr.com
“Sebastiane”, 1976, Directed by Derek Jarman and Paul Humfress
Sebastiane” is a 1976 Latin-language British historical thriller directed by Derek Jarman and Paul Humfress. The screenplay, written by Jarman, Humfress, and James Whaley, portrays events in the life of Saint Sebastian, including his martyrdom by arrows. The film, which was targeted to a gay audience, was controversial for the homoerotism portrayed and for being dialogued entirely in vulgar Latin. It was the only English-made film to have required English subtitles.
Intensely erotic, “Sebastiane” was filmed in Sardinia, near the town of Buggerru, and in locations in Italy. The film is an early film by the noted experimental and outspokenly gay director Jarman and features the debut of actor Leonardo Treviglio in his role of Sebastian. A bold film having the distinction of being the first non-porn film to show a male erection, “Sebastiane” now is probably only for the film aficionado who loves film- making and its history. A milestone in the history of non-porn gay films.
A Subjective Experience
“Human consciousness cannot be a passive observer of the outer world, just interpreting the input signals that are being received by the brain from the external world. Rather, it compares the fitness of a person’s inner world — feelings, perception, imagination, dreams, desires, etc. — with the external world, allegedly accepted as ‘objective reality’ outside individual consciousness. However, such an objective reality cannot be so objective as it is believed to be. Due to various internal processes to achieve a balance between the inner and outer worlds, consciousness insensibly changes the physical characteristics of reality, making it a subjective phenomenon, at least to a large extent. For this reason, in order to determine what is real (outside of human consciousness) and what is just a subjective experience, it is actually a difficult job.”
―
Straddling the Horse
“When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk: he trots the air; the earth sings when he touches it; the basest horn of his hoof is more musical than the pipe of Hermes. ”
―
Reblogged with thanks to http://satyrspantheist.tumblr.com
Valerie Ganz, Five Paintings from the “Shower” Series, circa 1980s, Mixed Media
Valerie Ganz was born in Swansea, South Wales, United Kingdom, overlooking the dramatic sweep of Swansea Bay with its background of heavy industry. She attended Swansea College of Art and studied painting, sculpture and stained glass. Ganz remained as a tutor until 1973 when she turned her attention to painting full time.
As Valerie Ganz’a interest in the landscape of South Wales grew, her attention was drawn to the landscape of its industrial areas and, in particular, to its mining industry. Over a period of many years, Ganz worked at fourteen different collieries, taking a house and studio in 1985 at Six Bells, Abertillery.
For a year Ganz worked at the Six Bells Colliery, alongside the miners both above ground and at the coalface. In the evening she made studies of the miners and their families at choir practice, in the snooker halls and in the chapel. This work formed the basis of the mining exhibition in 1986 at the Glynn Vivian Gallery in Swansea. The exhibition was entitled “Mining in Art”; her work was shown along with the works of fellow artists Josef Herman, Jack Crabtree and Nicholas Evans.
Valerie Ganz died after a prolonged period of illness on the twenty-eighth of September in 2015 at Swansea, United Kingdom. Today, her works are held in the collections of the National Coal Mining Museum for England in Wakefield as well as the Newport Museum and Art Gallery in Wales.
Insert Image: Valerie Ganz, “Ben Waits Patiently”, circa 1980s, Oil on Canvas, 31.5 x 26 cm, Private Collection
Photographer Unknown, (The Iron Dark of the World)
“By early evening all the sky to the north had darkened and the spare terrain they trod had turned a neuter gray as far as the eye could see. They grouped in the road at the top of a rise and looked back. The storm front towered above them and the wind was cool on their sweating faces. They slumped bleary-eyed in their saddles and looked at one another. Shrouded in the black thunderheads the distant lightning glowed mutely like welding seen through foundry smoke. As if repairs were under way at some flawed place n the iron dark of the world.”
