Rudolf Nureyev (1938-1993) - An Inspiration

Nureyev and Erik Bruhn (1960s)

Rudolf Nurevev was the kind of internationally-recognised gay icon that inspired fag blokes like me in my teenage years to feel good about taking a real gay public personna, even if not being absolutely out to everyone. Still reckon he is/was pretty fab!

He was one idea of a beautiful successful larger-than-life gay man - endlessly and effortlessly erotic and exotic. And I was lucky enough to meet him a number of times in London in the late 70's and early eighties, through a friend in the Covent Garden administration, Dorothy Cole.

He possessed the magnetism of great movie and pop stars, but was closed and mysterious at the same moment - a wonderfully lethal combination of pull and push! This distancing quality was obviously in part due to being queer and the perceived need, in those days, to be more private about it as a famous person. And he was naturally shy and suspicious and proud - not easily able to risk a personal attack.

This inward withdrawn 'don't touch' quality, combined with great force of personality, is a apparent I think in some photos:





Of Tatar (Asian-Russian) blood, Nureyev was (prophetically) born on a train. He struggled out of poverty using a great dance talent, graduating from the Kirov Ballet in St Petersburg, and then sensationally defecting to the West in 1961, to freelance all over the world.

My favourite images of this dancer are often those capturing reflective and intimate moments in rehearsal, here with Margot Fonteyn, and with Carla Fracci:

With Fracci in Milan, rehearsing 'Swan Lake'

With Fonteyn in London, rehearsing 'Marguerite and Armand'

I have been in performances where he absolutely torn down the house with some bravura technique, as in 'Le Corsair', here with Margot Fonteyn:



Finally, an electrifiying airborne moment:


Just talking about any kind of performing art has its obvious limitations.

You get no sense of Nureyev's feline fluidity of movement, luscious muscularity in action, astonishing control, and unfailing and continuous creation of line in relation to the frame of the stage.

Max Dupain (1911-1992) - Australian Photographer

Max Dupain was quintessentially Australian, being as Helen Ennis, photography curator and writer, and Senior Lecturer at the Australian National University School of Art, has said 'laconic, disdainful of fuss and flattery'.

His fame today rests in part on his early recording (1930s and 1940s) of an iconic Australian experience - the beach outing. As a break from the contraints of his commercial work, this photography was usually carried out during the week-end - he declared "the best work is always done on holidays".

His career started in the late 1930s , with photographs of Manly, the famous sydney beachside suburb. Dupain experimented with many of the ideas and techniques of 'New Photography', such as unconventional angles, low-angled light sources that unusual shadow patterns, and extreme close-ups.

In this context, you may know of this photographer from perhaps his most famous image - 'The Sunbaker' (1937):

'The Sun Baker' (1937)

Here there is the extreme close-up and the low angle - the camera seems to be on the sand itself.

The figure is made more 'everyman' by his face not being visible. And the image more powerful by there being nothing in frame other than the sunbaker and the sand. The few drops of water on his shoulders and arms, and the sand clinging to his hands, give a dynamic to the shot - he seems to have just come back from a dip in the sea. A dynamic that diminishes the obviously posed quality of the shot and makes it appear a more 'natural' or spontaneous.

A few more beach bloke pics:

'At Newport' (1952)

Again there is a lovely tension between a natural moment caught at the beach and the formal qualities of this pic.

With respect to the latter, there is again the pyramidal structure. The apex is just beyond the head of the guy standing on the wall, with the perpendicular line of his body dividing the triangle in two, a line concluding with the tip of the big toe of the gawky skinny bloke leaning against the wall. This geometric shape has one side bordered by the right arm of the guy facing the camera. With the other side suggested by the line through the tops of the heads of the two women in bathing caps.

