Artist and Model

Most of my collage work looks outward: at other men, other places, other decades. In my recent work, I place myself in the picture with the model. This is an old practice in painting. Three works show how artists have handled it.

Courbet: The Artist at the Center

Courbet paints himself seated at his easel, working on a landscape. A nude model stands behind him and watches. A boy looks up at the canvas.

On either side of the studio are the people of Courbet's life. On one side are ordinary working people. On the other are his friends, critics and supporters, including the poet Baudelaire, who reads at the far right.

The full title calls the painting an allegory of seven years of his artistic and moral life. The Exposition Universelle of 1855 rejects it. Courbet shows it in his own pavilion instead.

The model in this painting looks at the artist, not at the viewer.

Velázquez: The Viewer Takes the Model's Place

Velázquez stands at a large canvas, brush and palette in hand. The young Infanta Margarita and her attendants fill the room. A mirror on the back wall shows the king and queen.

The king and queen stand where the viewer stands. They appear to be the models. The canvas faces away from us, so we never see what Velázquez paints.

The artist looks out of the picture at his models, and at us.

Hockney: The Artist Becomes the Picture

Hockney's model is Gregory Evans, his partner at the time. Evans sleeps in a blue robe in the foreground.

Behind him is a painting of Hockney at work, drawing at a table. The painting is unfinished. Parts of the table and chairs remain outlines.

Here the artist is the image within the image. The model is a man the artist loves, painted in an ordinary, private moment.

My Collage: The Brush Becomes an iPhone

My piece starts with a mirror selfie. I stand in an ornate gilt mirror, holding my iPhone. Behind me, a second mirror shows a young man with a towel. In the foreground, another man holds a plaid towel to his chest.

The Blue Moon as longing and love and the Jupiter 3 as freedom and autonomy inhabit the space as unseen witnesses except to the audience.

Where Velázquez and Courbet hold a brush, I hold a iPhone. The tool stays in the frame. It records the moment and the person making the image.

Why the Artist Appears

Collage is built from images of other people. The artist can easily stay out of view. A self-portrait puts the artist back into the record.

Courbet surrounds himself with his world. Velázquez places the viewer in the position of the model. Hockney shows himself next to the man he loves. I show where I am, what I am doing, and that I am the one choosing these images.

My work takes subtext and makes it context. The artist and model theme makes that visible. The person looking is part of the subject.

The history a Man Carries with Him

Five Centuries of Men

1440s — Donatello's Bronze David
The sculpture comes from the Medici circle in Florence. It is one of the first freestanding nude male bronzes since antiquity, and historians have discussed its homoerotic qualities for generations. It is the earliest historical reference in the collage.

1960s — The Physique Pair
Two bodybuilders, tinted chartreuse, represent mid-century physique photography by artists such as Bob Mizer. Physique magazines presented themselves as fitness publications. For gay men, they were one of the few available sources of images of other men.

1980s — The Rugby Shirt
Two young men in a striped rugby shirt and short shorts represent a period when gay men were appearing in public more openly. At the same time, straight men were beginning to adopt the fashions of an emerging queer culture. Styles that began in gay communities, such as fitted clothing, short shorts, and the pink Izod polo shirt, entered mainstream menswear, often without straight men recognizing where they came from.

2020s
Shirtless contemporary figures at the upper left, and a man in a yellow-patterned swim brief, come from social media. In Donatello's time, sculpture and painting set the standard for male beauty. Today, social media does the same work. Photographers, content creators, and the men who post their own images now shape how the male body is seen. The medium has moved from bronze to the phone screen, but artists, including women, define what we see when we look at men.

The Objects

The 1969 Pontiac Bonneville
My father drove this car. Its size, power, and audacious styling taught me early what a man is supposed to look like. It belongs here with the figures, because it is another image of masculinity. These lessons reached me through ordinary family life, not only through art.

The Jupiter 3
The two saucers are the Jupiter 2 spacecraft from the 1960s television series Lost in Space, styled in my iconography as the Jupiter 3. They represent witness, freedom, and escape.

The Blue Moon
The moon in the upper right represents witness, longing, and desire.

Witness

The journey of this artwork begins with a simple selfie. The collage gathers five centuries of men around my face, with the eye at the center, the Jupiter 3, and the Blue Moon all marking the same idea: I see this history, and I place it in plain view.

