Gay fantasy art

Previous posts about gay or homoerotic art or artists. A personal and idiosyncratic selection, this isn’t meant to be definitive.

• Gwenaël Rattke record covers

• The art of Paul Binnie

• Splendid Suns

• Bill Travis revisited

• The art of Eduardo Hernández Santos

• The art of Alexander Cañedo, 1902–1978

• Barazoku covers

• Notre Dame des Fleurs: Variations on a Genet Classic

• The art of Shinji Horimura

• Tom’s World

• Born to be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey

• The art of Antoon van Welie, 1866–1956

• The art of Paul Thévenaz, 1891–1921

• The art of Peter Knoch

• The art of Tatsuji Okawa, 1904–1994

• The art of Willem Arondeus, 1894–1943

• The art of Nicholas Tolmachev

• The art of David Haines

• A Q&A with artist Mel Odom

• Homosurrealism

• In Homage to Priapus

• Querelle de Brest

• Fast Friends

• The art of Jean Boullet, 1921–1970

• Tom of Finland redesigned

• May Wilson’s Snowflakes

• Tom of Finland postage stamps

• The art of Robert W.

Richards

• The art of Sidney Hunt, 1896–1940

• Ignacio Goitia interviewed

• Andrey Avinoff revisited

• Fetish photographer Rick Castro

• Keep Your Timber Limber

• The art of Naomichi Okutsu

• The art of Konstantin Somov, 1869–1939

• The art of Seiji Inagaki

• Claudio Bravo’s packages

• Gekko Hayashi revisited

• The art of George Stavrinos, 1948–1990

• The art of Gösta Adrian-Nilsson, 1884–1965

• The art of Gregorio Prieto, 1897–1992

• The art of Guido Reni, 1575–1642

• The art of Michael Leonard

• The art of Ismael Álvarez

• Muto Manifesto, volume 7

• Cum In Your Eye by Scott La Force

• Be prepared

• The art of Xiyadie

• Jacques d’Adelswärd-Fersen revisited

• Gay octopus sex

• The art of Hyeyeol

• Richard Bruce Nugent’s Salomé

• The art of Elmgreen and Dragset

• Elie Grekoff’s Tirésias

• The art of Rob Clarke

• Japanese gay art

• The art of Mel Odom

• The Classical alibi in physique photography

• Ed Wood’s Sleaze Paperbacks

• Looking for the Wild Boys

• Seminal art and design

• The art of Ludwig von Hofmann, 1861–1945

• Muto: The Exterface Manifesto

• Carl Corley

• Phallic casts

• Lonesome Cowboys

• Jean Genet… ‘The Courtesy of Objects’

