Long ago, before I moved to West Hollywood, I spent a terrible year teaching at
Hell-fer-Sartain State College, the worst place on Earth. Houston had some very nice shops, museums, and restaurants, and the biggest gay neighborhood in the Cowboy Belt, but it was 20 miles away, and in the nonstop gridlock traffic it might as well have been 2,000 miles.
So I didn't do much sightseeing, and I certainly didn't have the time or energy to go scouring the countryside for beefcake art. But, apparently, Texas has more than its share. Starting with Houston:
1.-3. The Cullen Sculpture Garden at the Museum of Fine Arts features a reproduction of Rodin's
Walking Man, Émile-Antoine Bourdelle's
Adam, and this stylized nude man atop a horse.
4. Austin, about a 2 1/2 hour drive from Houston, is the site of the Texas State Capitol and the University of Texas. When I visited, it was frightfully crowded, with streets torn up for construction everywhere. But the entrance to the university campus features the muscular semi-nude
Torchbearers.
5. I've never been to San Antonio, about 1 1/2 hours south of Austin, but evidently it has become a cultural center rivaling Houston, with ,many museums and art galleries. This nude fisherman stands outside the McNay Art Museum.
6. This hunky, well-endowed statue of Marcus Aurelius is in the San Antonio Museum of Art.
7. This sculpture outside the Children's Museum is called "Firstborn Son," but it looks like the child has just broken the dad's neck.
More after the break.
8. Waco, about 1 1/2 hours north of Austin on the road to Dallas, is pronounced "Way-co," not "Wacko." It's famous chiefly for the Branch Davidian cult that blew up there. But it has a more sedate past, such as a large Masonic Temple, with this frieze by Raoul Josset depicting muscular, nude workers.
9. There's another frieze of hunky football players at Farrington Field in Fort Worth.
10. I've been to Dallas. but I didn't visit the Freedman's Cemetery, where this African prince stands guard.
11-12. There are several muscular, half-naked freedmen inside the cemetery.
13. According to Google Images, this is "Cattle Drive," in Dallas, depicting a number of naked boys leaping into the river. Why "Cattle Drive"? I have no idea.
14.Arlington, a suburb of Dallas, is the home of the stadium of the Dallas Cowboys football team, where this frieze depicts scenes from Texas history. Apparently many Texas in the past were naked a lot.
15. This Nature Boy is playing with the birds in a pier in Galveston.
It's a big state. I didn't have time for Amarillo, Lubbock, Midland, Odessa, San Angelo, or Corpus Christi.
See also:
Male Nudity in Italian Class.
