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| Irwin Olaf - Male Nude No 3 (from Skin Deep) |
I recently published one of Irwin Olaf's best known photographs, 'Joy' (feat. an exploding champagne bottle) but he's also produced other strikingly erotic images, not entirely without fetish interest. This spectacular example is one of the best.
Seen as an academic, art pose, it displays the male body by showing a man consciously displaying his body. It's an unnatural pose that stretches muscles and bunches flesh which is ideal for an academic study. Although he is nude there is no tawdry explicitness, even his bottom is largely hidden in shadow.
He faces a panelled and elaborately painted wall, which is suggestive of stately homes and antique artefacts. It's as if he is imagining himself as part of that world, as a piece of art. Even the colour tones of his skin are morphing to the shades of the Old Masters.
Seen as an erotic and fetish pose, we are struck by how attractive his lean, muscled body and ginger hair are. Also how passive and totally submissive his display is. It's as if he's offering himself up, but if there's a recipient for that offer we can't see them.
The pose itself makes him highly vulnerable - and tempting. That's not just because his hands and feet are tucked behind him but because his whole weight is resting on them, making any defence or recovery to a normal position dependent on exceptional bodily strength (or on rolling sideways onto the floor in an undignified manner). We see too how close his hands are to each other and so are his toes. They seem to cry out for restraint, thereby sealing his ultimate surrender.
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| Erwin Olaf - Squares, Tulips, 1986 |
If you remember the exploding champagne image you probably remember this one too. It was popular as a greeting card design in that era for fairly obvious reasons - who wouldn't want a giant bouquet from a naked muscle hunk? It's not hard to see phallic connections in the shape of the tulips and they sprout from his groin in a way that is not totally dissimilar to the infamous champagne eruption. He clutches the area tightly as though trying to hold it in or shield it from us.
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| Irwin Olaf - After Rodin III (The Thinker) |
This image might be seen as a parody of
Rodin's The Thinker although that figure study, suggestive of momentous philosophising, pretty much parodies itself. Olaf gives the idea a tangible context relating to more mundane preoccupations. A young man pondering his life and it's issues. The glimpse of moccasins and poised toes suggest he might be a dancer. The colours of the rough, bare walls seem to hint at the settings of Dutch Masters once again, but the towel and simple, aging stool suggest a modern shower room, perhaps one used for dance classes.
The subject's nudity and isolation in this austere place of contemplation seem to say something about the profundity of what he has just learned. It's also open to fetish interpretation as the portrayal of a prisoner, stripped of all his worldly goods and contemplating his future. Freshly showered, perhaps he's slated to take his place on the auction block shortly where strangers will bid to acquire him and make him their own. Is he thinking of the pleasurable life and the people he's being taken away from - or the unknown challenges and hard labour that lie ahead of him?
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| Irwin Olaf - Male Nude No 1 (from Skin Deep) |
A naked man kissing a bare wall and pressing himself against it with arms symbolically held behind his back. This almost seems the stuff of religious fervour, as if divine forgiveness is to be found in inanimate buildings (as well as inanimate statues!). There's the same sense of vulnerability and submissiveness here as in the first, kneeling picture. The sense again of being one with the walls that enclose him. However this picture also has the sense of solitary isolation seen in the 'Thinker' image just above. It's easy to imagine this as a punishment scene, the classic 'corner time' after a spanking, seeking the cooling consolation of a bare wall. Or another slave-to-be finding the familiar confining walls a comfort in his last moments before mounting the rostrum and facing those who want to have him and take him away.
![]() | | Unknown - Setting An Example |
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I recently found this image, purely by chance. It wasn't attributed to Olaf but it looks very similar in style to the preceding images and invokes the same theme of isolation using walls and a simple prop. The artwork on the wall and beamed ceiling likewise bring in the 'Dutch' theme.
This picture inevitably invokes the same irreverent thoughts of childhood punishments upcycled for a grown man, not so much setting but making an example of him. It's a short path from there to the idea of an improvised auction rostrum, with the buyers about to enter the room to view the poor man or perhaps it's an on-line sale where he can't even see who wants him nor how much he is willing to bid to get him. It's hard to see this fine fellow being despatched to the fields to earn him keep.
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| Irwin Olaf - Title not known |
I wouldn't normally include such a assertively heterosexual image in this blog but the beauty of this man's backside warrants making an exception. If I were being mischievous I might suggest he's putting straight life on the shelf here, on hold while he finds a man who will worship it (etc.) properly.
There are more echoes of the dance world here of course and leg musculature to match, but that could be any weight he is lifting, another man say - or an inanimate object like a box or a rock, if I were to invoke the spectre of slave labour again.
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| Irwin Olaf - Fashion Victim, Gucci (2000) |
The imagery here is less subtle, how those who slavishly follow fashion are trapped and blinded by the organisations and individuals who orchestrate it. Of course this is not really slavery, it's completely voluntary, a compulsion to conform to the views of 'leaders'. In the age of the internet it's interesting to see how easy it is for individuals to set themselves up as 'influencers' without having any obvious qualifications for the role.
Olaf seems to suggest it's an arousing obsession with a sexual dimension. He also uses the word victim, but that's not right either, no-one has put that bag over his head. It's more akin to an ostrich putting it's head in the sand. I'm no expert on fashion (ah, you already guessed!) but this man's socks and sandals seem somewhat dubious to me.
There's also a Chanel variant in this imagery and there's an interesting comparison with a very similar theme depicted by
RW Richards.
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More Irwin Olaf:-
