Planet Homo

V MEN

The new Summer VMAN is homodelicious and ripe with erotica.

For the weekend

Robert Rauschenberg

One of the art world's greatest painters has died. Robert Rauschenberg, who along with Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns (with whom he had a long relationship) was a major player in the Pop Art movement of the 60s. Read the entire obituary here.

Black and White

Michael Roberts just gets better and better. Photographer and style director for Vanity Fair, Roberts has been creating visual poetry for decades. This month, his new book, Shot in Sicily is being published by Steidl Books. Photographed over twenty years, SIS features an array of homoerotic images with distinct reference to master boy photographer, Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden.  Or as the press release states: His camera captures the beauty of youth, crumbling temples, traditional Easter parades, and the theater of daily life to recreate the allure of Sicily, even for those who have not yet been there. It is testimony to the power of black and white photography, with an evocation of Avedon, in those astonishing Paris years.         

Great Art: Robert Sherer

Opening Friday at the Lyman Eyer Gallery, 432 Commercial St. in Provincetown, artist Robert Sherer evokes childhood as many of us imagined it: joyful, innocent and very physical. The works are pyrographs, which are wood-burned images created with actual camp craft materials such as leather, wood, tarpaulin, lanyards and grommets. "Like many American boys I grew up in a world of sports, camping, scouting, and war gaming. The secret rites of passage and relationship intrigues played out in the locker rooms, pup tents, and tree houses helped to define me as a man. Because my youth most closely resembles the classic illustrations of camping guide books and scouting manuals of the 1950s and '60s, I have found it necessary to derive my biographical drawings from these visual resource materials." Sherer, himself a former Boy Scout, grew up in Alabama. “I had a classic American childhood. My dad worked in the aerospace industry doing contract work for NASA. Knowing my dad was building rockets for the moon put stars in my eyes.” Like fellow artist, Eric Fischl, Sherer's work is playful, yet matter of fact. The stirrings of attraction, affection and sexuality are rendered in an illustrative style reminiscent of the 60s, but with meanings that explore the generally untold, and unseen homoerotic side adolescent youth. In addition to the the pyrographs, Sherer is stunningly brilliant at appropriating the styles of neo-classical masters Boucher, David, Ingres, Jerome, and Bougereau, which has brought about censorship charges from the religious right who claim that Sherer perverts God’s natural order by placing men in women’s positions. Not unexpectedly,they are completely missing the point. It is astounding that an artist of this caliber should be subjected to criticism, but the infamy, in itself, has provoked a far greater awareness of his work. They are simply, beautiful. To see the full range of his talent visit www.robertsherer.com.
Note to George Michael: start collecting.

“Sherer perverts God’s natural order           by placing men in women’s positions

Chris von Wangenheim

Vmagazine pays tribute to one of the greatest photographers of the 70s, Chris von Wangenheim. Renowned for his violent, decadent images, Wangenheim clearly helped define an era by pushing photography to the acceptable limits. While photographer Bruce Weber would be exploring the sensual, erotic side of men by shooting an entire issue of GQ (unheard of today), Wangenheim, whose images appeared in all the great fashion magazines, would explore women and occassionally men in a completely different light, literally. Dark, sinister, provocative and more then hinting at violence, he met his own untimely death by a car accident in 1981.

Talent

Photographer Karim Sadli

February: Water

The Cutting Edge of Art

The art issue of West, the Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine featured a piece on performance artist, Ron Athey by Kateri Butler.
Athey's art, which many find repulsive, is a combination of theater and self-abuse. Most notably, a performance in 1994 at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, which in part was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, led to a Republican Inquisition and a nearly complete meltdown of funding for arts in America.
An excerpt from the article:
"Ron is fearless in his work. The only true darkness is that which comes out of the hidden and misunderstood. He doesn't flinch. Oh, but I do. Especially when I see him the day after a performance, blotches of yellow and purple where hooks had pulled his face into a garish mask, or barely formed scabs where he had cut himself. I admit I'm one of those people who shivers and turns away during such scenes—yet one of the most powerful parts of a Ron Athey performance is the collective physical reaction that sizzles through the audience when he impales himself on a Judas cradle, say, or teases a rope of pearls out of his ass. Which is critically acclaimed, by the way. "Ron Athey's asshole," Amelia Jones declares in the spring issue of TDR: The Drama Review, "has its own place in the history of contemporary performance art."

YOU HAVE MALE

What a Relief

Italian police unearthed a hidden cache of Roman reliefs believe to hidden by grave robbers. 12 panels were found near Fiano Romano, just north of Rome. The reliefs date to the late 1st century B.C. and are believed to have decorated a tomb.

