The Godfather of Homoerotic Photography

From Aperture photography magazine on the occasion of a major retrospective of the man's work at the Museum of Sex in New York back in 2019 (opening with a quote from the exhibition's curator Lissa Rivera):

“The big boom of porn culture wasn’t his style. It wasn’t elaborate. It wasn’t something that was going to take seven years to shoot and have jewels.”

Pink Narcissus was, as they say, just too much. Producers wrenched the film from him and made a lousy 1971 print Bidgood took his name off. Meanwhile, audiences lapped up Warhol’s faux verité and the hedonism of Wakefield Poole...

The bud of Pink Narcissus would bloom in the work of Pierre et Gilles and David LaChapelle and Ryan Trecartin and Greer; its gauzy shimmer shines in films like Blade Runner and Soft Cell’s Non-Stop Exotic Video Show and Prince’s Sign o’ the Times... While drag queens have for decades mined his work for their art, it must also be noted the exclusive focus on male bodies in racialized fantasias would likely get the film “cancelled” today.

But the ripples of Bidgood’s influence appear in most every artsy earnest queer on Instagram who gazed into Bidgood’s pool and saw themselves. And what remains is a wide-eyed, world-building tribute to the beauty of narcissism. “He wasn’t being ironic,” says Rivera. “He was interested in the fantasies he had since he was a boy. He’s elevating men who don’t get elevated: queer men, hustlers, people from the drag world. He loved them in this emotional visual sense. He still loves that way.”

RIP James Bidgood (28th March 1933 – 31st January 2022)

A table for four, sir?

"Table Des Joyes"


"Trone Salon Secret" armchair


"Trone Salon Secret" armchair detail

I.

Must.

Have.

These...

From an article by Michael Reynolds in Wallpaper magazine, October 2013:

As the Wehrmacht steamrolled in every conceivable direction throughout Europe during the Second World War, bringing death, destruction and misery with it wherever it went, somehow, miraculously, it found time to shop. Shopping, in this case, being a relative term - the German army feverishly plundered Europe from East to West, snatching up as many masterpieces of fine art and antiques as it could get its greedy little hands on.

One great vanishing act to emerge from this sordid tale of wartime looting involves the disappearance of a fabled suite of erotic furniture belonging to its famously libidinous 18th-century daughter, Catherine the Great. The same Catherine whose lustful life was an open secret and whose reign was populated with as many as 13 lovers (her final paramour Platon Zubov being a positively geriatric 22 years of age, while she was a youthful 60).

Shortly after the siege of Leningrad in 1941, German officers raided the Czarina's summer palace, best known as the Catherine Palace, and upon entry into her private chambers stumbled across what one can only imagine would have been any healthy teenage Nazi's wet dream. Her boudoir was adorned with erotically carved wooden panels and pieces of furniture, all embellished with sexually graphic motifs. When the German forces finally retreated from Russia in 1944, they deliberately destroyed the historic palace, leaving behind only its hollow shell and no clue as to the whereabouts of its contents. The secret erotic furnishings of Russia's most renowned Empress had disappeared without trace.

Fast-forward seven decades to the present and a discovery was made, but not one that solved the mystery of the missing furniture. Instead, it was a discovery that would stimulate the imagination of illustrious French furniture factory Henryot & Cie and its manager Dominique Roitel. After procuring a copy of Bernard Gip's book The Passions and Lechery of Catherine the Great, Roitel had a brilliant idea - to create flawless, quality, hand-carved reproductions of the late Empress's missing erotic furniture. After closely referencing images from the book, as well as archival drawings and photos taken by the German military during the war (the latter made accessible to them by filmmaker Peter Woditsch, best known for his documentary The Lost Secret of Catherine the Great), Henryot embarked full throttle on its mission. The first two pieces to be reproduced are a round, phallic-based table and a coitally-encrusted armchair.

...And what of the fate of the originals? We may never know. One can only imagine that they are hidden away in some Bavarian castle, routinely oiled by some octogenarian military crow. Because old wood - as I am sure Catherine would attest, were she alive today - needs plenty of oil.

The pieces are available through Cote France, New York [or at least they were at the time of this article in 2013] - $269,000 for the chair; $159,000 for the table.

Fit for a Queen!

Eight things you didn't know about Catherine the Great.

A lovely pecker

A rather intriguing statue in a park in Tulsa, Oklahoma, of all places...



...perhaps less intriguing when you realise it's actually a swan.

[source]

Doggy style

Only in America could there be such a thing...

National Hot Dog Day

My dreams

I hear you say "Why?"

Always "Why?"

You see things; and you say "Why?"

But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?"

George Bernard Shaw - Back to Methuselah

The Great Wall

"I’m interested in the behaviour of penis. It’s soft and hard, up and down, small and large, smooth and rough. It may be the most attractive and intuitive interface."

This kinetic sculpture ["The Penis Wall"] consists of 81 erectable penises that respond to either a viewer's movements or to realtime movements in the stock market.

Apparently.





[Source: Dangerous Minds]

Turning Japanese

From Time Out:

How often do you associate the British Museum with sex? Sure, there are some saucy cabinets tucked away but it’s probably not your first port of call for a sexy old time. That’s all about to change with their new show Shunga: Sex and Pleasure in Japanese Art.

A sexually explicit feast of paintings, prints and illustration, the exhibition celebrates an erotically charged style known as ‘shunga’ or ‘spring pictures’. It was produced in Japan between 1600 and the mid-1800s, a time when the country was secluded from the rest of the world, and enjoying its own internal order and culture.

Seen together, the artworks offer a window into a culture that saw sex and sexuality in entirely different terms to polite European society...arrive with an open mind, and be prepared for Shunga’s sometimes funny, sometimes tender, sometimes shocking (there are enlarged genitals, masturbation and even an amorous octopus involved at one point) works of pure art.

Shunga exhibition at the British Museum

Shunga: Sex and Pleasure in Japanese Art is on at the British Museum until 5th January 2014.

Oh, Jason!

Il Giasone is an opera by by Francesco Cavalli loosely based on the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece, and became wildly popular in the mid-17th century after it was premiered during the Carvival of Venice in 1649.

Its often comical elements revolve around the meddling of the gods in Giasone/Jason's love-life, and how his earthly passions for the two Queens in his life Medea and Isifile (and their plotting against each other) drive him almost over the edge. In Baroque style, of course.

It is not often in an opera that one gets to hear an aria about sex and masturbation, but, as this marvellously homoerotic performance from the Vlaamse Opera of Belgium proves, (once more) in the words of Miss Anna Russell - "that’s the beauty of Grand Opera, you can do anything so long as you sing it!"

Christophe Dumaux - Delizie, contenti [Cavalli: Il Giasone]

Read more about Il Giasone on Classical Net.

[Eternal thanks to Madam Acarti for finding this particular clip.]