Raymond Voinquel, “Jean Marais”, 1938

#somereallygoodones, #raymondvoinquel, #jeanmarais, #malenude, #tumé

As a response to the beauté of Miss Belle Poitrine, let me offer up a lovely languid portrait of Jean Marais by French photographer, Raymond Voinquel (1912-1994).

Nudity in photographs prompt a range of reactions. I understand that painters learned about the human figure by doing nude studies although I suspect that there were a disproportionate number of wankers present for the skin if little else. When students do nude work I think there is the possibility of inappropriateness so I steer clear. Maybe it simply makes me anxious prompting personal feelings of inadequacy.

For years I had a Herb Ritts male nude from my collection on a wall near my kitchen with the model wrapped dreamily in breeze blown diaphanous fabric. I was on the phone talking and looking at it and I recognized it had to go, It was all too too. Off he went to the auction house.

All that teasing.

This Raymond Voinquel study of the actor Jean Marais is pretty steamy, the pose oddly references Eduard Manet’s 1865 “Le toréador mort”. The nipple is so central, a touchpoint as it were.

I encountered a print of this in a famous photographer’s loft, home to their notable collection. The Voinquel was gorgeous and decadent, with the model in repose; the scene is erotically charged in its nineteen thirties studio lighting. Is the man exhausted from pleasure or simply resting and thinking?

I made up a word for the model’s condition: tumé, as in “the quality of having been tumescent”. It is a lovely, languid, luscious notion and a decent word to describe Ritts, Bruce Weber and Greg Gorman, all of whom appreciate their naked men.

#somereallygoodones, #theunseeneye, #wmhunt, #collectiondancingbear, #collectionblindpirate, #greatphotographs, #howilookatphotographs, #photographsfromtheunconsicous, #sansregard, #aperture, #thames&hudson, #actesud, #collectingislikerunningaroundinathunderstorm hopingyoullbehitbylightning, #aphotographsogooditmakesyoufart- lightning, #photographychangeditlifeitgavemeone, #raymondvoinquel, #jeanmarais, #malenude, #tumé