Square jawed and clear eyed, these beautiful men seem to have tumbled out of a time machine from exactly 100 years ago, the Gilded Age before World War I, looking all slick-haired and suited and ready for some modern man-on-man.

We might even think we had come upon a hidden stash of fabulous retro-porn if we didn’t know that the artist, Benoît Prévôt, is not only alive, he is a mere 38 years old!

A lifelong Parisian, whose day-job is designing cartoon characters for children’s television, sitting at a computer doing 3D backgrounds and images, Prévôt views the erotic drawings he does at night as his more important art.

In Prévôt’s swanky re-imaginings of the past, we get a glimpse of what the Arrow Collar Men were doing when the Gibson Girl was out on a motor trip.

We imagine the stately Gibson Girl coming home suddenly, unexpectedly, all leg-of-mutton sleeves and upswept hair behind motoring goggles, only to find husband and best friend slavering over each other in the drawing room. Solid patrician that she is, trained from childhood to be The Wife, she looks right on past the dog and pony show, gazing in her dreamy, heavy-lidded way out at the grounds, thinking ackh! men!

Such is the slow, graceful impact of Prévôt’s work.

Of all the things gay pornography quickly brings to mind, glamorous men in tuxedos is not one of them.

Prévôt’s world of louche style, of the hardon in the tweed trouser, is a strange and wonderful bloom in a gay porn universe usually set in a timeless nether-realm, in Tom of Finland’s vaguely 1950′s Americana or Etienne’s S&M dungeon nights.

“I didn’t try to emulate an old style at first,” Prévôt tells us through a translator — which we definitely require: our French is of the ala mode restaurant variety.

“The style came naturally to me. I’ve always been interested in old movies, vintage fashion, art deco architecture — when I watch an old movie I can tell the date within two years just from the clothes!

“So little by little I found myself putting more of my fantasy life in the drawings: locating my drawings in an ideal art-deco past, where I could show glamorous men in situations I only dreamed of.”

When we mention that the provenance of his art seems earlier than the art-deco 1930′s, taking its vocabulary from the square-jawed, square-shouldered Aryans of another gay illustrator, J. C. Leyendecker, whose Arrow Shirt models became icons of the early 20th Century, he lights up.

“Yes, now that you mention it, I guess I always wondered what really happened between those beautiful Leyendecker men and the men from the Chesterfields ads.”

We mention that Leyendecker based his Arrow Collar Man on his lover, Charles Beach, so perhaps the artist was channeling what was hiddin in the lines already.

“I try to show the other side of that clean image — without showing too much because I want the viewer to fill it in with his imagination, make his own choice.

“And, yes, I definitely like square faces — the sort you see on Jude Law, Bruce Willis and a porn actor that I love, Blake Harper.

“I also love big shoulders, big backs and big muscles! What gay man doesn’t! Like many of us, my sex fantasies run to that line of musclemen Jane Russell had in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.”

Ah yes, we nod warmly; we too are fellow movie freaks and horndogs. Who can forget all those physique-magazine studmuffins in their skimpy, over-packed swim trunks, diving over Jane Russell’s head while she belted out a song and looked every bit as big-bodied as they did!

“Certainly I love the hand of John Singer Sargent,” the artist continues, referring to the great America painter of the Gilded Age. “So I see your point, about my art coming as much from the 1910′s as from the 1930′s.

“I like drawing so I admire Ingres, Michelangelo and Rembrandt. But also Tom of Finland and Robert Mapplethorpe. I love Tom’s sense of humor.”

Humor, we ask. Tom of Finland … funny?

“Tom doesn’t take sex seriously. He has fun with it. 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 at times!”

We see his point. Tom of Finland does have a sense of joy and fun in his work. The enormous erections, the lusty approval from other men for those erections — Tom’s men are not dark types but robust and life-affirming. They seem full of exuberance for what they’re doing.

Like Tom, Prévôt’s “Arrow Collar Men” have a similar benevolence, a certain joy of life, a celebration of beau monde style. This is what sets the Prévôt drawings apart from more pedestrian homo erotica, where the signature feature is its static literalness.

Take the Prévôt image at right, which we have dubbed Swimmer with Roses.

A gentle comparison is being made between the thick cockhead peaking over the elastic bathing suit and the full , lush roundness of the roses. This same rosy roundness echoes throughout the illustration — the bodaciousness of the butt, the voluptuous pecs and ample deltoids.

Yet nothing is out of proportion. Nothing is Herculean or super-steroid looking. Even the way the figure lounges against the backdrop, emphasized by the drop-shadow, is casually graceful.

The style doesn’t defeat the sexiness of the image, and the sex doesn’t kitsch-ify the high style.

“I like to create structure,” says the artist. “Keeping things in order, making them stylish but with the door opened just a bit — to let that other side we all have in us be seen.”

Learn more about Benoît Prévôt | Visit his blog.
(but your French better be up to it!)

Benoît Prévôt’s drawings can be purchased
from the online gallery Manstouch,
an excellent source for gay art.

© 2008, John Calendo. All rights reserved. Nightcharm.com