Review: Summer Moved On

Michael Breyette is an artist whose work has long been featured on his website and in magazines. With the 80-page Summer Moved On (available for example at Amazon), publisher Bruno Gmünder gives the artist his first book collection, which is filled with muscled hunks, alone or in pairs.

Breyette’s style is realistic, though usually not photo-realistic. The vibrant hues of his characters’ skin are one of his strongest features, as is his ability to portray tenderness in what often looks like porn settings, without any sex being shown. I must admit I find the men he draws to be not very varied: white, well-built, very manly, traditionally handsome. But apart from the fact that there’s nothing wrong in drawing that kind of men, he does it well. All those drawings show an easiness in the masculinity offered to the eyes of the viewer, which is in fact the contrary of what a lot of modern porn seems to portray. And as I wrote above, there’s a moving tenderness in the couples scenes which make up about a fourth of the book.

There’s a rather interesting dichotomy between the far above average physical types of men drawn here and the often everyday, casual circumstances which the artist has chosen to depict. That makes for a potent brew, probably all the more effective as there’s a kind of voyeuristic aspect to showing scenes where the characters are supposed to feel safe from prying eyes.
Michael Breyette’s men might be a bit conventional, but the artist’s eye manages to convey an inner life that makes them far more than just handsome, manly guys.