The selfie shows a man alone in a room. The collage becomes the history that man carries with him.

— Behan

Postscript: For the personal history behind my move from painting to digital collage, please read "From Darkroom to Digital: A Personal Timeline."

Ride the Gay Surf

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE — HOLLYWOOD, 1964

Columbia Pictures Presents "Ride the Gay Surf," the Summer's Breakout Hit

Columbia Pictures heads to Hawaii this summer with "Ride the Gay Surf," a story of surfing, friendship, and romance on the North Shore of Oahu!

The Stars

Tab Hunter and Fabian lead the cast as two mainland surfers who travel to Waimea Bay to test themselves against the biggest waves in the world. They find more than waves. Shelley Fabares, Barbara Eden, Peter Brown, and James Mitchum round out the cast as the friends who cheer them on from the beach.

Filmed on Location

Every surfing scene is filmed in the wild waters of Waimea Bay, in full color.

The Look of the Summer

Hunter and Fabian model the newest Jantzen swimwear line throughout the picture. Audiences will want to leave the theater and head straight to the beach.

Opening This Summer

"Ride the Gay Surf" opens in theaters nationwide. Bring your friends. Bring your boyfriend.

Artist's Note

The Real Film

"Ride the Gay Surf" is based on "Ride the Wild Surf," a 1964 Columbia Pictures release starring Fabian, Tab Hunter, Shelley Fabares, and Barbara Eden, filmed at Waimea Bay. It was one of the many beach films that studios produced in the early 1960s for teenage audiences.

The Law in 1964

In 1964, homosexual acts were illegal in every state except Illinois, which had repealed its sodomy law in 1961. The Hollywood Production Code had banned any depiction of homosexuality until 1961, and after that it allowed the subject only if handled with "care, discretion and restraint." In practice, gay characters in films of the period were punished, killed, or presented as tragic.

Tab Hunter

Tab Hunter was gay. He was arrested at a gay party in 1950, and Confidential magazine reported the arrest in 1955. He did not speak publicly about his sexuality until his 2005 memoir, "Tab Hunter Confidential." In 1964, he played the heterosexual leading man because the studios and the law required it.

Follow the Money

Studios made beach films because beach films made money. If being gay had been legal and socially accepted in 1964, the studios would have made gay beach films for the same reason. These collages show that version: same stars, same location, same swimwear tie-in, and an open gay romance at the center of the story.

Subtext becomes context.

— Behan

Rory and Guy Having a Moment

Summer of Love, 1951

Imagine a 1951 where being gay is completely ordinary. In that year, Guy Madison and Rory Calhoun are Hollywood's newest and hottest couple.

The Couple

They are seen at every hotspot in town. They spend afternoons with friends at the Riviera, LA's swankiest pool and lounge. This summer they star together in MGM's major new picture, "Union Soldiers in Love."

The Real History

The pairing has a real-world basis. Madison and Calhoun were both clients of agent Henry Willson, who built the careers of a generation of handsome leading men, including Rock Hudson and Tab Hunter. Willson also created their names: Robert Moseley became "Guy Madison," and Francis Durgin went through several names before Willson settled on "Rory Calhoun."

The two actors did share the screen. They appeared together in the Monogram film "Massacre River" in 1949. Off screen, Robert Hofler's Willson biography includes a story of Calhoun and Madison found together in a Jaguar while Willson stood outside in the rain. The story is unconfirmed, and both men married women.

The Version That Never Happened

In the actual 1950s, studios and agents carefully managed the image of men like these. Willson did not allow his gay clients to live with other men and enforced the rule through surveillance. In 1955, when Confidential magazine threatened to expose Rock Hudson, Willson gave the magazine information about Calhoun's years in prison and Tab Hunter's 1950 arrest at a gay party instead.

These collages remove that management and show the version that was never allowed to happen.

The Symbols

Blue Moon, representing love, and Jupiter 2, representing freedom, appear in each piece.

Subtext becomes context.

— Behan

Sources: Robert Hofler, "The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson: The Pretty Boys and Dirty Deals of Henry Willson"; Bright Lights Film Journal, "Inside the Dreamboat Factory"; Wikipedia, "Rory Calhoun"; IMDb, Henry Willson biography.

