Neel Bate (1916–1989), also known as Blade, was an American underground artist known for his gay

erotic art Erotic art is a broad field of the visual arts that includes any Work of art, artistic work intended to evoke Sexual arousal, erotic arousal. It usually depicts human nudity or sexual activity, and has included works in various visual mediums, ...

. He is best known for his 1948 series of drawings ''The Barn''. He began drawing erotica in the 1930s and continued for most of his life. His work was initially distributed underground due to American obscenity law. In the 1970s, his drawings began to be published in gay magazines, and, during the last decade of his life, exhibited in art galleries.

Biography

Bate was born Carlyle Kneeland Bate in Canada on November 29, 1916. His family moved to the rural outskirts of

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

soon after his birth. After high school, he studied art at Seattle's

Cornish School Cornish College of the Arts (CCA) is a private art college in Seattle, Washington. It was founded in 1914. History Cornish College of the Arts was founded in 1914 as the Cornish School of Music, by Nellie Cornish (1876–1956), a teacher of p ...

, but dropped out before completing his degree. He worked as an illustrator in California, and later as a designer in Hollywood. Bate was gay and had sexual encounters with other men as part of the nascent, underground gay community that existed in Hollywood at the time. Bate enlisted in the Merchant Marines during World War II. After the war, Bate moved to New York City, where he lived until his death. He worked as a designer, whilst also selling his artwork and occasionally modeling for physique photos. Bate was friends with other early gay artists and photographers including

Bob Mizer Robert Henry Mizer (March 27, 1922 – May 12, 1992) was an American photographer and filmmaker, known for pushing boundaries of depicting male homoerotic content with his work in the mid 20th century. Biography Bob Mizer's earliest photographs ...

George Platt Lynes George Platt Lynes (April 15, 1907 – December 6, 1955) was an American fashion photography, fashion and advertising, commercial photographer who worked in the 1930s and 1940s. He produced photographs featuring many gay artists and writers from ...

, Harry Bush, and Tom of Finland. In the early 1950s, Bate began a relationship with physique model Ernest Henry, and the two moved in together. Their relationship later became platonic, but they continued to live together until Bate's death. Bate was a heavy smoker, and died of

emphysema Emphysema, or pulmonary emphysema, is a lower respiratory tract disease, characterised by air-filled spaces ( pneumatoses) in the lungs, that can vary in size and may be very large. The spaces are caused by the breakdown of the walls of the alve ...

on June 27, 1989.

Work

The subjects of Bate's drawings were often working class men (such as farmboys, truckers, or sailors), who have been described as "gritty", or "burly". A recurring theme was young men having their first homosexual experience with an older, more experienced man. Before joining the Marines in World War II, Bates burned all his drawings, fearing that they would be discovered. More of his work was also lost in an armed robbery at his apartment in the late 1950s or early 1960s. His work was initially sold through underground channels, but in the mid 1970s, it began to appear (under the pseudonym ''Blade'') in the new explicitly gay publications of the time, which cropped up as successors to the physique magazine. Bate wrote an article for the gay magazine '' In Touch For Men'' (reprinted in ''

The Advocate An advocate is a professional in the field of law. The Advocate, The Advocates or Advocate may also refer to: Magazines * ''The Advocate'' (LGBT magazine), an LGBT magazine based in the United States *''The Harvard Advocate'', a literary magazin ...

'' in 1983) about the short-lived 1937 magazine '' Bachelor'', which he recalled as his first exposure to gay-coded media.

''The Barn''

''The Barn'' was a series of ink drawings with captions telling the story of a sexual encounter between a motorcyclist and a farmboy when the former takes shelter from the rain in a barn. A small number of prints were made by Bate's friend

, and given to a gay bartender to be sold clandestinely. The prints were seized in a police raid, but in the following years, copies came to be widely circulated underground, even internationally. It has been speculated that a member of the police department began the spread of pirated copies.

Legacy

The majority of Bate's originals have been destroyed. His surviving work was donated to the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bate, Neel 1916 births 1989 deaths American erotic artists Gay male erotica artists American gay artists Pseudonymous artists 20th-century American LGBT people Canadian emigrants to the United States