Though rarely seen outside of the gay underground, over 30 of Japan’s top gay artists will come together later this month for an unprecedented group show at the Tap Gallery in Sydney, Australia. The exhibition, called “Boy’s Life,” is timed to coincide with Sydney’s annual Mardis Gras festival, one of the biggest gay events in the world. For those of us unable to jet to the other side of the world, we present a sampling of the provocative gay artists working today in the land of the rising sun. (Some images NSFW.)
New York Arts Magazine writes:
“Born in 1951 Japan, Hideki’s work is seen in many magazine publications around Japan and is widely recognized. One of many successful Japanese artists who has held many solo exhibitions in Japan, he has also exhibited in LA, Sydney, Melbourne.Showing the perfection of his ability with acrylic paint. His stimulative, yet evocative work is gracefully executed within the framework of colour and delicate detail.”
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Only having begun commercial illustration four years ago, Takuh’s more risque work is seen in the popular gay manga Six-Nine (think about it…).
Born in 1964, Gengoroh Tagame is Japan’s answer to Tom of Finland and much of his subject matter covers the same territory as Finland’s, including leather and bondage. Along the way, he’s experimented with incorporating traditional styles, like woodblock, into his images of male eroticism.
Based out of Kyoto, Touya creates a ‘zine inspired maga known as Rice. Like many male erotic artists, Touya’s site offers up a selection of desktop wallpapers to internet-savvy Japanese gays.
Takarabe’s primary interest is mature dudes, whose continuing adventures both in and out of the sack are chronicled in his manga, “Thunder City.”
Higa’s style is a bit different from other erotic Japanese artists as he doesn’t do manga, but rather single stand-alone images of hot guys, in a style that’s both pop and pin-up.
Not all of Japan’s gay artists are focused on creating representative erotica. Gay artist Shiroki has turned to the classical form of brush painting to express eroticism in an abstract, lyrical way.
What do you think of Japan’s current crop of gay artists? Do you think that it’s still difficult to work with explicityly gay subject matter, either here or abroad?
Darth Paul
That’s awesome!
REBELComx
This is really awesome. I wish we could do something like this here. All the artists up there are great…but I can’t honestly say I’m that impressed with Higa’s work. It looks like low quality Flash Animation. And I’m not thrilled with his anatomy at all. Personally, I think I do a much better job – http://rebelcomx.deviantart.com/gallery/#Gay-Greetng-Cards
j
So much for the thought provoking question ending the article I guess…
I do think that it is still difficult to work in the mainstream of the world with gay subject matter, because only art communities see the work as equal (not always, but often) and after it is accepted there is still the question of whether or not they are going to say you paint it just to paint men in their underwear… and whether or not your peers think it is art (as REBELComx critique shows).
GG Allin
I like the movie Heavy Metal.
Charles J. Mueller
@REBELComx:
Umm….spamalot, do you REBELComx?
Darth Paul
@REBELComx: Higa’s *is* a little trite. Very Ranma 1/2.
kevin57
Interesting.
Note that in many (most?) of the depictions, the guys are Caucasian. Is this the perennial attraction to the “alien”?
Lucas
Kevin57, somewhat true…. if you’ve ever seen any Japanese Cartoons or anime — a lot of characters are more Caucasian than they are east Asian, even though they all speak perfect Japanese. All of the higher up people (Presidents, royalties, leaders) are almost always Caucasian. So… perhaps not so much attraction to “alien”, but more along the lines of classicism and a bit of ingrained racism.
Ted C.
I don’t think the characters in anime are supposed to be “Caucasian”. I think it’s just that when you simplify the outline of a person to make a cartoon, facial features all turn out pretty much the same.
I think American artists have a tradition of exaggerating Asian facial features when drawing Asian characters. (And I think it’s a silly tradition. Growing up, I never understood why they did that.) Obviously, Japanese artists feel no need to do that. That might be why you don’t think the characters in anime look Japanese to your eyes.
j
Huge props to Ted C.
I couldn’t think of the right way to explain that. I think there are only two caucasians in all of the art on this page. (By which I mean: two characters intended to be caucasian.)
Michael vdB
I love how the Japanese make everything so expressive and full of life. I recently went to a presentation on Katsushika Hokusai’s The Great Wave. Although he is not gay (or thought to be), his print was superb in giving life to the ocean. Great stuff.