Stroke of Eros

Fantastical gay men are, politely speaking, "exercising their virilities" at the GLBT History Museum, though there's nothing polite about the sexually explicit imagery and full-frontal nudity on uninhibited display in "Stroke: From Under the Mattress to the Museum Walls," a touring historical retrospective of erotic illustrations by artists whose work appeared in gay men's magazines from the 1950s through the 90s.

First, some context: In the 1950s, the government supported a draconian crackdown on so-called sexual perversion, driving gay men further into the closet and stifling expressions of their sexuality. That suppression contributed to a void filled by a proliferation of gay men's magazines easily purchased at the local drugstore or newsstands. Though many masqueraded as bodybuilding or health-and-fitness publications, "Most of the men bought [them] because they were gay," exhibition curator and New York artist Robert W. Richards writes in the show's catalogue. "It was nearly their only opportunity to see handsome, well-made, virtually naked men." It was also one of the few avenues open to them for investigating physical intimacy, exploring fantasy love/lust objects, and seeing reflections of their sexual identity.

Social significance aside, the show's art is exceptional, with a high level of professional draftsmanship applied to exaggerated male anatomy done in a cartoon comic-book style; hard-core material with muscular players and erect cocks in your face and up the ass; and in substantially less raunchy, idealized fantasies, which may be the gay male answer to the Vargas girls, those knowing, slim-hipped, big-breasted creatures that once roamed the pages of Playboy. George Quaintance's "Glen Bishop" (1956), an oil painting of a tawny, movie star-handsome dreamboat a la Tab Hunter, is a prime example of the latter genre. Ensconced in sunlight, naked except for a discreet baby-blue speedo, his buff body is cradled in a tree branch. In a similar romantic vein is Michael Breyette's dewy summer idyll "A Place in the Sun" (2009), a pastel which seamlessly blends Mediterranean Sea and sky with a long, toned male torso. Needless to say, the well-endowed men who populate these works are blessed with spectacular physiques - this must be the largest collection of immense, tumescent, mile-long schlongs ever assembled in one place. For those with a fragile constitution, however, it may be a penis too far.

Roughly a quarter of the 80 original artworks from the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art in New York City, where the show originated, made the trip to San Francisco. Augmenting the exhibition are backgrounds of the 24 featured artists, detailed in text panels adjacent to their pieces, a component that enhances the appreciation of a largely forgotten body of work. Among the most famous of those represented are Colt (Jim French), a producer of magazines and gay video erotica whose original drawing was emblazoned on a T-shirt worn by the Sex Pistols back in the day; and Tom of Finland (nee Touko Laaksonen, and actually from Finland), known for his stylized, hypermasculine, sexually charged images and regarded as one of the more infamous gay artists of the 20th century. Though he once told a colleague, "Most of my works are pornographic illustrations, not pieces of art," three decades later MOCA in L.A. saw fit to make TOF the subject of a major retrospective that may or not have included "Biker Fuck" (1965), a graphic drawing that words fail to adequately describe.

Quite a few of the artists are art-school grads and started and/or supported themselves as fashion-magazine illustrators. Bastille/Frank Webber, for instance, a New Jersey native, trained at the Pratt Institute. His work informed by Jean Genet and W.S. Burroughs, he began illustrating for French fashion magazines and Esquire in the 1950s. By the 1980s, his homoerotic works were widely exhibited. In images that imprint themselves on the psyche such as "SAUNA-FICTION" (1982), he envisions S&M dungeons and hooded, trussed men in any number of anatomically challenging, impossible positions, viscerally rendered in a gouache, tempera painting style he perfected in 1980.

Treading on the softer side, French homoerotic artist Benoit Prevot serves up vintage scenes with advertising panache and a whiff of Weimar "cabaret" decadence, like the come-hither portrait of a teasing, young and beauteous man in a top hat, shirt unbuttoned and no pants, of course, seated on a gilt, orange upholstered chair. ("John O3," 2013). A doll collector, cover illustrator of books and one-time favorite of Playboy, Mel Odom, too, specializes in ravishing, sensual young men ("My Uncle Oswald"), and noble-featured, leonine males da Vinci might lust after.

Partial to sexual subcultures, Rex (real name undisclosed) brought a blunt toughness to the burgeoning gay leather scene of the 1970s. His frank pointillist style is on offer in a 1983 untitled pen-and-ink portrait of a character with an insinuating demeanor, Ray-Bans, black leather jacket slung over his shoulder and enough below the belt to make a grown man cry. Jack Fritscher of the Leather Archives wrote of him: "He draws for big boys grown up enough to face their fantasies."

And what about grown up big girls? After this show closes on October 16, an equally steamy female-centric exhibition might be in order.

For more info: www.glbthistory.org