{gay} – Page 218 – { feuilleton }

Evolution of an icon

Jean Hippolyte Flandrin (1809-1864) was a Neo-Classical painter whose work tends to lack the sensuality of his master, Ingres, yet who managed to produce one picture at least which has been an inspiration to subsequent artists and photographers.

Jeune Homme Assis au Bord de la Mer (Young Man Sitting by the Seashore) was painted in 1836. The simplicity and directness of the rendering is probably intended to be reminiscent of Classical sculpture and the figures seen on Greek pottery and bas-reliefs. There’s nothing in Flandrin’s history to suggest a homoerotic intent but the picture has that effect nonetheless, and it’s to gay artists (and viewers) that the work has mostly appealed since, as can be seen below.

The first (?) copy, usually dated as being from 1900 although it may be earlier, and a very careful imitation of the original pose. Photographer Wilhelm von Gloeden specialised in Classical-themed gay erotica and gave his figure a Biblical allusion by titling the picture Cain. Gloeden’s follower, Gaetano d’Agata, produced his own version.

Ebony and Ivory (1897) by Fred Holland Day.

L’Apocalypse by Pierre Yves Trémois (1961).

Ajitto by Robert Mapplethorpe (1981).

A rare sculpture version, L’Homme de l’Apocalypse by Pierre Yves Trémois (1998).

Finally, here’s my own Fallen Angel picture from 2004 which added wings to the figure.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The recurrent pose archive
• The gay artists archive

Fencers

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The men with swords archive

The lost art of sleeve design

Listening to the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers recently had me musing about the great cover design by Andy Warhol, probably his most well-known after the first Velvet Underground album. The music may sound better than it ever did in the Seventies but CD reissues can’t reproduce the brilliant sleeve which included a real metal zipper on the front of the jeans. The Seventies were the golden age of cover design, popular music had evolved considerably since Sgt. Pepper and the “album as artform” meant that bands were searching continually for new ways to exploit the medium of the record sleeve. Gatefold sleeves became commonplace, then expanded into multiple foldout affairs; expensive gimmicks like the Stones’ zipper arrived pretty swiftly and there were other striking novelties like the first Faust album, a clear vinyl record, in a clear plastic sleeve.

Significantly, Warhol’s Velvet Underground design was also a) gimmicky, with its peel-able banana skin, and b) similarly phallic-oriented, as the banana beneath the skin was a pink one. (Original copies of this album are easy to spot in shops since they’re nearly always missing the skin). Joe Dallesandro is supposed to be filling out the trousers on the Stones’ album, a refreshingly homoerotic moment in the often resolutely sexist world of rock graphics. Nice of the Stones to be so daring but then Jagger at least didn’t mind dancing along the boundaries of sexuality in Performance and it was about this time that they were playing their scurrilous rent boy song, Cocksucker Blues. It’s also quite a macho image, of course, and aggressively sexual, so they get to have their cock cake, and eat it, as it were.

Fancy album sleeves fell out of fashion somewhat when punk came in but there were still things like the first Durutti Column album with its sandpaper sleeve intended to destroy the records it was stored with. I was fortunate to be able to do some vinyl design when I was starting out in the early eighties, even if I wasn’t allowed to design anything quite so elaborate. Some of the designs for the Alan Moore and Tim Perkins CDs take advantage of different booklet arrangements but it’s not the same as having all that space to play with. Now that music is thoroughly digital the visual component is reduced even further. A 300 x 300 pixel image in iTunes is a poor substitute for the tactile (and erotic…) pleasures of the album as artefact.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The album covers archive