This image continues the theme of muscular thugs threatening men who are younger/softer/weaker than themselves. It part of a series in which the victim is beaten and forced into sex by his attackers, which poses the possibility that butch, thoroughly-nasty, queer-bashers can be gay too. However, essentially this is an image about the eroticism of power and fear, a narrative that does not really depend on sexuality.
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Greasetank - Rib Bustin' Time
I have featured many images in this blog with a naked captive threatened by clothed attackers and such imagery is commonplace in the movies (e.g. Casino Royale?). It is amazing how a few splashes of red turn such an image into something much more difficult to accept.
There is obviously an erotic dimension to this piece, spelt out by the exposed flesh, the site of the wounds and the guns (the guns!). However, there is no sexual interaction going in a conventional sense. You might suppose that both parties find it arousing, certainly the captive, who for once is both muscled and defiant, bravely confronting an inescapable, seemingly grisly fate.
These two attackers might easily have attracted his admiring attention on the street, their faces are not ugly but they are grotesquely contorted in expression of their sadistic pleasure. Cloaking them in Hell's Angels trappings suggests wildness and a capacity for unrestrained violence that greatly adds to the forebodings of a bad ending.
Interestingly the central figure's face seems to show the characteristics of a black man although his skin is white. Greasetank's faces often blur racial characteristics, it's part of his exploration of eroticism and this is a clue to understanding his art.
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Greasetank - In The Woods
In this image there's a similar ambiguity about the dark-skinned captive whose face belongs to Greasetank's neutral, 'victim' persona more than any distinctive racial group. The noose is probably more eloquent symbolism for race hate. We know that this scene (like the queer bashing and drive-by shootings) reflects real events that happen in the U.S. and is not the product of some perverted imagination, but notice that there is no appeal to our sense of injustice, no clues to what has precipitated this scene apart from the frothing beer bottle and self satisfied grins. Those grins contribute to some well-observed and attractive laddishness. In fact there's a strange sense that these muscular men are seducing their victim into his fate. That becomes more explicit in my next example.
Image self-censored by author - see comments below
Greasetank - Scab eyes
These men are not soldiers of the 3rd Reich but have merely donned (over-sized) elements of that garb. It signals danger, but with those enviable physiques and goofy, seductive smiles, Greasetank makes it hard for us to see them as brutes*. But here they are recreating the worst excesses of that hated regime, gently ushering their (blind?) victim into a steel chamber with a teasing tweak of the nipple. A chamber where the lethal canister in his hand will be unleashed.
You may not find this situation sexy. But removed from the narrative, the men certainly are.
How would you feel if the roles were reversed and they were the victims?
This is a more developed example of how Greasetank depicts victims, diminishing them and deliberately contrasting them with the health and attractiveness of their captors and tormentors. In other pictures he takes it further, showing us emaciated, shaven-headed figures who still haven't suffered enough to be spared yet more torture. Or to be spared 'they probably deserve it' status.
Because of the death camp associations, these images shock and repel the intellect even more than the blood splattered ones. But the enhanced characterisations give you an eerie sense of witnessing something disturbingly real.
These images are part of a progression. If you review the other examples in this article you will see the same theme of unequal protagonists and callous indifference - no, pleasure - in threatening and inflicting suffering. That progression chronicles Greasetank's testing of his own limits in linking violence and sex, love and hate. You go along with him or eventually bail out at some point according to your own values, limits perhaps influenced by your own sense of having suffered injustice yourself.
*Greasetank was born shortly after the Second World War and reached his formative years towards the end of the 60's when the true enormity of the Nazi war crimes against civilians and minorities was finally being grasped by the world, long after the initial horror of piled-up bodies had been digested. At this time the Swastika and 'SS' symbols were synonymous with almost unimaginable, ruthless cruelty in a way that is hard for younger people to truly understand, although it is likely that in the years to come the black flag of ISIS will achieve a similar notoriety that we can barely imagine as yet. So when Greasetank uses Nazi imagery in his pictures he is not promoting their ideas nor campaigning against them, but simply laying down the threat of remorseless, unbounded cruelty and twisted, ideological motivation in his thuggish characters.
