Swimmers

 Kenny Park

The bathers

“The Bathers”, 1927 by Eric B. George (British,1881-1961). 

The Sack of Rome

 ‘The Sack of Rome in 410 by the Vandals’, c.1890 by Joseph-Noël Sylvestre (1847–1926)

I somehow doubt that the Vandals were nude.  The Romans and Greeks famously despised them because they wore trousers.  However, the Teutonic and Celtic tribes would have been just as bisexual as the Romans, the Greeks and the Persians.  Hostility to gayness is a Christian/Abrahamic notion.  Man's natural state is bisexuality.

Peter Berlin

 A gay aristocrat from Germany, who moved to San Francisco in the early 70s. 

Max cute

 Art by joji

Late summer naps

 From this fabulous artist, Kay.

Classical

I don't recognise this painting and I don't know who painted it, but I like it.  Notice the intimate way the beareded warrior listen to the other man, the tender, trusting way the other man rests his hand on the warrior's shoulder.  Lovely.

The Orange Jersey

Henry Scott Tuke (1858-1929) The Orange Jersey

Tintin and Captain Haddock

By the artist Kristina Gehrmann.  Lovely!

Dying Abel

“Dying Abel”, Giovanni Dupre, Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia, 1842.

I loves ya

I don't know who the artist is. If you know, let me know in the comments, so I can give credit where it's due.

Voyeur

The work of Phillip Swarbrick is sometimes characterised as pornographic because it deals with sub-cultural areas of life. He himself characterises much of his work as 'dangerous' - and he relishes exploring those areas of life that are rarely the subject matter of art. He enjoys the fantasies that he can create by touching on extreme or taboo subjects, and the discomfiture of viewers for whom the content is too strong.

 But don't be misled: Swarbrick is a talented artist. He was born in South Africa and, after a short spell in the police force, came to England to escape from the apartheid regime then in power.

(source: Adonis Gallery)

Banana Land

Vintage gay fiction

Is it in yet?

A cartoon by Gerard Donelan.

Locker kiss

If I knew who painted this I would like to his or her website. Alas, I do not know.

Dying secrets

A 2010 portrait of Erik Jensen by Cullen

An uncommonly insightful piece about an Australian artist.  About trying to be a "real man", even though you are gay or bi, and how much damage that does to you.

"Handsome" was Adam's greatest term of affection. Paintings were never beautiful, certainly not pretty: they were handsome. He coined the term "hetero-camp" to describe what he liked about the glamour of a bullfight: the traje de luces, the suit of lights. In Barcelona on an artist residency, he had watched six bullfights a day and produced almost no work.

Violence and sex for him were always intertwined. At art school, his aesthetic was forged from the danger of both. He dressed like a skinhead and described as "savage" his relationship with campus feminists. He boasted that he had been a member of the ultra-right National Front and part of a gang that had kicked to death a gay man. "I hung around with the skinheads because I liked the skinheads. I wasn't necessarily a Nazi, but I have always been interested in the existence of the extreme right," he said. "It's just so handsome. I used to love to go and see bands that would attract that crowd."

He claimed to have played trumpet briefly and poorly with the punk band Feedtime, and with another called Lubricated Goat. This was, so far as I could tell, untrue. "I used to love clothes, really nice skinhead clothes," he said. "I could never get hassled by anyone. Nice shoes. Skinny braces, f...ing white ones. Of course, I got called a poof when I studied art. But not regularly."

There is nothing dramatic about Adam's black eye. He fell on the back stairs, shifting pot plants in the rain. But the swelling makes it difficult to cry. The tears pool in the purpled flesh and the bruises make painful his attempts to wipe them away. "You probably know I'm on the border of bisexual," Adam says through the crying. "I think you can smell me a mile away."

We are sitting in the front room of his house. The lights are off. A newly acquired bearskin lies in front of us, the head still attached. An enormous fish trap has arrived since I was last here. His court case for weapons possession ended only a few weeks earlier.

"I prefer the company of men," Adam offers, "as a lot of writers and artists have said." He pushes through the tears, fending off emotion as if giving some urgent instructions. "My father said that the best advice his father gave him was, 'Kevin, be careful: women are queer cattle.' " Adam had used a similar line when we first met: "As my granddaddy said, 'If it's got tits, wheels or fur, you're f...ed.' "

Adam stops trying to wipe away the tears. He cries openly and his speech becomes unvarnished. But he looks away to make his points. I have rarely seen him so uncomfortable. Publicly, he has only ever been straight. "I haven't been openly gay or bi before, but I prefer men because women are f...ing stupid," he says. "Holding men is nice. We people are great specimens. I suppose I should quote Shakespeare: 'What a piece of work is a man.' "

I ask adam why he has hidden from his sexuality, but he doesn't have an answer. I suspect it is because, at heart, he wants badly to be a country boy, to be some copy of his father: charming, funny, good with women. Instead, he has created for himself a character of violent machismo that would have been destroyed by his affection for men.

Suddenly, it is all there: the showers, the nudity, the elegiac emails, the lingering touches, the fantasies about taking hotel rooms together, the pretence of this book with which he has convinced me to stay at his house. I think back to something Adam said early in our interviews: "You're the only man for me." Sitting opposite him, I finally twig: Adam is in love with me.

Read the whole article here.

Off Duty

A painting by the Belgrade artist Nebosja Zdravkovic

Beaut, neh?

Thanks for the heads up from Art of Male Masturbation.

Diver

A painting by Earle Jay Goodman.

Beaut.

Hustler

One of the fascinating blogs I've discovered in my often tedious wanderings round the interweb is this one, the thoughts and ideas of the artist and designer John Coulthart.  Erudite, intriguing, different, entertaining and full of  insights into art.  You can follow it in the links on the left hand side of this blog.

These images are from this piece.

Sven de Rennes

It was fantasy which first drew me into writing.  I love fantasy and I wanted to read about worlds where people like me were normal.  Not enough authors were writing stories like that, so I decided to write my own.  The result was ElvenSword and its sequels.

Sven de Rennes is an artist from Rennes in France; you can read his blog here.  This image is classic fantasy.  I love it.  Have a look also at this article in Wilde Oats about gay-shaded artists .