Hare Décor XIV

Image: The Leveret.

The Art of Leo Rydell Jost

Writes Abi at Gayletter:

[Leo's] drawings, which are a combination of paper cut outs, tracing paper and other stuff from the garbage that he glues together, are effortless and arranged in a very casual way, he explained to me, "I don't usually have much control over what I'm working on . . . it's not so much about symbolism nor meaning of what you are trying to put behind things, it’s almost completely aesthetic. . . I'm always working with the computer, so I emulated the way I worked with Photoshop: layers, opacity, cut/ paste . . ."

To visit the archive of Leo's tumblr site, click here.


See also the previous posts:
• The Art of Jim Ferringer
• The Art of Juliusz Lewandowski
• The Art of Felix d'Eon
• The Art of Herbert List
• The Art of Joe Ziolkowski

Hare's Christmas

Image: "Hare's Christmas" by Petra Heikkilä.

Morning Light

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Winter Hare

Image: Jane Tomlinson (from her collection of hare prints).

Bel Homme

Was it just a dream?
I couldn't tell if you were really real.
Was it just a dream,
A dream that I could see and touch and feel?

All through the night
I held you close to me and loved you so.
But with the light
You turned to me and said you had to go . . .

– Bobbie Gentry
"I Saw An Angel Die"

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Hare in Moonlight

Image: Sally Mitchell (from her Wildlife Christmas Collection).

Morning Light

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Brown and Beyond

Write George Ewart Evans and David Thomson in The Leaping Hare:

The most common hare of England is called the brown hare . . . but ["brown" is a word that doesn't really] describe that mixture of grey, fawn, yellow, black and brown which distinguishes it from the even colour of a brown cow or horse. Its winter coat is reddish, though seldom as bright as the foxy russet red of the Irish hare. At a distance, especially on grassland, its summer coat looks darker than a rabbit's, and if you examine it closely which, unless you have a pet one, means examining it dead, you will see that in contrast to the mountain hare, its back is covered with tiny black specks – the black tips of its 'guard hairs' which are longer and coarser than the other hairs. Its chest and abdomen are almost white, also the sides of its face. The inside of its legs and the furry pads of its feet are usually the most beautiful yellowy-gold, often tinged with red. The only part that is pure brown or buff is on the nape of the neck smooth and hidden.


Image: Wayne and Adrian.

"There is Something Radical About That Patch of Hair"

Writes Noah Michelson about the above image of Nick Jonas:

It's a beautiful photo, but it's also one that you'll rarely see in mainstream media because of one thing: the small patch of hair fanning out across Jonas' lower back and creeping down his ass crack.

An appreciation of body hair in our culture has waxed and waned over the years. Today the male bodies presented to us (and especially to young men and women) as enviable and desirable are often hairless. . . . And when we do see body hair in magazines or movies, it's always controlled and coiffed and constrained to the chest and stomach. Remember the funniest scene in The 40-Year-Old Virgin? It was when Steve Carell got his torso waxed. Whenever that scene plays, we hold our collective breath as Carell undergoes his metamorphosis, mesmerized by the agony (and his hilarious reaction to it) but also relieved by the taming of the beast before our eyes and his implied transformation from wild man into gentleman.

Hairy backs and asses are even bigger jokes. If you have one (and many, many men do), you can't be the leading man; you're someone's gross dad or lecherous bad date.

Until now?

Nick Jonas is certainly no one's creepy uncle, and he's not a niche figure who doesn't get a lot of traction in Hollywood. He's a 22-year-old bona fide celebrity whose tax return may very well list his occupation as "heartthrob." So when I saw his hairy lower back and ass, which could have been erased easily via Photoshop, I got excited because I felt I was seeing what maybe, just maybe, could be interpreted as a breakthrough.

I can already see the comments section of this blog post filling up with responses like "Who cares?" and "Why is this news?" And you're right: This isn't "news." No one else even seems to be thinking, much less writing, about this photo. But before you write me off as just another garden-variety perv (which is totally valid most of the time), I hope you'll consider how important visibility is for creating change.

As more and more queer people come out and we gain more and more "possibility models" (as Laverne Cox has so eloquently put it) in the media, we feel more permission to be exactly who we are, and I believe the same is true for body image. Imagine being a 22-year-old guy and feeling ashamed about your own hairy back or hairy ass and seeing that image. Or imagine being an 18-year-old young woman and seeing that photo and having to readjust your idea of what sexy is. Even in queer culture, with our bears and otters and cubs and wolves, we're no stranger to shaming bodies – our own and each other's – and tiny, but visible, moments like this one are important for us too.

