Beefcake: 100% Rare, All-Natural

In the 1950s the Western Photography Guild of Colorado offered images "of the highest artistic content." This material provided distinct physique photography for the painter, sculptor, bodybuilder, student or "collector" (whatever that means). Some people considered these studies to be pornography, but dealers insisted that it was simply "the male body at its best" in the most versatile and masterful poses. In modern times, these photos, that were packaged in regular periodicals, have come to be known as beefcake.

The hardbound volume "Beefcake - 100% Rare, All Natural" is a collection of these images taken from a number of different studios over the course of several decades in the mid-Twentieth Century. Edited and introduced by cultural historian Petra Mason (with a forward by Lady Bunny), it organizes a selection of these pictures into genres: You have your muscle men, guys posing like Greek art, gentlemen dressed like they're in a Charlton Heston Biblical epic (but who have forgotten to put on their loin cloths), Spaghetti Westerners in spaghetti strapped briefs, virile playboys lounging naked in their bachelor-pads (smoking cigarettes and drinking milk) and oily men wrestling in the midday sun (and in the process, they crush their opponents' faces into their moist, bushy armpits).

Still, it isn't the way these men imitate Greek sculpture that makes these pictures art -- the curve of the models arms, the point of their feet, the splay of their fingers or the firmly rooted placement of their torsos -- it is the way the photos carefully craft eroticism and desire. The product is not only something that appease the censors but this "art" convinces the men who are turned on by it that they are looking at something as wholesome and fortifying for the mind as Wonder Bread or Tang - orange flavored drink.

Today's porno leaves nothing to the imagination. The only thing the viewer needs to fantasize is that the drug addled men who are thrusting and spurting are actually enjoying themselves. The vintage erotica in "Beefcake" offers sex as free, natural, uncoifed and uncomplicated as the untamed pubic hair bursting from the models' light-woven nylon posing straps.

If your mother were to find this book under your pillow, you could always say, "There's nothing untoward going on here." These are just dudes enjoying each others' company - in the nude -- a man listening to a vinyl record on the hi-fi while he rests his head on his mate's firm and flaxen-fur-covered backside, a boy binding his buddy's arms while he pushes his pelvis into the small of his challenger's back. These are just guys wrestling (a legitimate sport), but they happen to be unencumbered by clothing.

This 256-page collection, printed on the finest paper, is something that a sophisticated gay man can proudly display on his coffee table or keep beside the lotion and tissues on his nightstand. It explores the athletic human form as a dramatic study, but it is never pretentious or prurient. Nevertheless, when shades are drawn, the cultured homosexual can take pleasure in opening his fly and using this book to beat-off like it's 1955.

The joyous eroticism of these images is infallible because of all the things we see in them -- but we actually don't see. For instance, there's the blond bloke, tanned all over because he isn't even wearing SPF, hitchhiking by the side of the road. Lucky for him there's another unclad dude riding by, his thickly manned, uncut cock vibrating on the motorcycle seat. "Hop on back and hold on tight."

Images like these show very little but send the imagination reeling. That's what make this book "high art."

"Beefcake - 100% Rare and All Natural"
Published by Universe / Rizzoli International
$50.00
www.rizzoliusa.com