'Lifesavers' (1940s)

In this photo, perspective cannot be set up in the usual way - it is a quite featureless landscape. But depth is palpably and simply there in the rescue rope heading to the central vanishing point, properly situated if you image the scene extends out beyond the right hand edge of the frame. And there in the diminishing size of the sequence of lifesaver figures. Compare with 'The Jetty, Walsh Bay, NSW' below.

'The Jetty, Silver Beach NSW' (1952)

'Lifesavers, Maroubra Beach' (1950s)

This last photograph was the result of a Christies Auction impulse - you can just see me in the reflection off the glass! Forensic science would be able to draw out an accurate likeness!

As well as hot guys, the beach of course has heaps of other denizens:

'Nuns on Newport Beach' (1960) - Amazingly and improbably, not Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence!!!


'Icecream at Townsville' (1943)


'Mother & child, Cronulla' (1937)

'Bondi' (1939)

The last image has a delicious element of observation, and of satire! I can feel the lycra clinging uncomfortably, and the need to let the skin breathe. And the vanity of wanting the fabric, unwrinkled, to describe the perfect arc of my butt!

To finish, the sea and sand itself:

'Surge edge' (1940s)

'Sunrise at Newport' (1974)

'Banksias by the Sea' (1939)

'Sand Dunes' (1930s)

For a comprehensive catalogue of Dupain's work, check out the MDAA Photo Archives, a specialist library of photographs of the commercial work of Max Dupain and Associates.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) - Three Studies of Flora

Three botanical sketches by Leonardo. They each catch nature with the precision of exact scientific observation. But have also been conceived as a set of wonderfully balanced and unified interlocking forms. Which transmutes just exact representations into little works of art.

'Lilies'

'Botanical Study'

'Sedge'

Nothing more to be said! Just enjoy.

Adam and St Eve - The Temptation

As I've already mentioned (name post), one of my first erotic experiences - I was about 7 or 8 so an early starter! - was looking my grandmother's large Victorian art book and, in particular, the paintings involving naked blokes, usually in historical guises - of Romans, Greeks, ... doing battles, lying about naked to be observed and so on.

The journey from 'Adam and Eve' to 'Adam and Steve' ...





... and beyond:

Realism in Photographic, Digital and Cartoon Images

I've just realized I've been seeing a lot of digitally-generated porn appearing round the blog-o-sphere recently, with some almost blurring the boundary with real photographs:




In the first image, the illusion of photographic reality is made more convincing by cute touches like including freckles on the top guy's back!

So I was wondering about the rise of digitals, apart from the natural impulse to play around with the new technology.

Digital technology seems to offer a further level of image realism for an 'artist' of porn to select from. The realism cline or gradient that is available now is 'low' realism level as in cartoons, 'medium-high' with digital images and 'high' with photographs.

So the question is why one would select one level over another when considering the specific content of a proposed image.

I think the selection is to do with the complex inter-relationship between the social acceptability of this content in a genral sense, the force or power one wants to give an image, and the particular audience of the poof-o-sphere that's being targeted.

Quite unacceptable content (conventially speaking) can to be presented in a way that makes it more acceptable for a mainstream gay audience to enjoy when it is being presented in the less realistic (and less powerful) mode of cartoons:


It may still be unacceptable to many audiences.

The content of this cartoon can be made much stronger if presented in a realistic digital image or in a photograph. ok or appropriate for an S and M or B and D audience.

Slightly less unacceptable content might be offered to the general audience in a way that is acceptable to enjoy through the more realistic mode of digital images:





This mode is more powerful than in cartoons but less than in photographs. Though one might want to present this content to the B and D audience in a photo to make the experience of it more powerful:



Or in a cartoon mode for great uncle Cedric - who has heart problems!

Quite acceptable content (to anyone) can to be presented in the total realism of the photograph. And might be too weak if presented in a cartoon or digital image.


Two final points.

Firstly, less realistic digitals are able to explore fantasy and/or exaggeration while maintaining the power of a certain degree of realism:





These guys have the musculature I can only dream of!