A Photographer Shows in Brooklyn

For twenty two years the Wessel + O' Connor Fine Art Gallery has showcased homoerotic photography, featuring some of the most significant names in the genre: Steven Arnold, Jim French, George Platt Lynes, Herb Ritts, Bruce of Los Angeles, Steve Klein, George Hoyningen-Huene and John Dugdale among others. Tonight in a show entitled "Schooldayz," they feature the work of the young Brandon Herman. Born and raised in a small suburb outside of San Francisco, Brandon's work is a combination of stark realities set in stark illusions. Using mostly friends, companions and objects of desire, his work pays homage to the ordinary while transcending it by the sheer reality of taking a picture.
"When I take pictures they become my reality and the photographs become important mementos, proof that for a few hours at a time I got together with my friends and made my fantasies come true." It should be noted that in his myspace profile, he lists his profession as a "plastic surgeon", which might be apt as he undermines reality, suffusing it with movie-like lighting with deep saturations of color redefining the ordinary. His work is showing January 11-February 24. The Wessel + Connor Gallery, 111 Front Street, Suite 200, Brooklyn, NY.

 

Celebrity Photography

Under pressure. The photographer has less than thirty seconds to compose, light and take THE photograph. There are no retakes, celebrities don't come back. Watching photographer Michael Davis shoot under these extraordinary circumstances is to understand a kind of grace under fire. It also makes one reexamine the art of celebrity  photography in general: if a photograph taken on the spot, without stylists, make-up or even an art director can be this good.....
Actor, writer, director (Little Children) Todd Field with Academy Award winner Sissy Spacek. Babel director Alejandro González Iñárritu and the ultimate gentleman, Morgan Freeman.

The Place to be this weekend...

This weekend in Palm Springs, Ca. is hot. There is the Eighteenth Annual Palm Springs International Film with 80 world or U.S. premieres of upcoming major international films, seminars, and intimate on-stage interviews with movie and media personalities like Shirley MacLaine, Christopher Nolan, Kevin Costner, Peter Bart and Leonard Maltin. Brad and Angelina will be there. Tonight is opening night with the premiere of "Outsourced".
Tomorrow night the m modern gallery, presents Blow Up: A photography exhibition of amazing Hollywood images taken by legendary Hollywood photographers. Featured is the photographic work of three legendary celebrity photographers, Michael Childers, William Claxton and Douglas Kirkland. The opening will be followed by a party at the swank Viceroy Plam Springs Hotel.

Sexy Art

In the next few months Planet Homo will be sponsoring a photo exhibit that will be hitting major cities in the United States and hopefully Europe. Featuring the work of Joe Oppedisano (pictured), Karl Simone, Brandon Herman,  Michael Childers and Mel Roberts, the show will look at the state of male erotic photography past and present. Men have been photographed since invention of the camera. There has always been a special quality and story attached to images. During the early 50s and 60s, photographing men was usually done under the guise of athletics, fitness and wrestling generally in jockstraps. Nudity, though prevalent was also against the law. Photographers were arrested, files and images confiscated.
With an evolving culture the late 70s and 80s, photographers such as Bruce Weber and Herb Ritts expanded the notion of photographing men by shooting them in naturalistic and less tableau settings.
Throughout all images of men there runs a current of exploration, a discovery of form eliciting a revelation about what is to be male, to be seen, to be alive. And that has not changed in the current climate of digital photography and the abundance of images to be seen on a daily basis.
This exhibit explores the relationship between images both old and new. Photography is essentially timeless, and male photography is virtually without fashion, instead always focused on the object of desire, revealing only the relationship between photographer and model.

Art Opening

If you happen to be wandering around Palm Beach a few days before Christmas, stop by the Holden Luntz Gallery for an amazing group show entitled, "Dreams, Fears and Desires". Featuring the work of Brandon Herman, Eric Ogden, Kerry Skarbakka, Bernard Faucon, Cig Harvey and Lynn Goldsmith.

Some of the names may seem familiar. Lynn Goldsmith has photographed kids, children and many, many celebrities including a stint as Michael Jackson's personal photographer. Bernard Faucon has been at the forefront of creating surrealist images most notably the beautiful Summer Camp book. Brandon Herman is a New York photographer originally from the Bay area and a recent graduate of the famed RISD (Rhode Island School of Design).

There is an odd coherence in the grouping of these photographers. Naturalistic and Surrealistic images gliding over the human landscape exposing our dreams, fear and desires.