Neo Classical Homoerotic raunch, while basically the foundation for naked boy art for most of the 20th century, or at least a large swath of it, has always left me cold, either its kitsch, badly done, laughable, or fails to compare to the boysluts of the italian reniassance (see carvaggio). its not porny enough. some of the amg attempts
i dont really find them erotic, i mean they arent nearly as erotic as sodoma, matengna, carvaggio, or the like, but they are impt.
daniel skarmesto is his name






(if it matters he qoutes both carvaggio and odd nerum, i see both)

Americans:
Ashuntz, The Ironworkers Noontime, 1880


Eakins:

Wrestlers 1899

Henry Wallis DEath of Chatteron 186?



William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Dante&Virgil, 1870s

John Singer Sargent Two Men Wrestling, 1890s


Harry Lamb, (60 years later, 1940)


Italian Mannerist Examples
Sodoma:

Pieta, 1590s

Mantegna

1480s

Carvarggio:

crucifixion of st peter, 1601

I think what im saying, is that what is difficult about these works is that this radical anthologizing of 1000 years of flesh into flesh, wrestling and not quite conquering, and attaching itself to the porn of mass mediated 20th century. By knowing about that history, the anthologizing, the source material, places distance, takes away the cryptic voyuerism of the working class nudes, or the religious excuses of the mannerist examples...all of the ones above have been assumed to be male to male identifed, but the frisson of mystery, tension, and danger is no longer present...we know that daniel fucks men, and takes place in a cultural, social and economic pattern that provides if not tacit permission, at least a set of normative contexts for fucking men. i dont know if he is constructing himself as part of a metanarrative context, by using carvaggio as an example he seems to be, or if he is tacitly critquing all examples of men struggling against men is explicity homoerotic, the deserpate seeking of historical other as wank material.

i remember seeing that ashuntz in an american history textbook, when i was young, and also seeing eakins paintings about the same time, maybe when i was 10 or so, and they made me hard, they were one of my first attempts at hottie men.

(also when it comes to the american and english examples, there is a matrix of meanings and narratives that surround the idea of working classes that continue with porn)