And secondly, more realistic digitals are able to harness the power of serious realism while being free from the constraints of what you can get models to do in photographs - stuff, if photographed, might risk putting you in jail.

You know what I'm talking about !!!! Blood and shit come to mind. No images - sorry!

'Life' into 'Art' - From Photography to Drawing

'Adonis' - Artist Unknown

For me, it's interesting to consider how an artist (of whatever persuasion - photographer, painter, sculptor, etc) transmutes the stuff of his world into a work of art.

There seems to be various stages in this transformation.

There is perhaps the initial selection of things from the world and the arrangement of them in a chosen setting. To give a 'composition' to work from - with a particular balance of forms, colours, textures, etc.

(There is of course the philosophical question - so nicely put by E M Forster in 'Maurice' (?) - of whether the world in fact exists at all in its own right, but only when we observe it. In the opening of that novel, students sit around in their digs at Cambridge Uni and consider whether a cow in a field is still there when not being seen.)

Okay then, so this 'composition' then is the basic material for the work of art.

There are then decisions to be made about how to transmute this composition into art.

In photography, choices about lighting, and the angle to and distance from the camera to be considered. The kind of film used to be determined - depending on the degree of graininess or sharpness, etc desired. And so on and so on. The following is the formally beautiful result of some unusual choices of lighting and composition - for example, the light source from the landing, and at least half the major elements exterior to the room:

'Mondrian's Studio, Paris' Magnum Photos 1926

In drawing, there are a number of additional choices to be made. So, what is to be exaggerated, omitted, added, changed around, ... . Rather than simply reproduce the composition in front of the artist.

In the 'Adonis' (Artist Unknown) drawing, a number of choices have been made - some more successful, some less.

The background setting, which in the photo is somewhat distracting, has been eliminated. The figure now stands out - its forms and details much clearer and observable.

The slight awkwardness of the inward-turning right leg in the photograph has been 'corrected' in the drawing. And the legs have been extended down - making the composition more formally balanced. All of which results in the cutie's legs more spread, and better framing/presenting his cock and balls!

Talking of which, the drawing happily gives us two balls, to eradicate any possibility of partial castration confusion in the photo. And a much fatter and longer dick. A good choice to my mind! Not sure about the motivation, oh yeah!

Surprisingly, some artists go the other way, like Michelangelo's choice in his painting of Adam in the Sistine Chapel's frescoed ceiling (1508-12):


In fact, this choice was symbolically motivated - Michelangelo was depicting the moment before God gave life to Adam.

The 'Adonis' artist was obviously not motivated by the painters's high-minded symbolism!

One of our artist's less successful choices (or a limitation of technique?) was to leave out the veins captured in the guy's left bicep, forearm and hand in the photo. This leaves the young bloke a bit less than pulsing with life.

Consider Michaelangelo's success in his 'David' (1504) in this respect:


in the detail, for example, of the veins in the youth's right hand:


Despite all of this, the 'Adonis' is a lovely drawing in that it captures the real sense of a self-consciously beautiful person, abeit from a photograph. As such, it is perhaps not a real work of art in its own right, in the sense of not going much beyond reproducing another's image.

But if anyone knows who made the drawing, I'd love to know.

The Courage of 'Dear Friends' in Wartime

Old photographs of 'Dear Friends' in wartime can be really moving.

For me, this is particularly the case when the relationship is not made absolutely explicit:



It's the tension between the courage that makes the subjects want to go public, and the 'prudence' that has them do this somewhat covertly. Though it is 'read' or understood by any gay guys.

Some guys of course wanted to be less covert:



And others, in a moment of bravado perhaps, just burst out and completely:

Perhaps it's that some blokes just had that strength of personality that allowed them to be their gay real selves. And would have been out in any era. For lesser personalities, maybe it was the intensity of experience that goes with war that gave them the courage to be out.

Whatever, I am fascinated with this particular coming-out-in-war phenomenon.

Fascinated and inspired.