That’s Pierre et Gilles, the French collaborative artists — playful, way gay, outrageous, and exceptionally fond of sailors — and their approach to what I called, in a 5/20/11 posting, that
widespread and powerful homoerotic subject in artworks, the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian
From that posting, a P&G depiction of the arrow-pierced, agonized saint:
(#1) Saint Sebastian (1987), focused on the beauty of the young male body; this saint seems more anxious about the future than writhing in agony, and the composition is otherwise restrained
P&G have used StS as a subject at least seven times. I was moved to post on their treatments of the saint by encountering a remarkably campy depiction of him on Pinterest this morning:
(#2) Our Lad of the Flowers: StS as a beautiful smooth-bodied boy in a flowery swoon, with a toothed — literally poignant — halo, performing a cock tease in his purple pants; even the arrows are flowered (I have no P&G title or date for this one)
Three P&G depictions of StS. With titles and dates.
(#3) St. Sebastian of the Sea (1994): the sailor saint in his watery domain, amidst his lavender sea creatures; he rises splendidly above the arrows’ pain to grip us with his cruise face and offer his engorged package
(#4) A close-up, with halo: The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian (1996), the saint as dreamy sacrifice
(#5) Saint Sébastien de la Guerre (2009): the sailor saint resolutely faces death in battle, wearing only a remnant of his dress blues (hey, this is P&G: everything is better with a sailor in it, preferably naked )
Two more P&G depictions of StS. Without anchoring information that I could find. Both with the saint posed against a large vertical architectural feature, a column or pole, that provides a phallic element in addition to the arrows (and, of course, Sebastian’s own phallus, which is a significant element in several of P&G’s StS works).
(#6) The lewd saint of the columns, his genitals just barely concealed by a sweet pink decorative fishnet, in a world of colored fishnets; meanwhile, he’s projecting his full-bore cruise of death (which might be literally of death, given those arrows) — hard to believe that StS ever got hotter than this — so offering a Trick Before Dying
(#7) The saint of the city streetlight pole, rising above urban chaos to display his body in a white posing strap, while casting his gaze heavenward and crying: take me, Lord; I am coming
I suspect that there are still more P&G works out there featuring Saint Sebastian, in other manifestations of him. (They certainly have been fond of him as a subject.) Maybe a StS of the animals, or a StS ministering to the cowboys (or, for that matter, the Indians), or a StS of the knitting needles, that sort of thing.
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