Orig Rare REX RAWHIDE BAR POSTER vtg 70s 80s NYC Leather Beefcake nude Gay Art

Description

RAWHIDE BAR POSTER 80s VINTAGE ORIGINAL
NEW, OLD STOCK, rolled never folded or mounted.
Art Drawings Dessins Pointillism :
REXWERK Zeitgeist NYC era
not digital - not a reprint - not a laser reproduction
Sale priced. My collection. Uncommon, for the Rex collector
. Scarce Collectible of gay history.
I used to live two blocks west on little west 12th, so the place was my watering hole. You stepped through the curtains into the blackened bar, leaving noise and glare of the city behind, entering a parallel universe. In those first seconds, it was impossible to see, so as you froze in place letting your eyes adjust, there was also a certain "letting go." The time of day ceased to matter because inside, it was always Saturday just past midnight.
212 8th Ave at 21st Street, New York City. Opened 1979 closed 2013.
“One of the things I loved about Chelsea is that on Eighth Avenue, there was the Rawhide bar—not a luxury product.
And for many years there were Latino guys from the neighborhood who had a folding card table every Friday and Saturday night and played dominoes. And they knew every guy who walked into the Rawhide, and every guy that walked in the Rawhide knew them. A gay leather bar may or may not be the best example, but it is the type of neighborhood experience we want to be able to have, what Jacobs called ‘the eyes on the streets’ all watching out for each other.” At the time of the bar’s 30th anniversary in 2008, the Rawhide “continued to do a brisk business in spite of Gym Bar, Barracuda, G Lounge, View Bar and other bars opening in the immediate area in recent year.”  “When I’m barhopping in Chelsea, this is where I begin my night and where I end my night,” Known as
the oldest levis-and-leather bar in the city
, the neighborhood friendly Rawhide smells of beer and motor oil, or maybe it just seems to smell like beer and motor oil, because it should. An old motorcycle hangs from chains over a red-felt pool table, a grimy baby doll strapped to its muffler. The ceiling is painted black, pockmarked by industrial staples still gripping gray fluff that once belonged to Halloween cobwebs.
The walls (also painted black) are decorated with Herb Ritts posters of muscle models, Mr. International Leather 1990, and Tom of Finland poses--everywhere Tom of Finland--pressed into the black walls so they look somehow melded there.
His series of print unbound portfolios were entitled (chronologically)
Rexwerk, Uncut, Undercover, Armageddon, Scorpio, Rexland, Legends
and
Rex Sex-Freak Circus
.
The unbound format proved popular with buyers who had been frustrated for the need to dismantle the bound book format collections to frame their favorite images. Rex's drawings, made over months, defy the throw-away nature of most pure pornography and are more akin to graphic novel, gay pulp comics (Tom of Finland too) and the Japanese tradition of Shunga prints prints.
On July 1, 1981 REX opened his gallery Rexwerk, in his SOMA studio on Hallam Street in San Francisco. Only ten days later it was destroyed and Rex's drawings and inventory burned in a fire started at The Barracks bathhouse undergoing renovation across the street. The fire could not have come at a worse time, for July 1981 was also the same month the first case of what a year later was called Aids was diagnosed in the city of San Francisco. His commercial work and original art nonetheless continued to appear as regular features in sexual magazines such as
Manifest, Just Men, Torso, Inches, Uncut
, and
In Touch.
Other erotic artists such as Harry Bush (1925–1994), and British UK artist Bill Ward were colleagues. Later commissions included posters for gay bars; The Lure and Mineshaft, Rawhide hot cruise bar in Chelsea and The Saint in NYC The Eagle in Washington DC. Bolt Poppers and the Pleasure Chest underground stores and his art was featured in the film Cruising with Pacino.
