Arnold Zwicky's Blog

🐅 🐅 🐅 tiger tiger tiger for ultimate December; it’s New Year’s Eve, so tomorrow’s rabbits will accompany the enfant terrible 2025, while my end-of-the-year e-mail brings me two male nudes, of very different resonances, to ride the wild tigers of 2024 off

First, on the soc-motss private group on Facebook on 12/26, for Hanukkah, a piece of digital art by Vadim Temkin that’s a playful sexual tease, like the Warwick Rowers calendar photos. Then, a male nude sculpture, in the Western tradition of heroic statuary, exhibited very publicly (in a prominent location on a college campus).

Dude, what a big dreidl you have!. From Daniel MacKay on the Facebook private group soc-motss on 12/26,  the greeting

Chag urim sameach all! (wishing us ‘Happy Festival of Lights’, that is, Happy Hanukkah)

plus the report:

I have a very fun graphic which has in the past got me in Facebook jail — a big muscled young man wearing just a smile, with a giant menorah and dreidl:

(#1) [caption:] There are 12 ways to spell the name of the Festival of Lights [in the letters of the Latin alphabet] but you can’t spell it without H•U•N•K

The image is an AI composition by my friend Vadim Temkin (whose artwork is often featured on this blog). The hunk is doing a crotch tease, just barely concealing his junk. Meanwhile, the menorah is (merely) ample; the dreidl, however, is gigantic — a typical dreidl is less than 2″ top to bottom; large dreidls for sale are around 3″; the one in the image looks to be about 10″, and heavy enough to club baby seals with (more like a weapon than a toy).

I’m not sure where the caption comes from.

Meanwhile, I’m dismayed, but not surprised, that #1 got Daniel MacKay sent by Facebook’s automata to its jail (for violating its “community standards”, in this case against showing genitals). But of course #1 doesn’t show genitals; it playfully, teasingly, conceals them (behind the hunk’s negligently placed left hand). By ostentatiously concealing the hunk’s genitals, however, it makes them the focus of the image. This is the paradox of the classic strip tease: pasties and g-strings make nipples and vaginas, the bodyparts they just barely cover up, the center of attention.

Similarly in some works of male photography. Jack Pierson’s book Every Single One of Them and Fred Goudon’s Cinq resolutely conceal the models’ penises (sometimes with a covering hand, sometimes in underwear, and so on); the Pierson is thought-provoking, the Goudon erotic and sensuous, but both call attention to what they conceal.

The masterworks in this line of photography are the calendars of the Warwick Rowers (the crew team from the University of Warwick, in England). One page, from my 11/27/17 posting “Again, the rowers of Warwick”:

(#2) Remarkably fit, and playful (just barely not exposing themselves; using clusters of grapes, traditional male-genital symbols, is a nice touch); best of all, with the proceeds going towards good causes

Come fly with me. Then on Pinterest on 12/28, this image of a sculptor at work on a huge male nude:

(#3) Gutzon Borglum, sculptor, standing on a ladder in his studio, alongside his sculpture, The Aviator (Library of Congress photo)

Then, from Wikipedia:

The Aviator is a historical sculpture located on the University of Virginia campus near Charlottesville, Albemarle County, Virginia.

(#4) The statue, placed just outside the university library (Wikipedia photo)

The sculpture is a bronze statue commissioned in honor of University alumnus, James Rogers McConnell’s heroism and courage in World War I, as a member of the Lafayette Escadrille.

The Aviator was designed by Gutzon Borglum [creator of the Mount Rushmore monument in South Dakota and the Stone Mountain Confederate memorial in Georgia] and dedicated in 1919. The sculpture measures 12 feet high and 8 feet, 6 inches wide.

… It is an athletic male nude with his feet placed shoulder width apart, knees slightly bent and arms outstretched supporting a pair of wings. The blade/knife; dirk or possible dagger / stiletto the figure has in his sheath is a recognized symbol of masculinity and of a warrior

The aviator is presented as a nude because this a representation of a hero, and in the tradition of Western artworks, heroes and gods can be viewed as above and beyond clothes (Michelangelo’s David being the most famous example); their exposed genitals are never a focus of attention (our eyes are on the faces and the musculature), but are just there, part of the whole male package.

This entry was posted on December 31, 2024 at 10:05 am and is filed under AI, Art, Holidays, Language and religion, Language and the body, Male art, Photography, Toys and games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.