Exploring the value of homoerotic art
This post has been contributed by Barry and Gwen from Vallot Auctioneers in Providence, Rhode Island, to whom we extend grateful thanks.
In May 2025 Vallot Auctioneers offered a remarkably well-preserved clamshell volume of a suite of lithographs by the French actor and artist Roland Caillaux. Produced in 1945 in an edition of only 115 copies, the portfolio includes twenty lithographs by Caillaux, accompanying poetry titled Vingt lithographies pour un livre que j’ai lu (Twenty Lithographs for a Book I have Read), written by his friend Jean Genet. The images depict a suite of clandestine meetings and sexual encounters of young men in dingy alleyways and tiny bohemian bedrooms. Carefully rendered homoerotic scenes are followed with images depicting encounters with the law – in a courtroom and multiple prison-like cells.
The print suite, remarkable for its overtly queer imagery for its time period, in many ways speaks to reality of queer people’s lives and art in the mid-twentieth century. Erotic art, and in particular homoerotic art, has historically been relegated to the shadows, to those back alleys and is publicly politicised, criminalised, and treated as taboo. Yet despite this, artists like Caillaux created fully realised, considered, and finely crafted works of art. Caillaux’s prints feature on the honesterotica website, being one of the only online resources to have Caillaux’s erotic work preserved and available for people to discover – you can see the complete portfolio by clicking here. Like honesterotica, Vallot’s aim is to champion these marginalised areas of the art world, and through its regular After Dark auction series Vallot highlights works of art by gay artists, homoerotic fine art, male nudes, and historical queer ephemera.
Vallots sees the value in this overlooked area of the art and collector world, with the goal of the After Dark sales being to emphasise the creativity and validity of queer erotic artwork as worthy of preservation and collection. Michael Dym, head auctioneer at Vallots, has been a proponent of queer art for decades, with a particular focus on homoerotic works that explore the intersections of sexuality, identity, and desire. He cites the pivotal moment when he realised that the emerging market of queer art could see a forthcoming boom as a thriving collector base: ‘It was the sale of a work by J.M.W. Flagg, illustrator of the famed Uncle Sam Wants You poster, featuring himself in drag in our 2004 auction, that really helped highlight the potential of queer art.’
Due to its historically fraught legality and censorship, a significant challenge for historic erotica’s entry into the art market is the base material survival of these works. The early collector base, primarily composed of gay men, was often clandestine, with artworks hidden away for private viewing. These works were often not created for broad public consumption, and in many cases, their long-term preservation meant risking the collector being persecuted or publicly outed. This extends further to depictions of the nude male form in general. While there are doubtless millions of artworks of the nude female form, the nude male form, despite being a mainstay of classical western art in antiquity, in recent centuries has become much more taboo for its perceived inherent homoerotism. For this reason, Vallots also features work by female artists sensually depicting the male form, such as a work by another honesterotica featured artist, the American sex educator Betty Dodson.
Vallots will be holding its next auction, After Dark/Winter on December 11th 2025, streamed live from vallots.com. The catalogue includes giants of male erotic art including Rex, The Hun, Matt (Charles Kerbs), Stephen Hale, Michael Kirwan, Etienne, and many others, including five new-to-the-market paintings by Shozo Nagano. To learn more about Vallots/After Dark auction series, visit the website by clicking here. If you are ever interested in consigning a queer erotic artwork for a forthcoming sale, you can email the team at info@vallots.com.