Erotic
Art is an artistic work of a sensual nature that is intended to evoke
erotic arousal or that
depicts sexual acts.
Contemporary Trends In Gay
Erotic Art by Constance Edwards
There
is no way to understand modern gay erotic art without
understanding how it came from its history. While many homophobes would
like to believe that homosexuality was the invention of the 20th
Century, this is a lie. Homosexuality has been with mankind
uninterruptedly from the moment homo sapiens first came into existence.
So too has art. Art
has always had three functions: to express feelings, to capture images,
and to be decorative or entertaining. The second function, capturing
images, has had a variety of sub-functions: education, religion, and
sexual stimulation among them. While we are all familiar with the Kama
Sutra and its ancient illustrations, relatively few of us Westerners
realize that it is a religious text and it is not shy about promoting
homosexuality with the same, pardon the pun, gay abandon, as
heterosexuality. But look at an unedited copy of the Kama Sutra and
there you have it, men on men, men on women, women on women. And for
all that instruction in how to use sex as a way of achieving nirvana,
the pictures are perhaps crude, but certainly explicit.
Until
the invention of mechanical photography in the middle of the 1800's,
art was the only way to do image capture and artists were expected to
come up with good likenesses. Henry VIII's artist, Holbein, got in
terrible trouble with His Majesty when Henry was between wives and
Holbein went to capture an image of Anne of Cleves. Unfortunately for
Holbein, he really liked Anne and brought back to England a lovely
image of her, leading Henry to set up the marriage. Henry, thinking far
less of Anne's appearance (calling her a Flemish mare) practically
divorced her before he married her. Fortunately, neither Holbein nor
Anne had to pay with their heads.
Portraits
of mail
order brides, grooms, mistresses, and lovers were a standard of erotic
art until the invention of the camera. Until the invention of the
camera, every purpose to which images of naked people have been put was
to be found in gay art - both lesbian and male. Masturbation, including
gay masturbation, was also not invented in the 20th Century and
actually dates back far earlier than homo sapiens.
The
camera changed everything.
With
the invention of the camera, paint and charcoal could be used for image
capture, but there was no longer any need to do so. Yet, it took a
while for the freedom that meant to fully sink into the consciousness
of artists. Crude photographs existed literally decades before truly
abstract art came on the mainstream of art. Yet, when we look at the
impressionists like Renoir, and especially my great favorites, the
post-impressionists like one of my greatest influences, Van Gogh, we
realize that art, for many, had moved from image capture to image
inspired work. Once purely abstract work came on the scene, even that
allowed for erotic art. One need only look at my most abstracted work
to see that much of it calls eroticism to mind, even if only as to mood.
In
that, I am
hardly alone. Also we find many images that are certainly human beings,
but equally clearly never to be mistaken for a photograph. Can artists
like me do paintings that can be mistaken for photos? Of course we can.
Look at my own Doppler Effect. But we don't do photo realism when we
don't want to because we find we have something to say other than the
image, times when photo-realism would actually distract from our
message. For an example of that, look at my Invitation to the Dance,
where the erotic joy of the dancing male couple would only have been
hidden had I selected my photo realistic style.
What then is the
trend here? What am I exemplifying? Simply this: Now that we are in the
21st Century, we are no longer enslaved to pure abstraction by the
camera making image capture obsolete as we were enslaved to image
capture before the invention of the camera. We now pick our tools
depending on our desired effect: photo-realism, semi-abstraction, full
abstraction. Whatever we may have to grind, axes are not among them.
For
more information on contemporary gay erotic art, please visit:
http://www.dov-artist.info
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com
Life model or interested? This site is FREE
for models to advertise and for artists to make contact. Free to
Register>>
The Nude:A Study in Ideal Form by
Kenneth Clark Click
image for book description.
The Big Book of Drawing
and Painting the FigureClick
image for book description.
The Nude Female Figure: A Visual Reference for the ArtistClick
image for book description.