Image self-censored by author - see comments below
Greasetank - Beer Bust
This is part of a similar picture to the one above (but substituting fire for poison gas). Even I shrink from reproducing it in full. There are enough clues here to what the missing part contains and you'll have no difficulty finding it on the web. You'll probably have noticed how adept Greasetank is in using lighting to highlight the characteristics, good and bad, in his men and this is a striking example. The masculine allure he engineers for these dreadful characters with the facial expressions and body stances he gives them is highly authentic and convincing and downright sexy. It's a skill unmatched by from most other artists in this genre preoccupied as they are with the anatomical and the carnal.
These are very seductive images despite their appalling subject matter.
~
Greasetank's work was seen as controversial and shocking and so it still is, but that is not a particularly enlightening response. Why do we find violence attractive/arousing even when it's directed against the most undeserving - even people like ourselves. Even when the violence is repulsive, why do we still want to look on, not to witness the suffering but, in Greasetanks art, to watch the pleasure it's perpetrators get from it?
.
I have featured many images in this blog with a naked captive threatened by clothed attackers and such imagery is commonplace in the movies (e.g. Casino Royale?). It is amazing how a few splashes of red turn such an image into something much more difficult to accept.
There is obviously an erotic dimension to this piece, spelt out by the exposed flesh, the site of the wounds and the guns (the guns!). However, there is no sexual interaction going in a conventional sense. You might suppose that both parties find it arousing, certainly the captive, who for once is both muscled and defiant, bravely confronting an inescapable, seemingly grisly fate.
These two attackers might easily have attracted his admiring attention on the street, their faces are not ugly but they are grotesquely contorted in expression of their sadistic pleasure. Cloaking them in Hell's Angels trappings suggests wildness and a capacity for unrestrained violence that greatly adds to the forebodings of a bad ending.
Interestingly the central figure's face seems to show the characteristics of a black man although his skin is white. Greasetank's faces often blur racial characteristics, it's part of his exploration of eroticism and this is a clue to understanding his art.
In this image there's a similar ambiguity about the dark-skinned captive whose face belongs to Greasetank's neutral, 'victim' persona more than any distinctive racial group. The noose is probably more eloquent symbolism for race hate. We know that this scene (like the queer bashing and drive-by shootings) reflects real events that happen in the U.S. and is not the product of some perverted imagination, but notice that there is no appeal to our sense of injustice, no clues to what has precipitated this scene apart from the frothing beer bottle and self satisfied grins. Those grins contribute to some well-observed and attractive laddishness. In fact there's a strange sense that these muscular men are seducing their victim into his fate. That becomes more explicit in my next example.
Image self-censored by author - see comments below
Greasetank - Scab eyes
These men are not soldiers of the 3rd Reich but have merely donned (over-sized) elements of that garb. It signals danger, but with those enviable physiques and goofy, seductive smiles, Greasetank makes it hard for us to see them as brutes*. But here they are recreating the worst excesses of that hated regime, gently ushering their (blind?) victim into a steel chamber with a teasing tweak of the nipple. A chamber where the lethal canister in his hand will be unleashed.
You may not find this situation sexy. But removed from the narrative, the men certainly are.
How would you feel if the roles were reversed and they were the victims?
This is a more developed example of how Greasetank depicts victims, diminishing them and deliberately contrasting them with the health and attractiveness of their captors and tormentors. In other pictures he takes it further, showing us emaciated, shaven-headed figures who still haven't suffered enough to be spared yet more torture. Or to be spared 'they probably deserve it' status.
Because of the death camp associations, these images shock and repel the intellect even more than the blood splattered ones. But the enhanced characterisations give you an eerie sense of witnessing something disturbingly real.
These images are part of a progression. If you review the other examples in this article you will see the same theme of unequal protagonists and callous indifference - no, pleasure - in threatening and inflicting suffering. That progression chronicles Greasetank's testing of his own limits in linking violence and sex, love and hate. You go along with him or eventually bail out at some point according to your own values, limits perhaps influenced by your own sense of having suffered injustice yourself.
