![vintage gay art rent boy leather tight pants bare top muscles]( "Cas - Hustler") |
| Cas - Hustler |
The 1960's artist Cas was an omission from my original A-Z series on fetish artists which seems unwarranted in retrospect. This image, one of his better known, probably explains why I left him out. The hustler clad in skin-tight leather pants has a splendid muscular body but Cas has depicted him as a coquettish, effeminate vamp right down to the way he is holding his symbolically smouldering match in a pose worthy of Marlene Dietrich. It seems to encapsulate the negative, self-contradictory stereotyping of the era which portrayed gays as being effeminate and at the same time sexual predators which ordinary (i.e. straight) men apparently found hard to resist.
It's not a look that grabs me erotically but I suppose I should have appreciated that Marlene's persona was a deliberate, bold assertion of female sexuality and strength that completely debunked the 'little woman' conventions and restraints of her era. Cas is emulating that here, his hustler is mocking the stereotyping by owning and flaunting it, he oozes (almost literally it seems) self assurance and confidence. If you cover his face, the depiction of his muscularity is probably the most erotic in all of Cas's work.
![vintage gay art biker sexy sprawled drinking smoking cigarette dandy]( "Cas - Aperitif") |
| Cas - Aperitif |
In this brilliant picture, Cas flips the coin, poking fun at gays who adopt a façade of rough, butchness that cannot hide their cultivated inner-selves. This biker is a visual treat for leather lovers. He casually sprawls across an antique chair, beautifully drawn with torn, dishevelled clothes, unkempt hair and stubbled cheeks, projecting an image that promises rough and dirty sex. There's a cleverly disguised outline of something big in his pants. However, his delicate cigarette holder and tiny glass of aperitif, reveals him to be highly refined, the shoulder-ribbons suggest he's something of a dandy too.
You can also take this to be an Eliza Doolittle scenario where a tough is being taught manners by a man of a 'higher station' in life. That scenario was not an uncommon experience for gay men back then. By necessity, they met anonymously in public places - toilets, discreet gay bars or clubs - where they were equally likely to meet a plumber or a professor, a rich man or a poor man, a young man or a pensioner, a soldier or a ballet dancer.
![bondage actor chained loin cloth threatened bdsm, Saint Sebastian, arrows, boiling oil, fear]( "Cas - Director's Cut? Chained actor") |
| Cas - Director's Cut? |
Humour runs through much of this artist's work but satire aside, it's not without it's harder edges. This jokey take on the classic, naïve model who is manipulated by his paymaster into stripping off to provide sexual entertainment is extended into bdsm territory by incorporating bondage as well. The caption provides fuel for imagining an outcome where a St Sebastian scenario is played out for real. The realisation by the hapless actor of what may be about to happen isn't really funny at all - but it is sexy.
The label to the left of the captive's foot says 'Intolerance Scene 1724', bottom left and is probably referencing the message of DW Griffith's epic 1916 film, although it did not deal specifically with sexual intolerance.
It's ironic that the sadism of Christian story-telling and imagery has for centuries provided a cloak of legitimacy for homoerotic art that explores the darkest forms of desire.
![biker nude washing clothes cap boots sexy bare ass smoking cigarette]( "Cas - Laundromat") |
| Cas - Laundromat |
'mitchmen' has visited the laundromat scenario a few times recently (see Art of Oztangles 5 , 'Laundry Day' image for links) but you might be surprised to learn that Cas beat Nick Kamen to it by about 20 years. It's another wry dig at the whole 'butch biker' image of course but he's done it by taking a common, semi-clad, beefcake magazine pose and dropping it into a real world setting where the erotic implications of the residual cap and boots are enhanced and can ferment in the pants of imaginative viewers.
The oppressive restrictions of the day deterred him from suggestively showing another man in the image, although a cartoon woman or women registering some sort of comic response, like that in a 'saucy' seaside postcard by McGill would have probably have been perfectly OK.
Smoking cigarettes features in many of his pictures. In those days it was a near-universal practice, often characterised as masculine and expected of you if you wanted to fit in.
![vintage gay art, undressed underwear overpowered outnumbered turned upside down stripped]( "Cas - Roughhouse") |
| Cas - Roughhouse |
This image shows the sort of scenario that might have been triggered by that innocent laundry image. Ostensibly a dramatic wrestling scene it's pretty obvious on further inspection that this man is having his jeans removed by the two assailants. They are both essentially naked as far as we can see, leaving the strong suspicion that his underpants will go the same way.
The wooden boarding at the back and the cap and boots worn by one of the attackers look rather like sea-faring imagery at first sight but the badge on the cap points to a biker scenario in the days when turned down boot tops were trendy and WW2 German army logos were a commonplace way of expressing individuality (a practice which spectacularly resulted in Prince Harry hitting a brick wall of revulsion and providing an early demonstration of his uncanny ability to manufacture unwarranted press intrusion by wearing a full blown uniform to a party in 2005).
