Talented Pioneers of Photography, and Cousins
Here a sampling of Pluschow’s work is followed by von Gloeden’s.
Guglielmo Plüschow (born Wilhelm Plüschow; August 18, 1852 – January 3, 1930), was a German photographer who moved to Italy and became known for his nude photos of local youths, predominantly males (but also females). Being the cousin of Wilhelm von Gloeden, who, despite taking up nude photography later than Plüschow, soon overshadowed him, Plüschow was several times at odds with the law and charged with corruption of minors. Today, his photography is recognized for its artistic merits, even though it is generally considered somewhat inferior to von Gloeden’s on account of his less graceful handling of lighting and the sometimes strangely stilted poses of his models.
Pluschow
Not much is known about Plüschow’s early life, except that he was born in Wismar as the eldest of seven brothers and sisters.
Pluschow
In the early 1870s, he moved to Rome and changed his first name from “Wilhelm” to its Italian equivalent “Guglielmo”. Initially making a living as a wine merchant, he soon turned to male and female nude photography.
Pluschow
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Pluschow
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I’ve read two or three articles recently that delve into the growing acceptance of male nudity in art, photographic exhibits and movies. These articles typically take the position that female nudity has been, and often still is, more acceptable because nude women are more aesthetically pleasing to look at. I, for one, take exception. Women are indeed beautiful creatures and pleasant to look at, and I enthusiastically showcase the female form on this blog; but is the female form more pleasant to look at than their male counterparts? Check out the images in this post and you be the judge.
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Eugène Fredrik Jansson (Stockholm 18 March 1862 – Skara 15 June 1915) was a Swedish painter known for his night-time land- and cityscapes dominated by shades of blue. Towards the end of his life, from about 1904, he mainly painted male nudes. The earlier of these phases has caused him to sometimes be referred to as blåmålaren, “the blue-painter”.
Jansson enrolled in the Tekniska skolan (now Konstfack) and studied for Edvard Perséus, a painter who ran a private art school in Stockholm. He was accepted into the Antique school of the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts in 1881, but did not have the means to follow most of his contemporaries to Paris for further studies. Remaining in Stockholm, which supplied him most of his motifs, his first trip outside the Nordic countries would come in 1900, when he had already become well-established as a painter and his economic situation started to improve.
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Helen Facenna, (pronounced Fa-CHEN-na) is a self-taught artist from the UK. She has been painting and drawing for as long as she can remember. “It’s a very important part of my existence.”
Helen specializes in creating male nude art and portraits, with the occasional foray into sculpture. She finds inspiration in the human form, in faces and expressions, and in the theatrical and dramatic forces that bodies and faces can convey.
Her work celebrates all that it is to be human, and is a constant journey through the complicated world of the human spirit.
Though her works lacks the masterful fluidity of a more experienced artist, the art she creates is evocative, sensual and extremely masculine. She has an eye for very muscular men, and the talent to paint them. I prefer her subjects that have spent a little less time in the gym.
Visit her blog at Facenna Fine Art.
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A painter paints, a writer writes, all with the same thing in mind: to share with his piece of the world the things he finds beautiful, the things he finds meaningful, the things he finds significant. Whether you read the words and paragraphs that comprise the tale, or look upon the brush strokes that come together to create a beautiful image, the treasures are yours to discover.
A quote from Jacques Sultana
“I paint what I love to see and touch. I don’t make things up. I just try to capture the fleeting beauty of everyday life, moments which I have experienced. No extraordinary thoughts or emotions, just the joy of existence. There is no action in my paintings: something just happened or is about to happen. Tactile pleasure of the caressing play of light on skin, stroking hair and sculpting a profile. The reflection of a magical mirror where you plunge into a space the hand cannot reach; the simple and natural beauty of the male body; the ambiguity of the model looking at the painter looking at him in a game of mirrors : innocence of an ever-present sensuality. Contrast and color are submitted to the rendering of light, harmony and balance of the whole. The rigor of geometry and technique are used to contrast with the body’s fluidity and only to serve expression. A few themes and infinite variations, far from violence and drama, just a smile.”
Jacques Sultana
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Years ago I communicated with this artist. He seemed rather vague about his work. I gathered only that his name is Willie.
I thought his study of the male nude to be magnificent. He seems to focus on well shaped, well endowed, not overly muscular, but very masculine men of different races.
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The expressive poses Willie chooses displays the male body with varying muscles at play.
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Subtle geometry, exotic shades of brown and black, distinct state of mind, all comprise the beauty of black men.
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Born in Germany in 1856, Wilhelm von Gloeden was a master photographer before the turn of the century. His most notable work was that of young boys photographed in Sicily.
His natural and emotional images have rarely been mirrored since.
He found himself in the right time and place; the people of Sicily were not of a mind to feel threatened by his work, nor did they object to the nature of his photography. In this day and time our moral sensibilities would be all a twitter; i.e. I thought the sky was falling after that split second glimpse of Janet Jackson’s nipple.
Of the 3000 plus photographs taken by von Gloeden, some 2500 did not survive WWII fascist Italy. The police, during the Mussolini era, deemed them pornography and destroyed them.
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