Remembering Charles Demuth

Introduction

Charles Demuth (1883–1935) is one of the first American modernists. He is also a gay man working in a period when his life cannot be shown openly. His art reflects both facts.

This post presents three of his watercolors next to three of my digital collages. Each collage is an homage. Each one takes what Demuth places beneath the surface and puts it on the surface.

What Demuth Has to Do

Demuth builds a successful public career. He becomes known for delicately colored watercolors of flowers, fruit, and figures, and for Precisionist paintings of architecture and cityscapes. Over his career, he completes about 750 paintings and 350 drawings, receives favorable reviews, and sells numerous works.

He spends time in New York and Provincetown, but Lancaster, Pennsylvania remains his home throughout his life. In New York, he takes part in the bohemian life and gay subculture of Greenwich Village.

Two Kinds of Work

Alongside the public work, Demuth makes watercolors of the nightclubs, performers, and bathhouses he knows in Greenwich Village. He keeps the openly homoerotic watercolors private throughout his career and almost never shows them publicly. In his will, he leaves all of his watercolors to Robert Locher, and among them is a series of explicitly homoerotic paintings of gay life in New York.

Between the public and the private work, there is a third category: works that can be shown, but that carry a meaning for viewers who know how to read them. This is how Demuth survives professionally while remaining honest to himself. The three works below come from that practice.

One: The Acrobats

Demuth paints a series of vaudeville images between 1914 and 1919, and acrobats are among his favorite subjects. In these watercolors, the attention falls on the male body in performance. The tights cover the body completely while showing its full shape.

The Acrobats keeps the attention on the male body in performance, but the performance now takes place on social media. The figures float without a floor, as Demuth's acrobats do. The covering is gone, both literally and figuratively.

Two: The Discotheque

Demuth paints Dancing Sailors twice, in two almost identical compositions. Both show three couples on a dance floor. In the center, two sailors dance together, while the others dance with women. The women give the scene a respectable surface. The two sailors at the center carry its actual subject.

The Discotheque moves the dance hall to a nightclub. The same male couple appears three times across the horizontal expanse, embracing and kissing. The repetition answers Demuth's three couples. The longing in the watercolor is fulfilled in the collage.

Three: The Beach X 2 2026

Demuth spends many summers in Provincetown, beginning in 1914. In the early 1930s he returns to the figure with a series of openly homoerotic works, and his last pieces are figural watercolors made in Provincetown in 1934.

In this watercolor, two men in dark swim trunks share an empty beach. One, in a white sailor cap, sits bent toward the other. The second reclines on one elbow, his legs stretched across the sheet. Large areas of the paper are left bare or only drawn in pencil, and nothing else is on the beach.

The collage repeats the arrangement. One man is raised on his hands behind; the other reclines on one elbow across the foreground. Dark trunks become briefs.

The main change is the setting. Demuth's men are alone, on a beach with no one else present. In the collage, the beach is full of people and umbrellas. The two men are in public, and they are not hiding.

Working in Code

Demuth and artists like him are forced to work in code. They do so magnificently and with great heart. Their paintings record what they are not permitted to say directly, in a form that allows the work to be made, kept, and in some cases shown.

These three collages are made a little over one hundred years later. They do not need the code. The subtext of Demuth's watercolors becomes the context of the collages.

  • Cleveland Museum of Art. Charles Demuth, Dancing Sailors, 1917. clevelandart.org

  • Museum of Modern Art. Charles Demuth, Dancing Sailors, 1918. moma.org

  • Demuth Foundation. "Stop 6: The Colonial Theater." demuth.org

  • New Britain Museum of American Art. "Charles Henry Demuth." nbmaa.org

  • The Art Story. "Charles Demuth." theartstory.org

  • Westmoreland Museum of American Art. "Celebrating LGBTQIA+ Artists in the Collection: Charles Demuth." thewestmoreland.org

  • Weinberg, Jonathan. Speaking for Vice: Homosexuality in the Art of Charles Demuth, Marsden Hartley, and the First American Avant-Garde. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.

L'Asie, Reversed

Timeline

• 1946 — Henri Matisse paints L'Asie in Venice, France.

