Never before seen and yet somehow strangely familiar – HVH’s gay interpretation of these more or less famous movie posters is highly entertaining. The artist masterfully plays with our expectations, playfully tweaking the history of cinema a bit, where until now gays have always gotten short shrift. His work is sometimes ironic and irreverent, occasionally affectionate and amusing and is in the end a simply magnificent homage to cinema!
HvH, “Gone to the Movies”, Bruno Gmunder, 2008.
How Could I Have Missed These Flicks?
Amos Lassen
It has been said that they don’t make movies like they used to and they obviously do not make movie posters like the ones in “Gone to the Movies”, a parody of movie posters. HvH has taken classic movie posters and redesigned them so that they are extremely homoerotic.
This is a wonderful collection of drawings that is great dun. HvH changes the names of films and stars to give us a whole new way of looking at Hollywood. I found it very hard to pick a favorite as each is so ingenious. I do, however, lean toward “Cockapatra” starring Lickbeth Gaylor, Dick Burbon and Sex Garrison presented by 69th Century-Foxy. And of course there is “Bareback Mountain” starring Hot Leader, Jack Gimmeall, Mark Thatstheway and Michael Willing and “Gigantic”—“the cruise lines that gave new meaning to cruising…” with a cast led by Jamie Wood and Sucking Smiths (will Amazon post this?).
It’s all tongue in cheek and all great fun. I thought I recognized HvH’s work but it wasn’t until I read the introduction by Eric Arvin that I realized that I had actually read about the author on Eric’s website and realized that he had done the covers of Eric’s books. Like Arvin says “there is intimacy in his (HvH’s) art, even at its most epic…he inspires us…he entertains us, he makes us think”. The artist’s work is filled with passionate color and skillful use of shadow and his eroticism is in no way cheap or offensive. He is touching and unique and I look forward to seeing more from him.
