Sex has made a dirty name for itself over the years, and any celebration of cock is going to be met with instantaneous dismissal if not outright hostility. The Hunks featured here, some of whom are gay (and straight) porn actors, pose and preen in proudly naked form, and in some small (and big) ways they are hopefully blazing new trails of sexual acceptance for a sex-positive world. One artist who is also pushing for a transformation in the way our culture demonizes sex is Nicolas Brunet.
His website ‘The Art of Nicolas Brunet‘ is gloriously NSFW, and more than worth a perusal if you’re into fascinating work that pushes boundaries and highlights the maximum pumptitude of the penis. Devilishly and deliciously not for the faint of heart, his artwork flirts with the profane, but actually makes greater strides in putting forth a world where words like ‘profane’ don’t exist, or at the very least matter.
Witness his glorification and depiction of gay porn actors. He paints a pretty picture of these gentlemen – worshipped and wanted in certain circles, and the judgment and derision sometimes heaped upon the gay porn industry is here transformed into a component of inspiration and beauty. Changing attitudes and social constructions doesn’t happen overnight, if it happens at all, but Brunet’s giddy joy in crafting such figures, and the exuberant arousal they put forth, is perhaps more effective than any abstract ideological argument on the subject.
The rock-solid phallic perfection of his work seems partly inspired by the legendary Tom of Finland, and his famous crotch shots. Yet Brunet’s work injects a modern-day edge, occasionally going boldly into sci-fi territory. There is a rich history of this sort of sexual display, going back to the erotic Japanese wood blocks centuries ago to current day Yaoi and Manga.
Not that it’s always been about sex and pleasure. Solitude plays a recurrent theme in many of his pieces, with auto-erotic acts and ejaculation made in mostly solitary respect. The men here don’t often come together, and the juxtaposition of such an intimate and isolated act given a public display makes much of the work crackle with tension.
Brunet is also a master of making quieter moments come to brilliant life. The longing of a man sniffing a shoe – a lost lover’s, a boyfriend’s, or his own is unclear – but what does come through is a palpable and resonant depiction of yearning. Maybe it’s a sexual peccadillo, or maybe it’s something more. The most powerful part of Brunet’s skill is that he leaves it up to the viewer to fill in the rest, and filling in the blanks has never been more fun.
{You can view more of Nicolas Brunet’s work at his NSFW website ‘The Art of Nicolas Brunet‘.}