Before Mapplethorpe there was Rex. Just as Tom of Finland realized and gave form to a new ideal of gay masculinity for the generation before him, Rex prepared the way for Mapplethorpe and the modern fetishists.  He is the last of the legends from that era. A bit like an animal thought extinct
- Guy Burch, UK artist - writer - curator
Unnoticed for a generation, a legendary and mysterious figure pre Stonewall. Disillusioned with commercial art, he dropped out for several years but re-emerged in the 1970s as one of the leading figures visualizing the fetish and S&M subculture in New York and later San Francisco. He was much influenced, he said, by his chance discovery of a probably bootleg magazine of the drawings of Tom of Finland which "irrevocably changed his life." The depiction of men "having sex with men, passionately and enthusiastically" "spoke to him in a way no lover or anonymous stranger ever had"
In terms of his cultural interest, in many ways Rex is the surviving Godfather of Folsom which began in San Franscisco and is now ‘franchised’ (Berlin being the famous offshoot)
Synonimous with an emerging S&M graphic idiom that, in addition to Tom of Finland, included Dom Orejudos (aka
Etienne
and
Stephen, lover muse and partner of Chuck Renslow, Kris of Chicago
), Steve Masters ('Mike' Miksche, born David Leo Miksche, 1925-1964), and Luger, Arion and later Colt drawings by Jim French. The raw underground dark energy of REX's early drawings resonated with a leather scene that was just emerging in Greenwich Village, Chelsea and the piers and High Line and the meatpacking district of New York City, and the original SOMA culture in San Francisco, his work also distributed via A Taste of Leather in SFO.
Understandably cautious – like Tom of Finland he has been constantly abused in terms of copyright. Even today, sadly
Beginning with
Icons
(1977) a series of portfolios were advertised. Rarely shown or seen in their entirety, these were carefully considered and structured sets. Most artists of the era issued photographic prints, not art prints. The only comparable previous works of this type were the commercially made lithographic prints of George Quaintance who also independently marketed his work in the early 1950s.
Robert Mapplethorpe knew REX and was attracted to his hard-core imagery relating to the Mineshaft. The photographer developed a photographic portfolio that reflected the same themes and, like Rex, had strong links with the West Coast fetish scene (they both had work published by Drummer magazine editer Jack Fritscher, one of Mapplethorpe's lovers. He secured an invitation in April 1978 from Robert Opel to have a one-man exhibit at his newly opened Fey Wey Gallery on Harrison Street in San Francisco.
Rex is artist of urban toilets, french pissoirs, unwashed  blue-collar hotels, filthy construction workers, greasy gas jockeys, muscled bikers, tattooed fighters, beautiful young homeless bums ... ex-cons, armpit-sweaty beautiful studs needing head – all these unshaved "lone wolves" in jockstraps, leather, boots, and torn tanktops ... who pay-per-night in sleaze-bag hotels where sailors, Marines, cops, and drifters lie back on stained mattresses, the smoke of their cigarettes drifting out the crack of their rooms, down to the toilet where the cracked urinal drips beer waste, and graffiti-covered stalls drilled with gloryholes
REX stopped publishing his work for several years. In 1992 he returned to New York and opened a 'by appointment only' private gallery called The Secret Museum at 218 Madison Ave until the events of 9/11 closed down Manhattan's economy. In early 2002 he returned full-time to San Francisco where he had maintained a room over the Zeitgeist Bar on Valencia Street during his bi-coastal years between Manhattan and San Francisco (1976–2010). Disheartened by the politics America, he moved to Europe in 2010 to Amsterdam.
