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| Felix Deon - Japanese Bondage |
This picture is based on one of the most familiar of vintage, bondage pictures (to be featured in a forthcoming post). Deon has sprinkled the elixir of youth and added shoulder tattoos but otherwise has left it unchanged. When you know the original you get the eerie sense that the captive has been tied up for the very purpose of inking his body. A Westerner being subjected to the arcane arts of the ancient East.
The most striking feature of the image is, of course, the styling, derived from the traditional pen and ink drawings of Japan. The parchment-like surface adds authenticity and he's even included Japanese script, a poem perhaps?
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| Felix Deon - Bullfighter |
You'd hardly credit that Deon drew this image. The academic, pastel style seems quite unlike his more familiar images, but he has a drawn many pictures in this style. The subject too is more dramatic than you expect from him and although he hasn't quite caught the sense of strength and struggle the concept is a marvellous expression of masculinity. Of course, wrestling naked with the bull is precisely what bullfighters don't do. They exhibit a similar level of bravery but instead of engaging directly, prefer to strut in elaborately decorated clothes, frustrating the beast and despatching it from a distance.
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| Felix Deon - Japanese Bondage 2 |
This example from the Japanese Bondage series features a chunky man who looks like the Japanese youths of Okawa and his contemporaries. He is not totally naked, having been allowed to retain his head band and fundoshi (loincloth) both of which have a deep cultural significance in that country, related to manliness and growth.
He's surrounded by the creatures of the sea, including an octopus or squid between his knees which may be an allusion to the famous erotic picture of 'The Dream of The Fisherman's Wife' (see Octopuses at mitchmen blog). The parchment colour gives the impression of a sandy beach but the creatures are drawn in a way that gives the sense that he's actually lying on the seabed, like a character being tested in an ancient legend. The simple, loosely secured hogtie does allow him scope to escape, like a latter day Houdini.
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| Felix Deon - An Unfortunate Encounter |
Escape seems less easy for this swimming party in the open sea, ambushed by two octopuses who seem have more on their minds that just dinner, stripping the unfortunate young men and sexually assaulting them. One is being dragged off for some other nefarious purpose in private. The seaweed seems to be aiding and abetting the abduction, reaching up from the depths. Or perhaps the immobile seaweed has bribed the octopus to bring the young man to it, who knows?
Deon has depicted the swimmers in 1930's bathing suits, loose fitting and modest (but easy meat for a multi-armed predator). He's employed a matching, contemporary style of painting like that once used for boy's adventure comics which lends a perverse sense of nostalgia to the scene (see also the Art of Sherer). There's a nod to Japanese art in the styling of the wave crests on the surface and the tiny signature scroll, top left.
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| Felix Deon - Saint Sebastian |
If you looked at the Sherer link above you'll see the connection to this image which is European in origin but was enthusiastically (and morbidly) embraced by the famed poet and writer, Yukio Mishima and it later found it's way into the erotic works of other Japanese artists like Hasegawa.
Deon stays within the European tradition here deploying an arty, elaborate cartouche (frame) and saintly upward gaze, which silently rebukes the Lord for his part in this fine mess. The fleshy build of the martyr seems to reference females in Renaissance art but the styling of the cameo inside the frame is mid-20th Century. The simple, loose sheet serving as Sebastian's loin-cloth has somehow become snagged on the tree as though it's participating in the torment, like the seaweed in the swimming disaster image above.
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| Felix Deon - Japanese Bondage 3 |
This third variation on the Japanese Bondage theme tweaks the hog-tie in an unconventional arrangement whereby the captive's arms are pinned to his sides by a simple harness looped around his backside. The captive himself is given the thirties, Leyendecker treatment with bouffant hair and suspiciously pink lips. The traces of tattoo we can see are different to the dense, samurai-inspired shoulder ink in the previous examples, here it seems lightly decorative rather than block-like bulk and comparatively feminine
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| Felix Deon - Happy Servants |
The sense of pre-war WW2 decadence pervades the styling of this image too with the subject matter itself reaching back to the Edwardian Belle Epoque. For an artist normally associated with the cute and witty this take on service is surprisingly S&M. It's pleasing to see the stereotypical role of camp dominatrix given an all-male treatment.
There's an unusual double edge to the term 'servant' here exploring beyond the modern world of consensual leather servitude with a Downton Abbey, Upstairs-Downstairs twist that sees the footman and the groom vying for the attention of their kinky, aristocratic paymaster. Unfortunately, thanks to the sensationalism of the current era it's a scenario that doesn't have the power to surprise like it once did.
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| Felix Deon - Tattooed Submissive |
Strangely enough this undramatic variation on the theme of domination is more unexpected. Or to be precise, the sight of a young westerner totally engulfed in oriental tattoos is unexpected. They simultaneously seem to disguise and yet in a strange way accentuate his nudity and vulnerability. It's hard to imagine why he would do this to himself and in this image he's not so much being submissive (as the title implies) but being dominated by the neatly dressed, leather master.
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| Felix Deon - Spanked |
Another pastel drawing, directly inspired by an image which is well-known to me but which I can't quite place. It's a slightly awkward spanking position but I can't fault the authenticity of the spankee's pain-filled face which Deon has beautifully captured.
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| Felix Deon - Bird In Hand |
I don't even know where to begin with this one. As one comes to expect with Deon, it draws on popular art of the past with distinctly Art Deco trees and turn of the century iconography in the peacock seducing the young (inevitably) gardener of some stately home. The naïve depiction of the formal garden in the background goes even further back to the 1700's. I suppose it must have roots in the legends of Asia as well, since Westerners are usually more reticent about relationships with the animal kingdom.