• 1981 — ZZ Top releases the song “Pearl Necklace.”

• 1993 — The Kimbell Art Museum acquires L'Asie.

• 1994 — Apple releases the QuickTake 100, the first color digital camera sold to the public.

• 2026 — I create my digital collage homage to L'Asie.

Introductory Thoughts

One of my favorite moments at the Kimbell since 1993 is standing before this amazing painting by Henri Matisse. In my digital collage homage, I bring contemporary perspectives on five major elements of his work: the Media, the Odalisque, the Arabesque, the Tiger, and the Beaded Necklace.

The Media

Matisse paints L'Asie in oil on canvas in Vence between November 1945 and June 1946, just after the Second World War. A woman sits in a violet-and-blue coat over a striped gown, holding a string of beads against a flat red field. Oil on canvas is the medium of the European tradition he inherits.

My medium is born as the Kimbell acquires L'Asie. More than thirty years on, I use that new medium, digital collage photography, to make this homage and to examine the painting's major elements for a better understanding of what is happening in the work.

The Odalisque

The odalisque is one of the most durable figures in European painting: a woman, usually reclining, often in an imagined “Eastern” setting, placed there to be looked at. Ingres, Delacroix, and Matisse himself return to her again and again.

In my collage, the odalisque is a man. He reclines with one arm behind his head, a red robe open across his chest, and looks directly back at the viewer. The pose and the display are the same. The odalisque is defined by who is doing the looking. When a man takes her place, the question of who looks, and who is looked at, becomes visible.

The Arabesque

Matisse fills the red ground with loose black arabesque lines. A photograph of an earlier state shows a black section in the lower left. He repaints it red so the whole background reads as one decorative surface. The arabesque comes from Islamic ornament. European painters took it, along with tiles, textiles, and costume, to build a decorative “East.”

My ground is assembled from that borrowed vocabulary: red chinoiserie wallpaper, a blue geometric Islamic tile, and a pink paisley textile. Each piece keeps its own edges. Instead of blending into one surface, the sources stay separate, so the borrowing itself is visible.

Two recurring elements from my collage series appear in this field. With the Blue Moon and Jupiter 3 present, my collage indicates a universal view while Matisse's work points to the earth.

The Tiger

Matisse's costume is a Chinese coat lined with the white fur of a Siberian tiger. In the painting, the tiger has been skinned and made into a garment, and Matisse then turns that garment into violet and blue paint. The animal survives only as material.

In my collage, the tiger is alive. A white tiger lies in a tapestry landscape in the upper background, alert and looking at the viewer. Today the Siberian tiger is an endangered species, and fur carries a different meaning than it did in 1946. The tiger is no longer worn. It is present, and it watches.

The Beaded Necklace

In L'Asie, the model raises the blue beads with one hand and holds them away from her body. The gesture is open. She offers the necklace, and herself, to the viewer. Matisse ties the necklace directly to the model's gaze. He paints her eyes blue and green, the colors of the beads. The necklace is what she sees and what the viewer sees.

In my collage, finding the right necklace is central to the work. It has to function as a design element, floating above the figure. It also has to be scaled large enough to hold its place among the other elements. The blue pearls cross the bare chest of a reclining man, and his pale blue eyesrepeat their color, as the model's eyes do in Matisse.

In contemporary language, a “pearl necklace” refers to a man ejaculating onto a partner's neck and chest. ZZ Top's song brings the term into popular culture in 1981, thirty-five years after Matisse paints L'Asie. Popular understanding assumes the partner is a woman. Placed on a man, the necklace removes that assumption.

The two necklaces are coded differently, but they carry the same meaning: an invitation to lie down and to engage. Matisse's reference is nuanced. Mine is explicit. I take subtext and make it context.

Concluding Thoughts

Eighty years apart, the two works come from similar moments. Matisse paints L'Asie in the months after the defeat of fascism in Europe, the first use of the atomic bomb, and years of wartime deprivation in France. I make my homage in a time of rising authoritarianism, renewed fear of world war and nuclear annihilation, and economic hardship. Facing those realities, Matisse creates an image that reflects the hope of a new and better world. He hides his effort, and the painting appears effortless.

