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Hard Boys
Harry Bush€™s drawings for magazines such as Physique Pictorial, Mr. Sun, Touch, Drummer, and Stroke combined masterful technique, exceptionally well-endowed subjects, and a wicked sense of humor that made his work extremely popular. Despite long periods of self-imposed retirement and a fear of being outed that led him to destroy much of his own work, the reclusive artist€™s drawings were as recognized and recognizable as those of Tom of Finland throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Hard Boys examines the life and work of this brilliant, mysterious, and paradoxical gay artist. Featured are some of Bush€™s best-known works along with previously unpublished drawings from the artist€™s private sketchbooks, as well as excerpts from Bush€™s correspondence that offer insight into a complex egomaniacal artist, self-critical individual, frustrated homosexual, and acerbic social commentator. This eagerly awaited collection allows fans to redi
208 pages, Paperback
First published November 28, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 30, 2021
This book was a bit of an interesting tour through a time we have thankfully been able to leave behind.
Harry Bush was a series of contradictions that could barely fit within a person. He drew art of the nature he did but criticised the genre he drew within. He drew promises of promiscuities and the height of youthful exploration but was old, bitter and lonely. His art was a reflection of a wry humour at something he felt he couldn't incorporate into because the lgbtq+ community, such as it was in the time, was scarce and deep underground and those who you could find and meet were the risk takers. The anonymous sex cliché's. It went against the grain of his comforts and upbrining. The shape he was encouraged into in the army. And when you look at his artwork after this explanation, it's almost glaringly obvious.
The book is also nigh impossible to attain these days without an excessive cost or considerable good fortune. I sort of ended up paying a bit in excess cost and finding it a more considerably acceptable price through a bit of good fortune. It's a large book, dipping closer to A3 sized paper than A4. You get a really clear understanding of Harry through the snippers of some of his letters that his friends shared. If you find it, it's worth adding to your collection as a echo of pre-Stonewall art and mentality for the those who were kept in a shape society wanted for too long.
Harry Bush was a series of contradictions that could barely fit within a person. He drew art of the nature he did but criticised the genre he drew within. He drew promises of promiscuities and the height of youthful exploration but was old, bitter and lonely. His art was a reflection of a wry humour at something he felt he couldn't incorporate into because the lgbtq+ community, such as it was in the time, was scarce and deep underground and those who you could find and meet were the risk takers. The anonymous sex cliché's. It went against the grain of his comforts and upbrining. The shape he was encouraged into in the army. And when you look at his artwork after this explanation, it's almost glaringly obvious.
The book is also nigh impossible to attain these days without an excessive cost or considerable good fortune. I sort of ended up paying a bit in excess cost and finding it a more considerably acceptable price through a bit of good fortune. It's a large book, dipping closer to A3 sized paper than A4. You get a really clear understanding of Harry through the snippers of some of his letters that his friends shared. If you find it, it's worth adding to your collection as a echo of pre-Stonewall art and mentality for the those who were kept in a shape society wanted for too long.
January 27, 2015
In the past couple of weeks there has been a lot of attention in the gay press to the homoerotic artist Harry Bush. While he died in 1994 in San Juan Capistrano a new book of his drawings Harry Bush: Hard Boys (San Francisco: Green Candy Press, 2007) is raising his profile with a whole new generation of gay men. I remember discovering his work as a teenager in Vern's collection of Drummer magazines. They were stunning in their execution, style, form and technique. He has remained for me over the years an example of everything that is possible in homoerotic art. Nightcharm has devoted a whole page discussing Bush's work and the new book. Bush remains the most important homoerotic artist in the United States. According to Robert Mainardi, the author of an essay reflecting on his complicated friendship with Bush, Bush remained isolated because of his own internalized homophobia and fear of losing his benefits.
He "...was, as Hard Boys points out, a mass of contradictions. He worked under his own name yet lived in fear of losing his Air Force pension as some sort of retribution for being a pornographer. He cut himself off from his family before they could cut themselves off from him. Inculcated with the occupational homophobia of the military, he was revulsed by the world he had entered — the noir side of Hollywood with its hustlers, Johns and fly-by-night models — yet continued to draw that world as a joyous homosexual playground." ("Harry Bush and the All-American Porn Boy." Nightcharm (November 14, 2007)
The homoerotic artist Tom Jones over the years has written about his own complicated relationship with Bush and has done a great deal of work bringing attention to Bush and his importance to the gay community. While it is nice to see a collection of Bush's work in mainstream distribution and publication it is sad that an individual whose work is so important to the gay community toiled alone and apart from a community that holds his work dear to its heart. Indeed, so much of our gay iconography owes a great deal to Bush's work. Bush provided beautifully drafted images of the All-American boy next door that drip with sensuality, sexuality and desire. He remains one of the most important and until now underrated homoerotic artists in North America.
He "...was, as Hard Boys points out, a mass of contradictions. He worked under his own name yet lived in fear of losing his Air Force pension as some sort of retribution for being a pornographer. He cut himself off from his family before they could cut themselves off from him. Inculcated with the occupational homophobia of the military, he was revulsed by the world he had entered — the noir side of Hollywood with its hustlers, Johns and fly-by-night models — yet continued to draw that world as a joyous homosexual playground." ("Harry Bush and the All-American Porn Boy." Nightcharm (November 14, 2007)
The homoerotic artist Tom Jones over the years has written about his own complicated relationship with Bush and has done a great deal of work bringing attention to Bush and his importance to the gay community. While it is nice to see a collection of Bush's work in mainstream distribution and publication it is sad that an individual whose work is so important to the gay community toiled alone and apart from a community that holds his work dear to its heart. Indeed, so much of our gay iconography owes a great deal to Bush's work. Bush provided beautifully drafted images of the All-American boy next door that drip with sensuality, sexuality and desire. He remains one of the most important and until now underrated homoerotic artists in North America.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews