Tag: male nude

Source unknown – Title unknown (date unknown)

mullets-make-me-moist:

It’s the hand on the thigh that kills me tbh

When it comes to response to sexual pleasure, bodies are not unlike musical instruments–some just line the sweet spots up beneath certain hands differently, others “you can’t love… until [they’ve] broken your heart a few hundred times.“

So while a big part of what gets me about this is how angrily red his erection is–like in my experience it takes a good long bit of stimulation to achieve that color, mullets-make-me-moist is astute in drawing attention to the hands–the correlation between the way they move over this boy’s body and the way a theramin player performs is damn uncanny.

Source unknown – Title Unknown (date unknown)

This is meant to resemble the Pietà, a work–predominantly represented sculpturally–wherein the Virgin Mary cradles Jesus Christ’s crucified body.

In general, I’m not into religious art–it’s largely redundantly boring and although I realize the majority of it was conceptualized as a means of earning a living through the practice of one’s art while also encoding religious work with a humanist undertow.

Pietàs are a notable exception–there’s just something viscerally affecting about them.

It took seeing this image for me to realize why I dig Pietàs: art historically the aren’t exactly erotic in form of fashion but they are decidedly physical. Christ’s musculature assuming a taut not of will but driven by the pull of his body’s weight by gravity. The duality of the Virgin’s attention to both the emptiness of the vessel as well as the vessel itself.

If the Virgin did cradle her son’s body after he was taken down and before he was put into the tomb, he almost certainly would have been naked–after all  Mark 15:24 notes the soldiers guarding him gambled for possession of his garments.

With Pietàs there is always a feeling that the cloth in which Christ’s junk is shrouded, was a concession to the holy patrons that commissioned the works and less an interest of the artist.

So while I don’t think the above is well executed–I am entirely enamored with it as pushes the erotic undertow to the fore. (I think there’s a great deal of room to explore various erotic notions with this form: la petite mort, angel lust and any number of other coded references. (One of my favorite erotic Pietàs is by the incredibly talented Paula Aparicio.)

Further I think there’s a winking bit of blasphemy to this as Jesus–if he actually existed as a legitimate historical figure–was a 33 year old man with a 36 hour refractory period. Whereas, the gentleman pictured above is already risen again.

Source: phallusandart

Source unknown – Title Unknown (20XX)

This could almost be a frame from Ryan McGinley’s Yearbook–same colored paper backdrop and a single studio light.

Unlike McGinley, however, this lacks the grimy, bleaching grain and the body objectification is way too unsubtle.

I like it–which is saying something because I have a strong bias against studio photography.

Explaining what I like about it is going to be a bit of a minefield because the things I like exist–moreover are facilitated–by being in tension with things that are hell of problematic.

For example, I dig the single, angled overhead light. It contributes to a pleasant peach skintone that’s just on the realistic side of hyper-stylization. Conversely, it also accentuates the oddity of the pose–the model has his back arched, his stomach sucked in and three-quarters of his ass is held just off the ground by his left leg.

I love that the texture of his scrotum borders on the synesthetic–sight as touch spectrum…but it is kind of disturbing that the rest of his body is so plastic-like (which could be the lighting, but is most-likely indicative of a Canon full frame camera).

The pose in tandem with the eye contact and the fact that the right frame edge amputates both the boys legs makes me uncomfortable. It’s like trying to interpret mixed signals. On the one hand this image seemingly goes out of its way to be respectful in its depiction; on the other, it’s still entirely prurient.

I feel like if the boy had an erection at least the impetus for the image and the image itself would be more in line. Hell, it’d almost even be even better if the boy had just masturbated to orgasm and made a cummy mess of his chest and tummy.

Source unknown – Title Unknown (197X)

Although this seems–initially–highly staged/contrived in an effort to balance the composition, there’s also something profoundly compelling about it.

I knew from square one that I fucking adored it. Putting my finger on the why of it took some time. But, last week I stumbled upon an article about a photo snapped during one of the many brawls in the Ukrainian Parliament and how it has garnered a great deal of attention because its composition resembles the Golden Ratio governing composition of Renaissance masterpieces.

