The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Sebastian, Four Mothers, Restless, and The Most Precious of Cargoes
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‘I wanted my drawings to show gay men being happy and positive’
Tom King pays tribute to the subversive illustrator TOM OF FINLAND
Tom of Finland
JOHN GREEN explores the argument that psychiatry needs to move away from the idea of just seeing and treating the individual
SYLVIA HIKINS applauds a polemic against “cleanfluencers” and considers radical alternatives to current inequalities of housework
RUTH AYLETT admires the blunt honesty with which a woman’s experience is recorded, but detects the unexamined privilege that underlies it
IAN SINCLAIR draws attention to the powerful role that literature plays in foreseeing the way humanity will deal with climate crisis
High quality pulp, rollicking online murders, Abnorman Britain, and high skates drama: reviews of The Get Off, Everyone In The Group Chat Dies, Pagans and First To Fall
DENNIS BROE notes what happens to content when the streaming giants incorporate AI and deregulation into their economic models
THROUGHOUT post-classical art, there’s a venerable tradition of male erotica hiding in plain sight.
Michelangelo’s David, Fabre’s Death of Abel and numerous scantily clad — if a little punctured — Saint Sebastians, to name but a few, indulged homosexual desire as much as they conveyed religious sentiment, and often more so.
For the most part, these works were only ever gazed upon by an elite, privileged few. But, as John Berger pointed out, mass-production democratised the image as much as the printing press did the written word.
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