(Not for kids or the sexually modest.)
Today’s Daily Jocks ad, offering 2eros Black Label items (with my caption):
(#1)
The Insolent Brothers
Offer themselves
On the altar of Eros to
Needy faggotsBuddy White more
Welcoming, Bro Black more
Contemptuous; off work they’re
Tight with one another but
Certain they’d never ever
Switch teams to joinThe Ecstatic Sisters, the way those
Queers Mikey Bono and
Lennie Vance did
Mikey Bono, also in 2eros Black Label, his head thrown back in ecstasy (and offering an armpit) — call the head thing the Ecstatic Pose:
(#2)
And Lennie Vance, in a Timoteo “84” model jockstrap that DJ featured on the 13th, even more ecstatic:
(#3)
An earlier posting about 2eros underwear (as in #1): from 3/5/16, “Tinging the scalene triangle”
And the Timoteo ad copy for #3:
Our newest favourite from Timoteo studio, this the new Timoteo “84” collection. It will provide you with the ultimate level of both support and style. Perfect for everyday-wear in and out of the bedroom. Made with high-quality cotton/spandex for fit and comfort.
But let’s get back to Eros / Cupid (on one account, the son of Aphrodite / Venus). Though the two names Eros and Cupid refer to the “same” ancient deity — the winged god of love, with his bow and his arrow that inspires love (or desire) — they tend to be pictured differently: Cupid as a cute infant, Eros as a (sexy) young man.
Here’s a paimting of the latter Eros by David Ligare, Landscape with Eros and Endymion:
(#4)
In Greek myth, Endymion was a handsome Aeolian shepherd, hunter, or king, the beloved of the moon goddess Silene; he spent much of his life in (eternal) sleep. I’m not sure how Eros gets into the story, but #2 shows Endymion sleeping alongside one of Eros’s arrows — possibly shot to ensure that Endymion will return Silene’s love.
On the artist, from Wikipedia:
David Ligare is an American contemporary realist painter. Contemporary Realism is an approach that uses straightforward representation but is different from photorealism in that it does not exaggerate and is non-ironic in nature… Ligare was born in 1945 in Oak Park, Illinois. He received his formal artistic training at the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles.
… Since 1978, he has focused on painting still lifes, landscapes, and figures that are influenced by Greco-Roman antiquity. Chief among his stated influences are the aesthetic and philosophical theories of the Greek sculptor Polykleitos and the mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras, as well as the work of the 17th-century classical painter Nicolas Poussin. A resident of Salinas, California, his paintings often depict the terrain of the central Californian coast in the background.
Winged men. As I’ve noted before on this blog, I have something of a thing for winged men. Eros is another winged man.
The earlier discussion: on 4/17/16, in “Another winged man”. First of all, on
Ganymede (always a beautiful youth) and Zeus (in art, sometimes an eagle, sometimes a winged man, sometimes just a powerful male figure):
on AZBlogX: “Ganymede’s tale” (where I note my long-time fantasy of sex-in-the-air with a winged man)
on this blog: “Ganymede on the fly” (a work of photographic art in which the Ganymede figure realizes this fantasy, magnificently and joyously)
And then, in that posting, a discussion (with illustrations) of the Fallen Angel films from TitanMen.
Now, two more winged images, both from mythology. First, Hermes / Merciry, in an illustration in which his winged cap, winged sandals, and winged staff together enable him to fly:
(#5)
(I haven’t been able to track down the source of this work. I’ve been able to find a fair number of copies, all unattributed, all on astrological sites having to do with the planet Mercury.)
Somewhat less mysterious, but still rather puzzling, is this image, which I recalled having seen several times, attributing it (almost surely correctly) to art photographer Richard de Chazal (see a 5/14/11 posting on AZBlogX on the artist):
(#6)
(Initially, I didn’t find the image on de Chazal’s site; but see below. It’s on a fair number of Pinterest boards, always, so far as I can tell, unattributed, and usually labeled as an image of Apollo.)
A winged Apollo was news to me, but this is cerainly a god-like figure with wings on his shoulder blades. I don’t follow all the iconography of the image, but the heart suggests that this is Eros again.
On the other hand, he has the aureole of the sun god Helios. And Apollo is the god of sun and light.
But wait! An exhaustive, image by image, search of de Chazal’s website reveals that this figure is his conception of the zodiac sign Virgo — my sign! — which de Chazal has chosen to visualize as a sun god, akin to Helios and Apollo: he is both male (like Helios and Apollo, but unlike Virgo) and winged (rather than riding the chariot of the sun, he flies on his own power). So he’s the Eros Apollo of the Zodiac, and like his precursor gods, he’s happy with male consorts. A fine astrological deity: he flies! he fucks guys!
(de Chazal is admirably, often outrageously, queer.)
Bonus linguistic point: virgo ‘virgin’ is a 3rd-declension noun in Latin (fem-gender, in accordance with the meaning; the idea of male virgins is a recent invention), but nothing in its declension tells you it’s fem-gender. So a specifically male name Virgo would be declined just like virgo ‘virgin’, which means that a zodiacal deity Virgo could perfectly well be male, and that the name Virgo could be masc-gender.
So Eros Apollo could have the epithet Virgo Alatus ‘winged Virgo’ — in contrast to virgo alata ‘a winged virgin, winged Virgin Mary’.
Explanatory note: the title of this posting, “The Insolence and the Ecstasy” is a play on the book and movie title “The Agony and the Ecstasy”, which is about Michaelangelo Buonarotti (who appears in my caption as Mickey Bono, artistic counterpart to Leonardo da Vinci, aka Lennie Vance). On the movie:
(#7)
From Wikipedia:
The Agony and the Ecstasy is a 1965 American film directed by Carol Reed, starring Charlton Heston as Michelangelo and Rex Harrison as Pope Julius II. The film was partly based on Irving Stone’s biographical novel of the same name. This film deals with the conflicts of Michelangelo and Pope Julius II during the painting of the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling.
Yes, more gay interest.
