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More on Benoit - A Recent Interview
1_ Your retro pornography is so delightful.
I love your use of the sort of men you see in the shirt ads from
the 1920’s, the square face, the art deco shaped hair! It
is so unexpected and yet so hot. How did you come up with this distinct
style?
-I can say that this style came naturally.
I have been always been interested in old movies, vintage fashion,
art deco architecture, furniture etc. … and these influences
have always gone into my drawings, even in the comics I did when
I was younger.
I like to locate my stories in an ideal past
(even if I don’t think it was better before). When I watch
an old movies I can know within 2 years near what the date is just
from the clothes worn.
I like to create a structure, keeping things
in order, but also to leave the door open ajar for the « other
side » we all have.
I didn’t try to emulate an old style
at first but little by little I thought it could be interesting
to do so and put more of my fantasy in my drawings and show these
« glamorous men » in the situations I dreamed of
2_Could you tell us something about yourself?
Your age, where you are from, the artists you admire, the men you
desire.
-I am 38 and always leaved near Paris except
when I was a small child in the French Ardennes. I like drawing
so of course I admire Ingres, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and I adore
the hand of John Singer Sargent as well as Cezanne. I like contemporary
artists like Hockney and Warhol.
In other mediums if like the images of Mapplethorpe
and Tom of Finland whose work represents for me my first naughty
feelings and I like his sense of humor. I often think that people
take sexuality too seriously. That doesn’t mean that I m not
shy. I have my own inhibitions, but I like to think that sex is
quite a natural behavior, and it can be so good !
The kind of men I desire ? Well as so many
gay men I like big muscles (like Jane Russell’s masculine
muscle men) but I also find other types of men attractive. It depends
on my mood but I definitely like square faces a cross between between
Jude Law, Bruce Willis and a porn actor that I love Blake Harper.
3_I see that you were the model maker on
Legende de Parva, an animated feature. What other projects are you
working on? Would you animate your own erotic drawings, put them
on T-shits, make dolls?
-Oh my god , how did you know that ? this
is a very « kitsch » movie that even I can’t understand
well ! Did you see it ?
I am now doing 3D imaging for a TV series.
I work most of the time as a character designer for children’s
cartoons.
I am now trying to take more time for my
erotic drawings ! I m not ready to animate my own erotic drawings
or make erotic cartoons like the Japanese but it is a possibility
in the future. Dolls ? I don’t know, but I like the Tom of
Finland’s ones.
4_Your erotic drawing are unique, I think,
in that they are set at a specific time, one that is nearly 100
years ago. Tom of Finland, has a certain 1950’s Americana
look to them, but I think that was by accident as the pictures were
all drawn in the post WWII era. So many erotic artists go for a
timeless quality. Yet your pictures are particularly stimulating
because they are set in such a specific time frame -- the 1920’s.
And there is a real sense of the forbidden about them. What the
illustrations in the magazines did at night, when the magazine was
closed.! Do you have any feeling or thoughts on this?
- That’s it ! I didn’t think
of it but now that you are asking I wonder what really happened
between those beautiful Leyendecker men and those from the Chesterfields
ads ! I think that perhaps this is what I try to show, the other
face of a very clean image without showing too much because I want
the viewer to make his own choice too.
We truly love your work and would be happy
to feature them in Nightcharm for a profile piece. Could we get
bigger pictures to work with. I found a collection of your work
on a French site and there are many lovely things to work with.
But bigger pictures, which you could send to me by email, will look
better when we have those to work on.
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