Mitchell’s A-Z of Fetish Artists - Garcia

Greg Garcia doesn’t have a strong presence in my collection so I won’t attempt to provide any sort of authoritative analysis. His cartoon series called ‘Hawk’ has attracted my attention, it depicts the adventures of a motorcycle-riding, S&M enthusiast. The characterisation of the ‘tops’ with walrus moustaches and long swirling hair leaves me cold, but that’s just a personal preference. On the other hand the depiction of young men undergoing training as shown in this example does have great appeal.

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Garcia has a very clean technique and the cartoons are uncluttered and easy to read. He is able to capture realistic human poses and erotic scenes in just a few strokes.

You can turn up references to Greg Garcia on the internet. He has contributed to the ‘Meatmen’ series of books, but I can’t find a website for him. I hope to expand this article some time in the future.

Mitchell’s A-Z of Fetish Artists - The letter G - Gicquel

After the rich choice of artists for the letter ‘F’ the only names I have found for the letter G are Garcia and Gicquel. There are some interesting artists working with computer generated images in the ‘G’s (Gorka, Gilgamesh, Greasetank) but sadly CGI doesn’t qualify under the criteria for this series.

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Xavier Gicquel is a mainstream artist with a fascinating style. He uses strong lines to delineate the figures and their clothing and often uses a palette of rich bright colours. The backgrounds are equally strong and this, combined with the use of “naïve” perspective produces an ‘flat’ effect. The overall result is reminiscent of mediaeval stained glass windows and very attractive to view. The stylised trees in the example shown enhance this feeling even more.

Giquel - Forest Fun

The naïve feel carries through into the depiction of the figures as well who are often slightly overweight with chubby, short legs and dressed in clumpy shoes or boots producing a bottom heavy effect. However the naivety stops at the waist, he does a nice line in hairy bodies and manly faces which always wins my approval.

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His characters are usually sexually cavorting in a variety of gay themed locations including leather clubs. In most of these pictures the fetish allusions are incidental to the depiction of joyous gay sex (although you do get the sense that he knows of which he draws!) I might have passed over them were it not for the set of pictures he has produced for ‘Rubberzone’ which show rubber fetish scenes and create a distinctive, dark erotic atmosphere which his other pictures don‘t have. A very interesting artist.

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Lots more nice pictures at Daddy's Here

(Updated Apr 2020, http://www.xaviergicquel.com/ has gone)

Desert Rat by Mitchell

This is a detail from my mini-series of drawings called 'The Desert Rat'.

It's one of my earliest sets.

I'll be posting the full set at mitchmen (yahoo) this coming week.

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The story is set in the Western Desert during WW2 and concerns an English soldier who is captured whilst observing enemy troop movements and faces a long and painful interrogation.

Mitchell’s A-Z of Fetish Artists - F

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Mitchell’s A-Z of Fetish Artists - Fury

Our journey through the letter ‘F’ has unearthed a rich vein of artistic talent and today’s final contender is no different. Ed Fury (aka Marc Ming Chan) shows real men not boys. This is probably his best known picture, showing a biker undressing in front of a cop. It's not clear if this is in response to an order or a challenging act of seduction. The cop is actually a photograph and Fury uses this mixed media technique in other images too.

His men are of muscular build but with a realistic padding of fat and generous patches of body hair.

Their head hair is usually cropped very short or shaved completely.

It's nice to see older men being appreciated!

This simpler cross-hatched style (reminiscent of Roger Payne) is very stylish

 - although perhaps a little too severe for drooling over.

In portraits he projects a sense of male animal strength which makes them very arresting. Some of his pictures are eye-catching for a different reason. He uses a technique that presents the image as though it were a hyper-realistic black and white photograph. Obviously this is a highly accomplished artist. 

Soldiers feature prominently in his output which is a refreshing change and in the action pictures they are shown dominating other men and seeming to make them undress. Like the cop in the top picture, though there is an element of ambiguity in it. This might be a prisoner attempting to seduce his captor or reluctantly responding to an instruction. We can't rule out gaydar at work either, flushing out their mutual interest in each other.

Again in this picture it looks as if the soldier, the dominator, and the entire background, is a photo, but it's hard to be sure. There's an interesting bit of control psychology in drawing a naked man and then parachuting him into real world situation with edgy implications. 

There doesn't seem to be much ambiguity here although one might concoct an accidental encounter between a nudist and a soldier who has wandered into the bushes for a comfort break. Yes I know, pull the other leg it's got bells on!

It looks like an unfinished sketch but that doesn't seem entirely inappropriate for a fleeting, strictly unofficial incident like this which isn't going to be reported back at base.

Perhaps the bushes analogy is not so outlandish!

Fury is a British artist but seemingly resident in France and so uses French soldiers as his models. They seem to have a stereotypical element of French chic in the neat cut of their 'uniformes', dainty beret and (in the earlier picture) cool shades. But there's a leanness of look that suggests they might be hard men. That combination makes a significant contribution to the erotic atmosphere of the image. A French viewer will see nuances and historical associations in this presence that an outsider cannot. 

