Gallery Three
INDEX:
Gallery One: Click HereGallery Two: Click Here
Gallery Four: Click Here
My View on Good Art: Click Here
"Vulcan"
attributed to El Greco
circa 1600
Granada, Spain
By the 1980's pictures of nude males became into their own and prevailed in every area of society except in the religious culture where they had previously found a home for so long. The advertising industry could not get enough photographs of semi nude males. The underwear clothiers plastered photos of bulging crotches in jockey shorts on billboards and magazines. A half nude torso may of a youth wearing jockey shorts may have saved underwear from going the way of the hat in previous generations. His name was Marky Mark.
A gay artist who possibly would have been soon forgotten was given more than his fifteen minutes of fame when spineless museum boards refused to exhibit his paintings in Cincinnati and Washington, DC. Consequently, Robert Mapplethorpe was instantly famous and maybe the first male US known artist to be openly gay. See Thomas, 1986 Apparently, before Mapplethorpe, all the artists and photographers who spent their lives painting and taking pictures of nude men did so for reasons other than really liking their work! Other photographers took a page out of the dark side of Mapplethorpe, and for a while we were treated to photos of men not always flattering as in Brian on the Toilet
The early pictures of nude males who seemed to have been photographed in innocent nakedness (see The Swinger) gave way to men whose stance and stares into the camera made clear their gay sexuality. Sex in the Tub
More is better was the theme of the gay 1990's. Whereas, in the 60's we saw a picture of three men and one hardon, the 90's would show all three men with erections. Three Hard Youths
Then there were those flights into fantasy of naked men in strange places as The Hitchhiker. The fantasy would press on leaving no male function unexamined as in The Farmer.
While arts and photographers were trying to reach for a new level in artistic achievement, the posters of porno on the Internet did not bother for anything artistic. Rather they fell back on the old tried and true. Yet in the midst of shock and fantasy, there were some moments of reality, and a photographer named Ingo Taubhorn broke with the traditional photographs of comely youths to photograph an older and younger man in The Couple. However, breaks from fantasy were brief. Photographers would continue to fall back on old standbys, and swords and shields would continue to play a part in gay photography. More Swords and Shields
To Continue to Gallery Four, Click Here!