―
Photographer Unknown, Title Unknown, (Hidden Identity)
Reblogged with many thanks to http://penisprocess.tumblr.com
A Year: Day to Day Men: 24th of November
One Facet of Life
November 24, 1639 marks the first known observation and recording of a transit of Venus.
By the 17th century, two developments allowed for the transits of planets across the face of the sun to be predicted and observed. One was the telescope of which the actual inventor is unknown; a patent for a refracting telescope was submitted in 1608 in the Netherlands by spectacle maker Hans Lippershey. Galileo heard about it, and in 1609 built his own version for observing celestial objects.
The second development was the new astronomy of Johannes Kepler, which assumed elliptical rather than circular orbits fro the planets. In 1627, Kepler published his “ Rudolphine Tables”, a star catalogue and 
planetary tables using some observational data collected by Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe. Two years later, Kepler published extracts from his tables concerning the transit of Mercury and of Venus for the year 1631. These occurred as predicted and were observed by several astronomers, vindicating Kepler’s approach to astronomical theory.
The first known observations and recording of the transit of Venus across the sun were made in 1639 by the English astronomers Jeremiah Horrocks and his friend and correspondent William Crabtree. These observations were made on November 24, under the Julian calendar then in use in England. This calendar was refined and gradually replaced by our Gregorian calendar initiated by Pope Gregory XIII, changing the observation date to December 4th of that year. Horrocks observed the event from the village of Much Hoole, Lancashire, and Crabtree, independently, observed the event from his home in Broughton, near Manchester.
Both men, followers of Kepler’s astronomy, were self-taught mathematical astronomers who methodically worked to correct and improve Kepler’s Tables by observation and measurement. In 1639, Horrocks was the only astronomer who realized that the transit of Venus was imminent; others became aware only upon receiving Horrocks’s report. The two men’s observations and later mathematical work were influential in establishing the size of the solar system. For their achievements, they are considered the founders fo British research astronomy.
Insert Image: Ford Madox Brown, “Crabtree Watching the Transit of Venus AD 1639”, 1883, Oil on Canvas, Manchester Town Hall, Manchester, England
Photographer Unknown, Model Unknown, (A Whole System of Symbols)
“The art of meditation is a way of getting into touch with reality, and the reason for it is that most civilized people are out of touch with reality because they confuse the world as it with the world as they think about it and talk about it and describe it. For on the one hand there is the real world and on the other there is a whole system of symbols about that world which we have in our minds. These are very very useful symbols, all civilization depends on them, but like all good things they have their disadvantages, and the principle disadvantage of symbols is that we confuse them with reality, just as we confuse money with actual wealth.”
―
Anna Taberko, Frogs, Computer Graphics, Animation Gifs, Endless Loop
Reblogged with thanks to the artist’s site https://annataberko.tumblr.com
Photographer Unknown, (The Silver Screen and the Red Jockstrap)
Reblogged with many thanks to https://finn4359.tumblr.com
Steffen Welsch Architects, Underground Rain Water Collecting Pool
Combining art with technology and social responsibility, the Australian firm of Steffen Welsch Architects uses sustainable materials like hemp and rammed earth while embodying the ideals of Bauhaus architecture to staggering results. This is their underground pool created by harvesting rainwater. In addition to rammed-earth houses that generate their own energy and capture their own water, they also build modern abodes like the Glen Iris House, a two storey modern Californian-style house in suburban Melbourne. .
Waves of Increasing Intensity
“There is no Space or Time
Only intensity,
And tame things
Have no immensity”
―
Pablo Picasso, “Garçon à la Pipe (Boy with Pipe)”, 1905, Oil on Canvas, 100 x 81 cm, Private Collection
“Garçon à la Pipe” was painted in 1905 when Picasso was 24 years old. It was executed during his ‘Rose Period”, soon after he settled in the Montmartre section of Paris, France. The painting depicts an unknown Parisian boy holding a pipe in his left hand and wearing a wreath of flowers on his head.