My work looks back at that hope and reflects how that world has remained very much the same, if not worse. It shows every seam, every layer, every effort. The invitation of the necklace remains, made explicit, in a world that still has not become what Matisse hoped.

— Behan

Sources

Kimbell Art Museum, “L'Asie (Asia),” Henri Matisse, 1946, accession no. APg 1993.01, kimbellart.org.

ZZ Top, “Pearl Necklace,” El Loco, Warner Bros. Records, 1981.

Urban Dictionary, “pearl necklace,” urbandictionary.com.

The Odalisque Wears Gym Shorts

ride Alaskan motion, liberated they’re free to love who they wantThe Reclining Figure

In 1814, Ingres paints a woman turned away, looking back over one shoulder. She is arranged to be seen, and the viewer is assumed to be a man.

Today the reclining figure is a young man on a phone screen. He identifies as straight. He has priced his body by the month.

What Masculinity Allows

A generation ago, a straight man who offers himself as an object of desire risks his standing. Display belongs to women. Looking belongs to men.

That line has weakened. Gym culture builds the male body for viewing, and social media rewards the result. The shame falls away. The body remains, shown openly.

Who Is Looking

The men who pay are most often gay. The straight performer knows this, adjusts to their requests, and accepts their money.

For centuries, the gay man looks at male bodies only through the cover of myth or athletics. Now he looks directly, and the man he looks at has agreed to be seen.

The Same Composition

The straight man takes the place of the odalisque. The gay man takes the seat of the patron. The composition is unchanged. Only the figures have traded places.

— Behan

References: Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Grande Odalisque, 1814, Musée du Louvre. Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," Screen, 1975.

How Three Become One

Behind the Collage: Three Become One

This post shows the source material behind one collage, next to the finished piece.

The Sources

Three photographs, found in succession on social media, build the foundation of the image:

• A beach under an overcast sky

• A single man with cap

• A group of celebratory young men

The Changes

Color: the original ground is muted in tone. In the finished collage, the sky and water shift to a saturated blue, and the skin tones warm. This shared color brings three unrelated images into one palette.

Scale: the single figure is enlarged to dominate the collage. He is head and shoulders above the horizon line, achieving a godlike presence that suspends the laws of nature.

Placement: the horizon line divides the composition in half, the single figure sitting above, the group of men below, cropped at the bottom edge so they press toward the viewer.

The Result

Seen side by side, the sources show how little the three photographs have in common at the start. The finished collage shows what they share once color, scale, and placement are adjusted: one beach, one sky, one dream.

— Behan

Subtext Becomes Context

Today's work is a set of four digital collages. Each one layers a 1960s swimwear advertisement with photographs of contemporary men. Both the vintage ads and the modern figures come from social media.

In the original ads, intimacy between men is subtext. The models stand close, look at one another, and share the frame in ways the culture of the time did not name.

When contemporary gay men enter the same scene, that subtext becomes context. The vintage models remain in the frame, and the viewer now reads them through the presence of the modern figures.

One ad still carries its original slogan: "everything a man ever wanted." Placed above a contemporary figure, the line now carries a more honest interpretation.

— Behan

Saturday Evening Flex

I like the way these three new digital collages evolved: each one placing the male figure in motion: flexing, lifting, carrying, surfing, posing. The blue moon and Jupiter 3 recur across all three like familiar friends, placing these bodies in a world slightly outside ordinary gravity. Fragments of the original screens are left in place. These figures came from the social media feed, and the work does not hide that.

And the strength emanating feels right. This year, my own relationship with strength has changed.

About 11 months ago, I started working with a personal trainer. We've been consistent three days a week, plus another day a week on my own in the gym. I have found this to be one of the most important developments occurring with my advancing age and impending work transition. I have discovered the love of the gym and working out, how it makes me feel, and the energy it gives me. I am really excited by it and grateful to have found it, like these digital photo collages.

Why it matters after 60, some stats:

• Age-related muscle loss can begin around 35 and can accelerate to 3% a year after 60.

• Adults who do not strength train can lose 4 to 6 pounds of muscle per decade.

• One in three adults 65 and older falls each year. Stronger muscles lower the risk of falling and of serious injury.

• Federal guidelines recommend strength training at least two days a week.

Four days a week. Eleven months. Still going. Let’s do this.