*Greasetank was born shortly after the Second World War and reached his formative years towards the end of the 60's when the true enormity of the Nazi war crimes against civilians and minorities was finally being grasped by the world, long after the initial horror of piled-up bodies had been digested. At this time the Swastika and 'SS' symbols were synonymous with almost unimaginable, ruthless cruelty in a way that is hard for younger people to truly understand, although it is likely that in the years to come the black flag of ISIS will achieve a similar notoriety that we can barely imagine as yet. So when Greasetank uses Nazi imagery in his pictures he is not promoting their ideas nor campaigning against them, but simply laying down the threat of remorseless, unbounded cruelty and twisted, ideological motivation in his thuggish characters.
Image self-censored by author - see comments below
Greasetank - Beer Bust
This is part of a similar picture to the one above (but substituting fire for poison gas). Even I shrink from reproducing it in full. There are enough clues here to what the missing part contains and you'll have no difficulty finding it on the web. You'll probably have noticed how adept Greasetank is in using lighting to highlight the characteristics, good and bad, in his men and this is a striking example. The masculine allure he engineers for these dreadful characters with the facial expressions and body stances he gives them is highly authentic and convincing and downright sexy. It's a skill unmatched by from most other artists in this genre preoccupied as they are with the anatomical and the carnal.
These are very seductive images despite their appalling subject matter.
~
Greasetank's work was seen as controversial and shocking and so it still is, but that is not a particularly enlightening response. Why do we find violence attractive/arousing even when it's directed against the most undeserving - even people like ourselves. Even when the violence is repulsive, why do we still want to look on, not to witness the suffering but, in Greasetanks art, to watch the pleasure it's perpetrators get from it?
.
There's an article about Greasetank at Queer Arts which attempts to explain the rationale of his work in the stock intellectual language of the art critic - shock tactics, forbidden thoughts, shining a light into dark areas of the psyche etc etc and making comparisons with the Old Masters. However, the essence of Greasetank's art really is contained in his own comment that he's simply exploring how brutality and sexuality feed off each other. It might be more appropriate to compare his work with the Freddie Kruger school of movie making which uses (more subtly) the same ingredients. At root, Greasetank's work is simply erotic horror art and it's lush sensuality is testimony to that. Sure he takes some major social issues as his starting point and shines a disturbing light on them. But giving them an unreal sexual dimension is not really contributing to any political debate. I don't believe that is his purpose.
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Greasetank - Calling the Shots
For that reason I conclude with this example that shows his skill with figure drawing focused more directly on the erotic content. The callous violence still subtly hovers in the background but arguably adds little to this particular piece which conceptually is a close relative of 'River Shooting' in Part 1 of this article.
Greasetank said his art would become uninteresting when it was neither attractive nor repulsive. Most of his art is striving to be both, portraying sexuality, menace and threat, and giving fears a tangible expression. Most gay men will relate to those ideas as reflecting their own inner lives. He does go further than most to make the threat seem extreme but his heavy-handed examples infuse the rest of his work with a flavour of evil and danger that is undeniably fascinating. Viewing the outcome is both illuminating and disturbing for the open-minded.
For that reason I conclude with this example that shows his skill with figure drawing focused more directly on the erotic content. The callous violence still subtly hovers in the background but arguably adds little to this particular piece which conceptually is a close relative of 'River Shooting' in Part 1 of this article.
Greasetank said his art would become uninteresting when it was neither attractive nor repulsive. Most of his art is striving to be both, portraying sexuality, menace and threat, and giving fears a tangible expression. Most gay men will relate to those ideas as reflecting their own inner lives. He does go further than most to make the threat seem extreme but his heavy-handed examples infuse the rest of his work with a flavour of evil and danger that is undeniably fascinating. Viewing the outcome is both illuminating and disturbing for the open-minded.
Greasetank died in 2009 and there is no website for him but you will find a plentiful supply of his art via search-engines including his most bloody envisioning and links to the blogs and sites of his adoring fans.
Read this article from Part 1
Read this article from Part 1