\u201cSex sells\u201d is one of the oldest aphorisms in advertising. But it wasn\u2019t until the turn of the 20th century that the marketing world truly took notice of the male form. In large part, that was thanks to the work of commercial illustrator J.C. Leyendecker, whose ads were suffused with homoeroticism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Leyendecker painted broad-chested Adonises that were used to sell everything from socks and underwear to razors and cigarettes. His most notable contribution, though, was the \u201cArrow Collar Man,\u201d a dashing figure who promoted Cluett Peabody & Company\u2019s removable shirt collars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Leyendecker also painted 322 covers for the Saturday Evening Post, reportedly one more<\/a> than his famous prot\u00e9g\u00e9, Norman Rockwell. From the 1900s to the 1930s, he was a household name: Both Leyendecker and the Arrow Collar Man were name-checked by F. Scott Fitzgerald.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But with the advent of the Great Depression and World War II, his urbane, effete mannequins fell out of favor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Commissions dried up and Leyendecker painted his last Post cover in 1943, dying in relative obscurity in 1951. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, his work \u2014 and his legacy \u2014 are being revived in \u201cUnder Cover: J.C. Leyendecker and American Masculinity,\u201d<\/a> running at the New-York Historical Society through Aug. 13.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The exhibition features some of Leyendecker\u2019s best known commercial work, as well as magazine covers, preparatory drawings and 19 original oil paintings, much of it on loan from the National Museum of American Illustration in Newport, Rhode Island.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cUp until Leyendecker\u2019s era, men had their clothes made by a tailor,\u201d advertising executive John Nash explained. \u201cNow clothes were being mass-produced and advertised nationwide. Any man could look at Leyendecker\u2019s work in a magazine or newspaper, or on a billboard, and want to be him. It opened up the idea of men as fashion consumers \u2014 and sex objects.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Leyendecker\u2019s Arrow Collar Man \u201cwas tall, muscular and white,\u201d Nash said. \u201cPractically Germanic. He was Ivy League-educated and athletic \u2014 the progenitor of today\u2019s metrosexual.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n The model for the Arrow Collar Man, and many of Leyendecker\u2019s figures, was Charles A. Beach, his business manager and, by most accounts, his longtime lover. The two shared a home in New Rochelle, New York, for nearly 40 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are few primary sources to corroborate Leyendecker\u2019s sexual orientation, but many modern historians \u2014 and the Historical Society exhibit \u2014 present him as a gay man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLeyendecker\u2019s eye for capturing the male form was absolutely informed by his sexuality,\u201d said Nash, who was the creative director who got Subaru to advertise to lesbians<\/a>. \u201cWas he going to that well purposefully or just instinctively? We just don\u2019t know. But it\u2019s definitely the visual world he wanted to create.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cUnder Cover\u201d is broken into two main segments: One explores Leyendecker\u2019s provocative depictions of the male body, including a Post cover featuring the god Apollo in a loincloth and an Ivory soap ad with a robed man who, according to the exhibit text, \u201cappears to be sexually aroused.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The other section explores his depictions of male intimacy, often through images of men sharing sexually charged looks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In a Saturday Evening Post cover from Thanksgiving 1928, Leyendecker delivers a musket-wielding pilgrim locking eyes with a hunky football player whose right nipple is exposed through his torn jersey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some of his work did feature women, \u201cbut they\u2019re almost completely ignored by the men next to them,\u201d curator Donald Albrecht said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In one well-known Arrow ad from 1910, a woman is sitting next to a golfer who is gently cradling his clubs and staring across the page at another man. Leyendecker\u2019s work was frequently cropped based on the needs of the outlet and, in some iterations of this ad, the female companion is cut out entirely, leaving only the two men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The executives at Arrow were probably focusing on how good the clothing looked, Nash said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe notion that there\u2019s this cult of masculinity sailed right over their heads,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t think they thought he was tapping into something primal about male identity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe don\u2019t know if Leyendecker explored that world, but it was going on parallel to what he was doing,\u201d Albrecht said. \u201cBecause he was so elite, so Ivy League, we decided we had to present a kind of counternarrative.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n The exhibit also presents an alternative to the homogeneity of Leyendecker\u2019s work. If Black Americans appear at all, they\u2019re young boys or porters. (\u201cHe was a creature of his time,\u201d Nash said.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cUnder Cover\u201d includes dapper portraits of Langston Hughes, Richard Bruce Nugent and other Black men who emerged from the Harlem Renaissance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLeyendecker was pushing boundaries, but he definitely followed gender and racial norms,\u201d Albrecht said. \u201cWe\u2019re saying, \u2018This is how he depicted African Americans, but others depicted them other ways.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n While Leyendecker\u2019s virile figures were his calling card, his work with the Post also solidified holiday imagery we still use today \u2014 flowers on Mother\u2019s Day, fireworks on the Fourth of July, turkey and pie on Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n