I'm not claiming that this photo is some kind of furry panacea for all that ails us. Of course Nick Jonas' body conforms to (or surpasses) societal norms in many ways, and seeing it could inspire body shaming or set unrealistic expectations for some people. I'm also not claiming that men shouldn't shave or wax or laser their bodies if that's what they prefer, but I would like to at least raise the question of why hairlessness is the preference for so many of us and address the stigma that often comes with being hairy. And let's face it: Jonas isn't exactly hirsute, but I believe there is something radical about that patch of hair – however small, however innocent – climbing out of his jeans in the pages of Flaunt. And I think it's worth pointing out and talking about, because this is how our culture begins to change – one image at a time – and because I want to celebrate progress – however modest – wherever I find it, even (especially?) if it's in Nick Jonas' hairy ass crack.


See also the previous posts:
• Beauty and the Beard
• Talking Scruff
• Going Floral
• "Don't Fence Me In"

Moon Hare

Image: "Moon Hare" by Rachel Toll, a watercolour artist based in Devon. Says Toll: "I love painting and gain inspiration from the landscapes, wildlife, the coasts of Devon and Cornwall."

The Art of Jim Ferringer

"My goal as a photographer is to depict
my vision of male beauty through my lens."

– Jim Ferringer

To view more of Jim's work and/or purchase his art, click here.

See also the previous posts:
• The Art of Juliusz Lewandowski
• The Art of Felix d'Eon
• The Art of Herbert List
• The Art of Joe Ziolkowski

Running Hare XVII

Image: "Golden Hare" by Chris Winch.

Boys Will Be Boys VIII

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

See also the previous posts:
• Just in Time for Halloween
• Hallowtide Transformations
• Halloween Hare

Hare Décor XIII

Image: The Leveret.

Bel Homme

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

A Curious Fact

Writes Simon Carnell in Hare:

Unlike rabbits with their well-known propensity to multiply to extreme pest and even plague proportions . . . hares generally regulate their population density at levels far below the carrying capacity of a given environment. . . . The apparent self-regulation of their numbers by hare populations in general has led to at least the speculation that their social behavior must be more complex than previously thought -- though 'speculation' is very much the operative word. It remains a curious fact that hares have been relatively little studied, with even their primary characteristics and behaviors remaining open to much further inquiry.


Image: Jon Evans.

In the Arena II

See also the previous posts:
• In the Arena
• Wrestling: "The Heterosexually Acceptable Form of Homosexual Foreplay"
• The Domain of Eros
• Olympic Male Beauty
• Olympic Male Beauty II
• Ball[s] Sports

Autumn Hare III

Image: "Autumn Hare" by Jemima Jameson.

See also the previous posts:
• Autumn Hare
• Autumn Hare II
• Autumn Hare (2008)
• Autumn Beauty

Mon Bel Ami

Image: The Leveret

Hare Décor VII

Hare Décor: Jim Shore. Background Décor: Doug Abbott. Photography: The Leveret.

Morning Light

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Hare Décor VI

Image: "Hare Handle Basket with Four Legs" (glazed stoneware, 1995) by Ken Ferguson.

Standing Ovations

The following is excerpted from Mark Shenton's December 23, 2010 commentary "The Full Monty," which is about what one blogger calls the "best hung the­at­rical her­oes."

___________

I recently wrote here about critics getting too personal in reviews, following the furore that engulfed Alastair Macaulay of the New York Times for his characterisation of the Sugar Plum Fairy in a New York City Ballet production of The Nutcracker having consumed too many sugar plums herself. But as Michael Cove­ney sug­ges­ted in his blog on Tues­day, “A per­former gets on a stage and per­forms. With heart, mind and body. All three are fair game for crit­ics, and being rude or not simply doesn’t come into it. What an actor, or a dan­cer, looks like is what crit­ics write about.”

And if a per­former goes naked, it should, to fol­low this reas­on­ing, be fair game for their par­tic­u­lar attrib­utes to be com­men­ted on, too.