![vintage art hidden erotic sex tight jeans ripped torn bulges lifted man]( "Cas - Bar Fight") |
| Cas - Bar Fight |
Fight scenes were a legitimate way of showing men interacting in a highly physical manner with their inadvertently ripped clothes exposing sexy flesh, although Cas here seems to rely more on the ambiguity caused by relatively featureless, skin-tight clothing. A scattering of playing cards provides a simple excuse for the argument if not the extensive semi-nudity (strip poker doesn't usually get this heated)!
The scenario is a blank canvass for placing men in close proximity in all sorts of undignified states which is exactly what Cas has done. The careful juxtaposition of bulging crotches, rounded backsides and phallic bottles does the rest. This image contains an (Heavenly) host of hidden heroticism.
At this time of year I'm tempted to ask readers how many they can spot! The most notable for me is the champagne glass held aloft, as if to an
optic in a bar, to catch the produce of the bulge directly above while the man holding it gazes purposefully at a curvaceous ass emblazoned with the Cas logo in a way that accentuates it's shape, like a tattoo.
Cas could not have imagined that magazine staples would add a double-dose of bdsm piercing when the image was published. Or am I underestimating the cunning of the artist? It is a very curious vertical alignment after all. Or was it the magazine editor who mischievously laid out the page like this?
![sailors fighting ripped torn uniforms clothes domination overpower bare ass groped]( "Etienne - Bar Brawl") |
| Etienne - Bar Brawl |
Etienne also did a bar-room brawl around this time, with sailors. It's a simpler, more fragmented composition but offers a more direct sensuality with the use of colour accentuating the revelatory effect of ripped clothing. There is one notable 'hidden' erotic reference, however, in the pair of sailors far left who could be construed as enjoying a hand job. Etienne's men are remarkably handsome and adult (I love that dishy blond on the floor!) but they are arguably less real and less varied than those of Cas in the preceding picture.
![naked black man giant cock dripping whip riding crop bare ass sucking cum vest]( "Cas - Black Master") |
| Cas - Black Master |
This image is usually attributed to Cas and the face of the sub certainly fits his style. It's to be expected that he would have done explicit pictures like this although it can't have been published openly in the 1960's. You sense experimentation with different racial appearances in other of his pictures, but this is his only black man as far as I know and it's not terribly successful.
From a mitchmen point of view the interest lies not so much in the master and his prodigious organ, but in his riding crop and the impression it has made on the young sub's rear quarters. The fingers steadying his head are a nice detail.
![young man looking down tight jeans bulge bare top naked torso leather jacket]( "Cas - Balancing Above") |
| Cas - Balancing Above |
Cas loved to depict tight jeans which was the most legitimate way for a man to dress sexily in those days. The biker jacket slung across naked shoulders was a classy embellishment - 1960's cool if you like. Around this time there was a fashion for low waisted trousers with tiny zips and this picture seems to reflect that trend. Cas, like
Oztangles, was abreast of what was fashionable. The upwards looking viewpoint accentuates the effect of the tight jeans and adds the mild suggestion of a dominant personality.
This is an exceptionally well-drawn image, breezing through a tricky perspective.
*Compare with Etienne's bar room perspective
![Hun man patterned tights, pirate circus bulge ripped torn open shirt bare pecs chest]( "Cas - Tights") |
| Cas - Tights |
Although I'm not fond of the way Cas drew eyes like this, this picture seems very sexy to me with a pugnacious, insolent face (which might have been a prototype for The Hun's blond convict) set atop a muscular torso (glimpsed through an open shirt) and patterned tights that accentuate thick thighs.
This isn't so much a portrait as a vehicle for erotic characteristics. The patterned tights seem to be those of a circus performer but the sword and distant seagulls point to him being a pirate. These two professions were blurred together of course in the swashbuckling movies of the day starring ex-circus performers like Burt Lancaster - in tights.
![bulge leather young man surly hairy thighs arms rolled up shorts open ripped shirt]( "Cas - Gardener in Ledehosen Shorts") |
| Cas - Gardener in Ledehosen Shorts |
The half-dressed gardener is the
mitchmen brand image and has been the suggestive, saucy background of numerous adverts and film scenes, most of which post-date this image.
The clothing of this young man accentuates his physique in a similar way to that in the tights picture above. Here too the open shirt looks as if it is being pulled tight by something hidden inside his shorts. The tattered sleeves are augmented in this image by a tear on one shoulder but are completely missing on the other revealing hairy arms (another brawler?).
He has deliberately turned up his leather shorts, far more than seems necessary for doing his job, but accentuating hairy thighs which flaunt his masculinity. The prominent pouch does so even more directly. He stands, hand on hip with a serious pouty face like a rebellious teenager whose just been told he's got to do an extra hours.
You might prefer to see him as confronting someone out of the picture, warning him not to try and interfere with that tempting flap.
~
Cas was a regular contributor to beefcake magazines in the 1960's but he hasn't acquired the same lasting fame as his contemporary, Etienne, although he was arguably a better draftsman. Etienne had a canny eye for the commercial and played safe with his characterisations, he was also bolder with his subject matter. For all his sharp satire and with the exception of Black Master, Cas stays within the tradition of innuendo and hidden artifice. There's probably a good reason for this but it affects the way modern eyes view his legacy.
No link for Cas I'm afraid
