(Talk about male bodies and sex between men in plain language, so, alas, not suitable for kids or the sexually modest)
The artistic manifesto of Polish queer artist Wojciech Woś (now working in Berlin), who came to my attention through this sweet and sexy (but, technically, entirely decorous) painting that came up on Pinterest this morning:
(#1) White Sock Club: one in a series with two boys, in white socks, on a blue sofa — a place where much can happen, but isn’t shown, only implied
WW is earnest and passionate about his art — and radically open in talking in plain language about what he’s doing in his art and what it means to him personally. Here’s his statement from his website (I’m giving you his text verbatim; he could use an English-speaking copyeditor to polish this text, but it’s so charming that I’d hate to mess with his voice).
About WW:
I’m Wojciech and I’m 28. I grew up in a small border town between Poland and Germany.
Since I was a child, I was sensitive for the beauty and aesthetically pleasing objects and I wanted to be surrounded by it.
Joining the local culture house helped me to understand my needs and try out creative techniques for the first time.
I made my first steps with photography, drawing, painting and sculpture. This experience helped me to find what I really wanted to do at very young age and here we are — I have my own website now and I still follow this fascinating path.
I left Poland by the age 19 and relocated to Northern Ireland where I studied Fine Arts and shaped myself like a little claydough into something more defined.
Currently based in Berlin where I’m learning more about my creative practice.
I PAINT BOYS.
My paintings are very QUEER orientated.
I treat my art as a some sort of diary with my deepest thoughts and experiences.
It’s about love, dissapointment, mental health, hate, warmth and more.
It’s about us.
Welcome to my little diary.
Along with proclaiming I PAINT BOYS, he should also have trumpeted I LOVE COCK; one of the themes of his art is dicks lovingly depicted — which I won’t show here, because it’s hard to argue that these drawings and paintings are entirely Fine Art, since (like, oh, Tom of Finland’s graphic art) they so clearly embody the artist’s own arousal at his images and convey it to his viewers. The images are certainly art (of often considerable skill, and worth viewing on those terms), but they’re also porn, one kind of utilitarian art, and so WW’s sweet penises are off-limits on WordPress.
Now to some recurrent themes in WW’s art that I can show you.
Theme: the implied penis. The primary object of gay male desire (whether artfully or artlessly depicted) doesn’t have to be thrust in our faces; there are cock-tease depictions, in which the male genitals are flagrantly concealed; and there are symbolic cocks, phallic objects standing in for the real thing. WW has fixed on a red tulip on a stem as an especially effective stand-in: the stem as the shaft of the penis, the red flower as the engorged head of the penis, even some leaves as a suggestion of testicles — as here:
(#2) WW’s Red Tulip for You, with the tulip strategically placed
Theme: the buttocks. The other major object of desire, and one that’s freely available for graphic art. Buck naked or in a minimal garment, especially a jockstrap. In a variety of poses: standing, bending over, crouching, lying flat, lying with the buttocks raised to varying degrees, even with the legs raised as well, as here:
(#3) Painting of a Boy with a Jockstrap On — a white jock to go with the white Nike swoosh athletic socks (white athletic socks being the canonical hosiery for gay porn) — in a posture offering his buttocks for fucking
Meanwhile, I encourage you to look at the brushstrokes in WW’s paintings.
Theme: the loving couple. A great many pairs of young men, as in #1, but with faces. Striking faces, with red cheeks and dark eyes, though not usually as wildly exaggerated as in the painting below, with bright red cheek circles and noses and kohl-dark raccoon eyes (there’s probably a cultural allusion here that I just don’t get):
(#4) I Want to Stay Here Forever
Oh. My.