It’s really the first time the how of the Rule of Thirds derivation from the Golden Ratio has made sense to me. But it triggered another correlation that’s generally overlooked in most work governed by the rule of thirds–the reliance on an increasingly dense deployment of negative space as thing spirals outward.

This realization reminds me of the wonderful–as per usual–analysis Every Frame a Painting presented of Nicolas Winding Refn’s grossly under-appreciated Drive and it’s use of a so-called Quadrant System of composition.

Granted Refn’s use of quadrants isn’t exactly in line with the Golden Ratio; however, I suspect if one had the time and energy one could demonstrate that the reason some of the unexpected cuts he uses work so well is actually due to an overall respect for the Golden Ratio across connecting scenes… the point is if you overlay quadrants over the rule of thirds and recall that one quadrant needs to be predominantly negative space, then the logic of the rule of thirds suddenly clarifies itself. (At least for me it does.)

I strongly suspect that the above image was originally composed according to the Golden Ratio and subsequently cropped prior to publication. It’s interesting to note that if something is rigorously composed according the Golden Ratio, then any thoughtful crop retains a logical consistency in composition.

Yet, what especially fascinates me  is that although my first thought is stylized contrivance–looking at this now, I view it more as a lie about a lie that manages to tell something not unlike the truth.

I love her introspective expression, the way it conflicts with the obvious catering to the voyeur suggested by her pose and it now strikes me as disarmingly intimate and beautiful.

Source: musorka

Source unknown – Ace, Joy and Erica (2008)

As a general rule: I don’t post images shot in color and subsequently desaturated. I’m making an exception with this because it’s literally a thousand times better than the low contrast, optically flat and unappealing original image.

Also, I really try not to post excerpts from shitty corporate porn often. I’ve noted the source here as unknown simply because this image has been licensed and relicensed so often, I really have no idea who the original author even is.

So with two strikes against it and the fact that even if the desaturation restores some desparately needed depth and contrast, it is still a compositional shit show–why the hell am I posting this?

Well, not unlike labeling oneself an anarchist unfairly welcomes correlation with Caucasian crust punk wannabe layabouts who smoke too much weed and have a less than nuanced appreciation for Bob Marley, I feel that the credo sex, drugs and rock n roll gets a similar bad rap by association.

That such a ready-made comparison exists is politically expedient. Thoughtful practice of anarchism is a threat to power structures in a way that few other -isms manage and sex, drugs and rock n roll as a baseline system of belief/motivating factor is similarly if not more dangerous because all three independently or amplified in combination have a proven track record of demonstrating to the individual the extent and degree to which learned limitations are bullshit.

I guess my point is that there is only so much you can to to push your own limitations. It’s like tickling–I can’t tickle myself, someone else is required for that.I know in my own experience that although best orgasm I’ve achieved through masturbation is only slightly better than the worst orgasm I’ve ever experienced during sex. You know what you’re going to do before you do it and you know what you like… there’s nothing unexpected about it. Whereas someone else can tease, cajole, surprise and push your body towards amazing experiences you never knew were possible.

And something with which I am preoccupied is the limitation of how much is too much, is too sensitive really a thing? In my experience, the answers are nothing and no, respectively. But I feel like I haven’t considered all the options and when I die, I don’t want to wonder if I was wrong I want to know with certainty that I was wrong or that as I suspect, I was right.

I think at the root of it that encapsulates my fascination with group sex in the face of the fact that I am a misanthrope with pronounced anti-social tendencies.

Source: icesalander

Rome Grant – Untitled Polaroid (1973)

Anytime I post something vaguely homoerotic, I lose followers. It’s super lame.

Look: if you enjoy watching people fuck, you don’t have to experience sexual arousal in response to every image but your expectations should never be for strict exclusivity. Namely, in the process of seeking out people you want to watch fuck, you should categorical expect to encounter depictions of people who fuck in ways that are not your cup of tea. That’s fine–probably normal-ish (whatever the hell that even entails). But it is hell of problematic when your desire to watch people fuck is only acceptable when limited to watching people fuck if, when and only as long as you never have to see anything other than folks who fuck the way you want to fuck. (That approach is what’s indicated by the term echo chamber.)