Crit­ics, of course, often do, par­tic­u­larly if the per­former doesn’t exactly meas­ure up, so to speak. I have pre­vi­ously writ­ten here how Mark Lawson once com­men­ted adversely on Ian Holm’s man­hood when he appeared naked dur­ing the storm scene in a National Theatre pro­duc­tion of King Lear, and how Holm replied in his auto­bi­o­graphy that the com­ments have “stayed with me, so I sup­pose they must have hit some kind of nerve.” But Holm gets his revenge: “Even dis­reg­ard­ing Lawson’s own phys­ical short­com­ings (the liver lips, the pudgy plas­ti­cine face, the old man’s pre­ma­turely bald­ing dome), I am not con­vinced that his no doubt enorm­ous cock would not also have dwindled after a cold bath in front of sev­eral thou­sand people.”

Ian McK­el­len, play­ing the same role for the RSC (and like­wise strip­ping), on the other hand drew this admir­ing, even slav­er­ing, review from New York critic Michael Port­antiere, in which he noted, “Spe­cial note for those who care about such things: In a brief nude scene, McK­el­len amply demon­strates the truth of Lear’s state­ment that he is ‘every inch a king’.” No won­der that Derek Jac­obi, now play­ing the role for the Don­mar, has pub­licly declared in an inter­view with Dominic Cav­endish in the Daily Tele­graph: “I can’t com­pete!!”. . . and so he doesn’t try and remains fully clothed dur­ing that scene.

When Daniel Rad­cliffe, the Harry Pot­ter film wiz­ard, fam­ously showed his own per­sonal wand as he made his stage debut in the lead role of Equus, a role that involved a pro­longed nude scene, he told the New York Times when he reprised the role there that he suffered from what he called Michelangelo’s David Effect. [According to Radcliffe] David “wasn’t very well endowed, because he was fight­ing Goliath. There was very much of that effect. You tighten up like a ham­ster. The first time it happened, I turned around and went, ‘You know, there’s a thou­sand people here, and I don’t think even one of them would expect you to look your best in this situation.’”

Nich­olas de Jongh, then theatre critic of the Even­ing Standard, how­ever, clearly expec­ted more, declar­ing that “never in mod­ern times has such excite­ment been stirred by the pro­spect of view­ing a very few inches of adoles­cent male flesh”.

The very phrasing, of course, proves that nude scenes in the theatre do undoubtedly cause a frisson and sexual tension that isn’t necessarily to do with the character at all but about the actor’s own exposure of something far more intimate. And in any case, I heard from separate reports over the course of the New York run that far from suffering the David Effect, appearing in Equus proved to be sheer theatrical Viagra for young Mr Radcliffe, who was more man than boy as the play increasingly stirred him to attention.

A similar thing happened to Eddie Izzard when he appeared in a nude scene in the West End play Lenny with co-star Elizabeth Berkley, and rose to the occasion in every sense, so to speak. As Max Bialystock says to Ulla after her audition in The Producers, “Even though we’re sitting down, Mr Bloom and I are giving you a standing ovation,” so it seems that both Mr Radcliffe and Mr Izzard wanted to lead the standing ovations.

To read Mark Shenton's commentary in its entirety, click here.

See also the previous posts:
• Hard
• Not a Weapon or a Mere Tool
• Body and Soul
• Rethinking the Normal Penis

Communion

com·mu·nion (noun): a close relationship
with someone or something.

See also the previous posts:
• "I Have Become Your Brother . . . One of Your Kin"
• Creature of Mystery, Creature of Magic
• Emanation

Morning Light

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Bronze Hare

Above: "Bronze Hare" by Belinda Sillars.

On her website it's noted that "Belinda Sillars is a renowned sculptor of extraordinary talent. Her bronze wildlife sculptures have developed from a love of wildlife since childhood . . . a very rare and natural talent that captures the true character of her subjects."

Ballerino II

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

This Fleeting Journey

Beautiful and precious one,
take care on this fleeting journey,
one so full of danger and despair.

Image: Photographer unknown.
Words: The Leveret.

The Art of Juliusz Lewandowski

According to his Saatchi Art website, Polish artist Juliusz Lewandowski is a "self taught painter, cooperating with Sopot Auction House in Warsaw, the Museum of Eroticism in Cracow, and the Catarine Miller Gallery in London.

To view more of and/or purchase Lewandowski's artwork, click here, here, and here.


See also the previous posts:
• The Art of Felix d'Eon
• The Art of Herbert List
• The Art of Joe Ziolkowski