WILL MCBRIDE
Anna Bulbrook
“I am very
interested in boys. Let there be no doubt about that. But I do not meet them
in train stations nor in the men’s lavatories. I do not go to places where I
expect to see boys. I do not ask boys to come home with me for pay. But when
I see a good looking boy, or what I think is a good looking boy: thin and with
good bones and muscles, an intelligent face with clear eyes and a full mouth,
high cheekbones, a not too large nose, a flat stomach, a full butt and long legs,
big feet and big hands, then there I am charged with a lot of excitement. It
is this excitement that makes me work. I do not make love to boys. I make pictures
and sculptures of them—my expression of loving.”
Berlin 2003 —
Having enjoyed a career as a photojournalist for forty years, American ex-patriot
Will McBride turned away from photography and towards other media. Though his
pictures have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Look, Life, twen, Quick,
Geo, Stern, and Paris magazines (he also photographed a book on sexuality for
children that is banned in the United States), McBride has spent the last 10
years eschewing the 2-dimensional world of photography in favor of the more versatile
forms of sculpture, drawing, and painting.
Though he stopped being a professional photographer, McBride has not shed his
photographer’s eye for strong and evocative compositions or for controversial
subject matter. His paintings and sculptures are based, generally speaking, on
recognizable figuration (little boys look like little boys, for example), and
on how boys are placed in relation to their environments and each other.
As many of McBride’s works address the subject of boys’ sexuality,
a topic which makes most people a little uncomfortable, the writer has to ask
the question of whether McBride’s works are or are not pornography. Take,
for example, the enormous stone sculpture of a penis being masturbated by a hand,
or the painting of naked boys tangled up with one another, watching a hand masturbate
another penis. To McBride, who matured in the 1960’s, these are beautiful
subjects that should be embraced and explored, rather than repressed and denied.
While the final verdict will be left to the viewer’s discretion, McBride’s
subject matter is undeniably provocative.
This subject, of boy sexuality, is prominent in his paintings. In “Commune
Bed” (Berlin 2001), the left corner of the painting shows a huge erect penis
being masturbated by a large hand. In contrast with the cool gray and blue palette
of the rest of the painting, the penis is a warm pink. At a diagonal from the
disembodied pelvis and hand, two boys sit on a bed, legs tangled together, watching
the hand from opposite the viewer. In “Two Friends,” another painting,
two boys sit at a table in a sand-colored room. One studies some papers on a
table before him in a T-shirt and underwear, while the other sits on a bench
facing the viewer, his erect penis pointing towards the sky as he stares outwards.
In both paintings the boy’s penis and sexuality confront the viewer in an
embarrassing moment. In “Commune Bed,” the viewer is looking into the
scene from an angle that places the viewer very close to the masturbating hand,
behind which the two tangled voyeurs stare at the penis and at the viewer. The
viewer is forced to witness this open display of sexuality and virility, while
also being implicated as a conspirator and voyeur (doubly the voyeur in relationship
to the two staring boys). In “Two Friends,” the boy’s frontal
pose and open legs, and the viewer’s straight-on view of his penis give
the viewer the impression that the boy subject is displaying his sexuality intentionally
and without shame, as though the viewer should not be surprised or taken aback
that the boy’s penis and gonads are sticking out of his underwear.
This celebration of the sexuality and beauty of boys brings up another element
of McBride’s work: why boys? Boys appear in almost every painting, sculpture,
and drawing: boys with erect penises, boys in shorts, boys at the beach, boys
being bloodied and wounded in riots, boys climbing trees. There is something
about the innocence and spontaneity and power and sexuality of boys that fascinates
McBride. In his book, I, Will McBride, he writes about the erotic relationships
between men in the army, the beauty of boys with long bones and big feet, and
how the sexuality of boys should be embraced to create peace-loving individuals,
rather than repressed and re-channeled into violence or war. It is the possibilities
of their sexuality, their innocence, their power, and their timeless beauty that
McBride celebrates. While this definition of boys’ enchantment may be a
little trite, the paintings are honestly what McBride finds beautiful, even if
they shock the viewer with his view of child sexuality.
Other works of his, including “The Peace Project,” a multimedia installation
of sculpture, painting, and drawing, and including his bronzes of boys standing,
playing, or squatting, show a wider range in McBride’s talents. Instead
of painting boys in varying settings, McBride casts boys coming out of various
shells of clay, as though they are shedding their skins, or breaking free of
layers cast upon them as they move through space. In the center of his Peace
Project, the boys grow out of a mess of metal bars, cars, guns, and rubble to
make peace and start violence again in a cycle of societal problems, sexual repression,
hate, and forgiveness. Built into the other side of this chaos is a small house,
the sides gone as though in an explosion, where a family calmly eats dinner together,
unaware of the violence on the other side of the sculpture. A group of children
dance in a circle outside the wall-less house. Around the perimeter of the exhibit,
paintings of people in coffins alone or stacked upon one another, show the consequences
of war. It is in this anti-war memorial that McBride expands his vision beyond
the sexuality and beauty of young men, using his sculptures of boys to make a
larger point about the human potential for extreme good and bad, as well as the
cyclical nature of peace and violence.
The Peace Project
is not Will McBride’s only socially conscious work. Some of his paintings
address the themes of mobs, crowds, and violence. In the painting “Locker
Room Conflict,” (Frankfurt 1998), naked boys stand, sit, and lounge around
in a large room. In the foreground, two boys rest on benches, one reclining with
legs apart, and the other crouching to face him. In the background, a priest
in robes speaks with a group of naked boys. As though the room full of boys lounging
around together isn’t a little uncomfortable for the viewer, the priest
in the background brings in questions of authority and power, deepening the moral
issues and discomfort the composition raises.
Other paintings have an almost newsreel character and message. In “Kirchplatz
Pogodance,” a crowd in a square mills around chaotically, as though stumbling
home drunk after a celebration. In the left foreground, a drunken couple laughs
as they help each other lurch along. As the viewer looks closer, however, the
figures behind the couple look not drunk but something worse, perhaps like they
have been gassed or are shell-shocked. What first looked like a party begins
to look like a crowd fleeing violence, except for the one couple in the foreground
who laugh carelessly as they hobble away.
Though his drawings and paintings may not be as widely acclaimed, or as beautiful,
as his photographs, it is in them that McBride accomplishes what he wishes to
do. His paintings and sculptures celebrate the beauty of boys and illustrate
the horrors of war. It is in these media that McBride has found a unique artistic
message and voice, a style of painting and mode of sculptural expression that
is clear, representational, and his own. Though whether or not McBride is a great
artist is up for debate, he deserves credit for persisting in painting what he
feels is beautiful, and for doing it with gusto.