If an image of two guys fucking like the one above elicits anything less empathetic than thinking oh, hey, great for them but where’s the lesbians already? then you have some personal growth to which you need to attend.

(If you’re a pervert, embrace that shit. It’ll make your life a lot easier and–I would argue–more fun.)

Back to this Polaroid, though: I won’t go so far as to recommend Grant’s work to you–it’s marred by staid commercial trappings, a lack of thoughtful editing and has all the subtlety of a train wreck in Quiet Town–but this is fucking so exquisite.

Source: romegrantphotography

Source unknown – Title unknown (19XX)

I have a preference for graphic depictions of sexuality focusing on a woman’s pleasure. Thus, although clearly staged–this appeals to me with a particular intensity.

The intensity is amplified by the fact that I also find it alluring where nudity is not presented as a facet of a woman’s sexual expression.

What I am really trying to communicate is the completeness with which this had me from the start.

There are two things it refuses to clarify: is the woman’s thousand yard stare a by product of the obvious staging of the scene or is she fantasizing about another man–perhaps the one rendered as a ghostly presence in the background.

My suspicion this is the intended–as much as authorial intention bears any relationship to the audience’s reading/interpretation (which is to say little if any)–outcome; however, to me the image exudes a sort of aching physical desperation. And that feeling causes me to wander if the ghostly presence is perhaps actually corporeal–a third party waiting to be invited to join the proceedings. The positioning doesn’t really support this interpretation; but wondering about the position caused me to notice the pose and musculature is oddly posed–legs together and touching, abdomen perhaps stretched…

…and I can’t help but thinking if the woman is thinking about the Crucifixion–a notion that would certainly fit with the feeling of seething sexual desperation I get from the image.

It doesn’t have to be that. In all likelihood it isn’t; but the ambiguity within the work that allows such an obscene meditation appeals with glee to the stretching darkness in me.

Sebastién Gherrë – Feña (2011)

If I have a weakness when it comes to image making, it’s audacity. Show me an image with the same couldn’t-give-a-fuck-less single-mindedness seen in that iconic image of Johnny Cash and I’ll be happier than a pig in shit.

The stumbling block with audacity is not unlike the problem with punk rock–the feral burst of righteous fury is usually usually at it’s best when it’s both absent discipline and especially clever.

Thing is: making good art requires at least some concerted discipline and cleverness is all too often willing to rest on its laurels which in turn predisposes cleverness to providing the impetus for a lot of bad art. [Consider a spectrum from clever (Andres Serrano) to smart-feigning cleverness (Arvida Byström) to smart (Laurence Philomene).]

With the above image, I adore the underlying idea: lotion as lube as foreshadowing of masturbatory ejaculation. Unfortunately, the execution–context eliminating close-up, unmotivated middle-of-the-road strobe and soft focus–is just fucking sloppy; detracting–woefully–from an otherwise promising image.

Source: gag-ball-gallery

Source unknown – Title Unknown (19XX)

I’d have posted this because it’s solely one of the most creative positions I’ve ever seen.

And yes, it’s a textbook example of #skinnyframebullshit due to the diminution of the overall context; namely, the ostensibly male legs protruding into the lower left third of the frame seem to suggest this is a group sex scenario transpiring in some teenage parental basement recast as an after school late-60’s rock and roll shangri la.

Then there’s the young woman’s breathtaking expression: a blissed out surrender to overwhelming stimulus, mind-expanding chemicals amplifying the almost magical ability music has to vibrate the soul raised to a level of transcendent crescendos of physical pleasure.

I’m actually extremely curious as to the photographer responsible for this. I’d likely disagree with him on a number of technical considerations, but this single image causes me to suspect he probably considered the pleasure motivating the performance to be the point; not the other way round.

Come to think of it: add pleasure over performance to remember empathy to my list of commandments for pornographers.