• Loving Boys by Christian Schad

• Saint Genet

• Le Baiser de Narcisse

• Philippe Jullian, connoisseur of the exotic

• The art of Marcus Behmer, 1879–1958

• Richard de Chazal’s Zodiac

• Wildeana #3

• Der Eigene: Kultur und Homosexualität

• The art of Ignacio Goitia

• Gekko Hayashi: homoerotics and monsters

• The Lady Is Dead and The Irrepressibles

• The fetish art of Taylor Buck

• The art of Ben Kimura

• The art of Dmitry Dmitriev

• Sanctuarium Artis Elisarion

• The recurrent pose #32

• Le livre blanc by Jean Cocteau

• Michelangelo’s Dream

• Sherbet and Sodomy

• The art of Yannis Tsarouchis, 1910–1989

• Ecce homo

• Joseph Cavalieri’s stained glass

• Eros: From Hesiod’s Theogony to Late Antiquity

• The end of Orpheus

• The art of Robert Sherer

• The art of Goh Mishima, 1924–1989

• The art of Benoit Prévot

• The art of Robert R Bliss, 1925–1981

• The art of Oliver Frey

• The Great God Pan

• Jerry by Paul Cadmus

• The art of Ralf Paschke

• The recurrent pose #26

• The art of Anthony Goicolea

• The art of Philip Shadbolt

• The art of Patrick Gerbier

• The art of Paul Richmond

• The art of Hideki Koh

• The art of Cody Furguson

• Colin Corbett’s decorated jockstraps

• Fizeek Art

• Let’s get physical: Bruce of Los Angeles and Tom of Finland

• Secret Lives of the Samurai

• The art of Cuauhtémoc Rodríguez

• Matthew Bourne’s Dorian Gray

• IKO stained glass

• The art of Nebojsa Zdravkovic

• The art of Jason Driskill

• William Rimmer’s Evening Swan Song

• The art of Norbert Bisky

• The art of Joan Sasgar

• Happy birthday Henry

• Phallic worship

• Saint Sebastian in NYC

• Mark Beard’s artistic circle

• Czanara: The Art & Photographs of Raymond Carrance

• The art of Scott Treleaven

• Reflections of Narcissus

• Narcissus

• Guido Reni’s Saint Sebastian

• The art of Sascha Schneider, 1870–1927

• Anthony Gayton’s Fall

• Hadrian and Greek love

• The art of Sadao Hasegawa, 1945–1999

• Cain’s son: the incarnations of Grendel

• The art of Hernan Gimenez

• AVAF at Mao Mag

• The art of Matthew Stradling

• Men with snakes

• Felix D’Eon

• Obverse Paintings by Fred Chuang

• Les Farfadais

• The art of Takato Yamamoto

• The art of NoBeast

• The art of Andrey Avinoff, 1884–1949

• The art of Jacques Sultana

• Toxicboy

• The South Bank Show: Francis Bacon

• The art of Lucio Bubacco

• The Male Gaze

• The art of ejaculation

• Philip Core and George Quaintance

• The Budweiser Ganymede

• Czanara’s Hermaphrodite Angel

• The art of Giulio Aristide Sartorio, 1860–1932

• The art of Robert Flynt

• February boy

• The art of Peter Colstee

• Images of Nijinsky

• Michael Petry’s flag

• Angels 6: Paradise stands in the shadow of swords

• Angels 3: A diversion

• Angels 1: The Angel of History and sensual metaphysics

• The art of Hubert Stowitts, 1892–1953

• The art of Bill Travis

• Jean-Frédéric Bazille’s swimmers

• The art of Paul Cadmus, 1904–1999

• The Cult of Antinous

• Army Day

• Super-objects!

• View: The Modern Magazine

• Michelangelo revisited

• The art of Thomas Eakins, 1844–1916

• Gay book covers

• Marcello Dudovich

• Evolution of an icon

Oliver Frey, better known to his many admirers under his pseudonym Zack, grew up in Zürich, Switzerland, the eldest of three children.

Frey and Kean sold the rights in all the titles to Millivres, publishers of the HIM rival, Zipper. On leaving school he gained a place at the London Film School, and started the two-year intensive course in January 1969.

While his parents paid the tuition expenses, Frey had to support himself. In 1956, when he was almost eight, the family moved to north London, where the youngster discovered Eagle comic and the cover hero Dan Dare, Space Pilot of the Future.

When he started school Frey discovered that most of his schoolmates were comics-mad, especially for Eagle.

He immediately sat down, thought up a story, produced the three-page ‘The Hitchhiker’, and sent it to Incognito. At some point during 1975, Frey got hold of a copy of Playguy, published by Incognito. Street Level also became involved with the gay club Heaven, which opened its doors in December 1979, arranging theme nights promoted through HIM magazine.

His association with the War Picture Library kept him busy and in funds, resulting in dozens of stories and covers before he stopped in the late 1970s. Frey’s best known comic strips followed, including Bike Boy, Tender Bait, and Funfair Surprise. As a young teenager he sketched images of a more sexual nature, always homoerotic.

Reading the weekly comic and watching television, he soon learned English, and then he started to copy the drawings of Eagle’s artists. Before long a growing number of gay organisations were lining up to commission Frey illustrations.

In 1978 Frey and his partner Roger Kean joined forces with Purnell to form Street Level, which continued to publish HIM together with Teenage Dreams, Hot Dog, and the HIM Gay Library series.

Purnell wanted a tough, butch comic-strip, and so ‘Rogue’ was born, and for seven years the no-nonsense sex-machine manhandled his way monthly through endless hunky young men. The feeling of bodies in movement, often in violent action, captured his imagination. Why? This makes your work and profile more accessible to partners, galleries, brands, collaborators, creatives around the world.

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As computer games developed, he produced artwork for many of the best-known games for consoles like the C64 and ZX-Spectrum, and in later years covers for the magazine Retro Gamer.

Oliver Frey gained a ready and appreciative growing audience, letting his imagination flow freely onto paper to the great enjoyment of his many thousands of fans.

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