COMBINED SHIPPING DISCOUNT, photographs books magazines added at a reduced rate
Original, collectible vintage photographs, unique books of photography and infamous photographers, and rare Magazines of the era; Heartland vernacular and Antique originals
Physique notables: Thor, Rex werk Rexwerk Verboten, Jon Arnt, Joe Weber, Herbert List, Western Photography Guild Don Whitman WPG Denver Colorado, Kurt Dietrich Dietrick Kensington Rd Bruce Bellas of LA, Gregor Arax Paris France, John Paignton Shipley Barrington London England, Jim French polaroid arion Luger Colt Studio Canal St NY Los Angeles, Lou Thomas Target Studio, Lon Alonzo Hanagan New York, Douglas Juleff Detroit, Spartan Constantine, Denny Denfield, Fred Kovert Hollywood, Walter Kundzicz Champion Studio Waljim Take One Sunshine Beach Club Master Physique THEM reidmeier riedmeier, Reed Massengill, Dave Martin, John Waters David Hurles San Francisco Old Reliable, DSI, Guild Press PNC Dr Lynn Womack Washington DC, Pat Milo, Bob Mizer Athletic Model Guild AMG Physique Pictorial, Cliff Oettinger, Michigan Models Glenn Bishop, Al Urban, J Brian Donahue Calafran Bob Damron, Tony Lanza, Third World Studio, Chicago Jim Jager Mr Big Long, Sierra Domino Craig Calvin Anderson, Basil Clavering Hussar, Foto Grafo, Mike Arlen Wetherby UK, Mel Roberts, Neil Edwards, Troy Saxon Stuart Pinky Rosenberg, Bobco, Pat Rocco, Cusido, RMX Richard Models Vetruvian Sennels Lyric, Gerhardt Liebmann, Tony Patrioli Italy, Eadweard Muybridge, Paul Cadmus, Jared French Lincoln Kirstein George Platt Lynes, Will McBride, Henry Tuke, Luke Smalley, Joel Peter Witkin, Terry Richardson, Michael Stokes invictus, beaumen beau Wouter Deruytter, Gaetano D'Agata, Pluschow, Von Gloeden, Vincenzo Galdi, Eugen Sandow, Achille Volpe, Rudolph Koppitz, Raymond Voinquel, Forbes, Thomas Eakins, Czanara Raymond Carrance, Desbonnet, Duane Michals, Sherwin Carlquist, Arundel Holmes Nicholls, Edwin Townsend, Charles Alphonse Marle, John Max Hernic, Leni Riefenstahl, Fred Holland Day, Crawford Barton, Daniel Nicoletta, Weegee Arthur Fellig, Malcolm Boyd, Siegmund sig Klein, NacktKultur Swiss Nudes Werner Bandi Der Kreis the Circle fkk Hans Suren Gerhard Riebicke, George Haimsohn Plato Anthony Tony Guyther Vulcan Capital, Islay Lyons Mark Slocum Edwinstone Fred Bisonnes Dennis Forbes, Mans Image Toby Ross John Gable, Dallesandro, Ohm Phanphiroj, Alvin Baltrop, Duncan Grant, Laure Albin Guillot, Roger Viollet, Hippolyte Bayard, Marconi, Frank Collier DeZine Artkraft, Les Demi Dieux Danny Fitzgerald, William Sayles Doan photoflexion, Chuck Renslow Kris Chicago Dom Stephen Etienne, Art of George Quaintance Harry Bush hard boys, Tom Bianchi nyc fire island, Vince Aletti, Klaus Kertess Peter Hujar David Wojnarowicz Robert W Richards Stroke Allure Hunter O'Hanian, Wessel O'Connor, Guy Burch, Bill Ward UK Otto Rieth Max Koch der Akt act Freilicht, Boris Lurie Habana Havana Cuba, William Gedney, Arthur Leipzig Brooklyn boys, Lehnert Landrock tunis, Stephane Gizard France, Julien Marinetti, Lowell Nesbitt, Mike Disfarmer, Norman Mauskopf, Barthe, Carl Van Vechten Harlem Renaissance, Michael Leonard, KarlHeinz Weinberger, Banksy Basquiat Warhol xxl Haring, Colt Album, Tom Album Barrington
The seeds of the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation were planted in 1968 when Fritz Lohman and Charles Leslie held a gallery show of gay erotic art in their Soho loft. In 1990 they became a foundation dedicated to preserving art which many in the art world used to destroy. Ed Cervone's "Three Sailor's". Or perhaps Patrick Angus' Hanky Panky - set in an adult movie house. Darold Perkins has taken an Arrow Shirt ad and turned it into an ad instead. Next in the Drawings and Prints category we particularly love Paul Cadmus; the explicit Andy Warhol drawings -- he wasn't Tom of Finland.... but much more than Campbell's Tomato Soup
We offer modern firsts, original photography, the arts, and gay erotica. You will also find a fine selection of signed copies, limited editions, and memorabilia because the goal is to deepen the pleasure of collecting.
We carry those that we ourselves like and believe in -- that we think will excite, enchant, and endure.
(the usps has raised postal rates approx 10%, thus rates are at cost not for profit)