These soldiers have tied up their captive and are delving into his clothes. The perpetrator looks at us guiltily as if caught in the act and uncertain whether to carry on. However, it looks as if his colleague is far from finished as he continues to immobilise their subject. That may not strictly be required, since the captive himself looks as though he is lying back and enjoying the attention (or perhaps he's simply thinking of England). 

It looks as if Fury might have been intending to clad the main character in shorts at one point.

I would certainly have enjoyed that, see below!

More French chic? 

I wonder what he's got hidden away.

In this image Fury explores the art of bondage with rather more subtlety. We see the rope man surveying his helpless subject with interest - or perhaps it's more accurate to say he's studying his subject's response to being tied up. He's gripping his arm tightly so he won't get away. The face of the bound man expresses uncertainty, which is inevitable in this situation. It may be his first time submitting like this and perhaps it's with a stranger, an unknown quantity. But once again there is that element of ambiguity.

Paradoxically, there is no doubt that this is a free choice 

although the threatening leather belt seems to suggest the exact opposite.

All these pictures are notable for their economy of composition, concentrating on uncomplicated but powerful, well-balanced images. There is sufficient detail of clothing etc to create a context but they stop short of becoming a full blown ‘story picture’ of a particular scene and place. In other words this is thoughtful art as well as stimulating eroticism.

Cladding his favourite fantasy man in a hyper-realistic soldier's uniform 

produces an image that is both memorable and extraordinarily sexy.

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I have been unable to find an operational website for marc ming chan 

but there is an interview on You Tube (2011)

Mitchell’s A-Z of Fetish Artists - Funayama

With Funayama we enter a dark, dark world of bondage used as a vehicle for abuse, torture, mutilation and even cannibalism. His pictures often show bloody wounds and the atmosphere is filled with menace and fear which can be both exciting and repulsive at the same time. Not exactly my cup of tea but he has produced some excellent bondage images of which I include a selection here.

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You can see he has a well developed technique and the rendering of details like body hair and clothing is excellent. In the hogtie picture below the relative positioning and the sizes of the different characters are not true to life but adjusted to fit into the composition. He does it so well that this is not obvious to the viewer. Tom of Finland had a similar ability to disguise the impossible.

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The bamboo stave seen here features in many of Funayama’s compositions, being used for beating, poking and levering joints. Traditional Japanese loincloths also appear and when shown in combination with conventional soldiers uniforms (for example) create a sense that the captive is being subjected to an ancient ritual. I am not well versed enough in Japanese culture to fully understand the significance of this iconography but the erotic impact is still powerful.

Not all of Funayama’s faces are as attractive as the ones shown here. They tend to have dark edged, staring eyes which are quite disturbing but entirely in keeping with the dark subject matter of the pictures.

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I now recommend TimInVermont for forbidden art

There's a subscription but it's worth it.

Mitchell's A-Z of Fetish Artists - Oliver Frey

I wouldn’t normally have considered Oliver Frey (latterly known as Zack) to be a ‘fetish’ artist but it doesn’t seem right to disregard his iconic leather pictures which were published in the early days of free expression for gays.

Frey has always inspired me with the sense of action and drama in his pictures and he was one of the first gay artists to utilise close-ups and dramatic angles (devices acquired, I guess, from film and photography) to enhance the impact of his pictures. The tennis boy in bondage image shows an example.

 

There was always an exciting element of ‘forcefulness’ in his sexual encounters which even today might raise eyebrows if published in freely available ‘top shelf’ magazines. This approach produced a some memorable depictions of arching ecstatic bodies. Torn clothing was an inevitable by product in this scenario and a bit of a speciality for him.

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His 70’s series of Back Alley pictures in which young men are introduced to the leather scene are classic, unforgettable images and were quite unlike anything which had gone before.

Not only were they crammed with domination, leather ritual and openly sexual content (who can forget the young kneeling leather boy offering up his buttocks, bathed in light, for gloved examination?). But also in these pictures Frey conjured up the menacing atmosphere of dark mysterious alleys on a wet night a feature which makes these pictures unforgettable. Now that I am older, the youth of the novices in these pictures spoils the effect a little but these are still first rate images.




The Zackboy picture above also shows Frey’s ability to use light and colour to create drama and sexual atmosphere in a fairly simple picture.
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Frey did a number of comic stories and fetishist images pop up quite often - as in the Tennis boy bondage image above. The ‘Slaves to Lust’ story explores bondage and leather at some length but unfortunately the recipients of the training are again rather young for my personal preferences.
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It would be hard to find another artist who could match Frey’s command of movement and atmosphere in his pictures. His draughtsmanship sometimes flags, the faces become strangely distorted, particularly when he grapples with more challenging angles - which is a shame as this does limit the audience appeal of his work. But it doesn’t detract from the significance of his contribution.

For more of Oliver Frey's work go to - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Freyartworkone/ 

Sorry - it is no more