THE RISE OF #HOTBOYBADART
A steamy new micro-movement has been plaguing Billy Parker’s Insta algorithm: hot boys making questionable paintings for armies of followers. So what exactly is #thirsttrap art, and is it older than we think?
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I’m a sucker for a curly haired twink. Throw in some exposed abs, call them a painter and that’s me done for, and yes… my Instagram algorithm has too deciphered my sultry little secret. As of late, my Explore page has been inundated with topless boys swivelling canvases under superimposed text declaring: “revealing my art so I can afford fat blunt$” or “*wishing I could look at men with big b00bs all day but then remembering I can paint*”.
The #algo-art #artreveal #thirsttrap boys have sieged my feed like an 18th-century pirate to a merchant ship, pillaging all ‘wholesome’ content and replacing it with questionable paintings and thick, naked thighs. Whilst I wish I could sit here and say “Eugh! This is so annoying! I don’t want to see hot, topless, straight boys painting Cy Twombly rip offs!!!!”, I quickly fell down the rabbit hole, chaotically spam liking all of their posts and crawling out of its firm hypnotic grip at 2am (that wasn’t me, that was Patricia).
Let’s call a spade a spade: we are living through the oppressive revival of the straight white twink. In a recent article for GQ, Raymond Ang established the “chaotic (demon) twink” as the “archetype of the moment”, with actors like Mark Eydelshteyn (Anora), Drew Starkey (Queer), Harris Dickinson (Babygirl) and Timmy Chalamet (A Complete Unknown) dominating our screens, magazines and feeds, ready to jump-scare-thirst-trap-queer-bait the girls, the gays and the repressed straights at any given opportunity.
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The #algo-art #artreveal #thirsttrap reels are a small branch of a much larger tree. ‘Gimmick Art’ has been plaguing our timelines for years, and has already sunk its nasty claws into the skin of the ‘real’ world art world (if you can call things that happen in reality real anymore). The Internet archetype can range from Banksy’s self-shredding painting, Damien Hirst slapping Key Stage 2 leaf stamps onto canvas’, artists setting their own paintings on fire, performing circus tricks, using tattoo guns, dressing as cowboy strippers, vacuum sealed bondage sacks, topless yoga, to an artist running on a treadmill in front of giant rotating blades caught somewhere between the Saw movies and David Copperfield illusions. These artists will use any device to chain you to their page, increase their likes and engagement, and thus accelerate their influencer status. In that sense, ‘Gimmick Art’ could be defined by its prioritisation of click bait content over ‘authentic’ artistic endeavour.
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The social media phenomenon is dissected in detail (itself through Instagram reels) by artist and critic Justin Bua. Through specific case studies, he reports from an ivory tower, praising what he believes to be raw artistry and condemning gimmicks. He, much like the #algo-art boys and #gimmickartists, has found ascension through utilising his own criticism and personality as a brand and seems only a few wrong/(right) clicks away from the becoming the manifest of his own condemnation. Bua is proof of the unstoppable and inescapable meta-cannibalism that social media incites. As Carl Jung once said, “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves”.
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As we collectively descend further into the depths of Internet culture, we are all left desperately grappling for any form of real, intimate, human connection. The paintings offered by the #algo-art #artreveal #thirsttrap boys are not necessarily of formal interest: much like a long distance relationship ‘shock collar’, heartbeat bracelet, or remote controlled vibrator, they offer an entrapment of their own eroticism and physical presence. They have utilised the thirst trap to create a form of fandom, enabling them to sell eye-wateringly questionable paintings for eye-wateringly high prices. By presenting themselves as untouchable and unattainable, they sell an opportunity for their followers to own a part of them. As Whitney Houston proudly declared when she opened for Luther Vandross in 1985, “If you give me some of you, I’ll give you all of me”, and these boys are really giving us (almost) all of them. You’re buying a physical manifestation of the adoration of the idol: the chance to own a sexually charged part of someone else, even if it is a dry humped Basquiat rip-off.
This ideology is nothing new and the erotic male form has been used over centuries to gain commercial and cultural capital. Caravaggio immortalised the queer-presenting-boy-youth and, although undoubtedly one of the best technical painters of all time, the mystical longevity of his work lies in his painting’s repressed, encoded (homo)erotism. Notoriously rumoured to be gay, his body of work is peppered with young, sexually ambiguous and promiscuous boys, enticing the viewer in, whilst simultaneously pushing them away: an open doorway to an impenetrable maze. Caravaggio's works can be argued as early thirst traps, an idea expanded in Leo Bersani and Ulysse Dutoit’s 1998 article Caravaggio’s Secrets for The MIT Press:
The poses and the looks in these paintings have generally been recognised as erotically provocative, an accurate enough description if we mean by that a body in which we read an intention to stimulate our desire, not only to contemplate the body but to approach it, to touch it, to enter into or to imagine some form of intimate physical contact with it […] given all this, it seems plausible to say that Caravaggio has painted a series of sexual come-ons.
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The male, queer ‘sexual come-on’ is prevalent throughout art history, found at its height within the innumerable representations of the now gay icon Saint Sebastian. If we take Guido Reni’s Saint Sebastian (1620-39) and Giovanni Battista Caracciolo’s The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian (c. 1625), both painted in the wake of Caravaggio, it is clear that 17th-century painters recognised the allure of cum gutters – the arrows of desire – and were utilising male eroticism to drive intrigue in their work. This has been perpetually reimagined, from Peter Berlin’s erotic commodification of himself, to Elvis Presley causing fans of all genders to wet themselves, orgasm and faint at the thrust of a hip, to Harris Dickinson peacocking his sexuality throughout his own horny body of work. I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel here: sex sells.
Through subtle and technical artistry, these historic depictions of the erotic man anchor experiences of sexual freedom, repression and desire. My issue with the #algo-art #artreveal #thirsttrap Insta boys is their disregard for the artistic discipline of the thirst trap itself. In their work (reels), the presentation of the male form seems to have performed a mitosis: the total visual object has divided in two parts: the vapid object of the painting (as prop) and the unsubstantiated male form (#hotboybadart).
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Out of all the #algo-art #artreveal #thirsttrap boys, @_codygene is perhaps our steamiest. The painter’s page is a party of flesh, an amalgamation of deep chiselled abs and paintings of his self-created fictional muse, Hero. Hero is an ever-changing otherworldly presence, a fear-inducing human-rabbit hybrid presented as having the body of a greek god and a floppy rabbit head. As Cody explains on his website, “When humans see Hero’s naked body, his smiling bunny face, they aren’t quite sure what to do with him. Is he an alien? A superhero? An angel? (Hero, of course, prefers the term ‘friend’).” His content delves into his process and is frequently found squeezing paint tubes by his scantily clad crotch or squatting to pick up materials in nothing but pink tightie-whities. Sadly, his work entitled IT’S NOT TOO LATE TO SAVE THIS EARTH has already sold for $1,200, but, you’re in luck as his most recent work HERO DEFENDS THE EARTH! is available for the same price (or in four interest-free payments of $300 with Afterpay).
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@laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaars, (AKA Lars Stenchly) whilst often wearing more clothes than some, poses topless next to his technologically-blurred paintings and large surrealist cyborg landscapes framed in gauche historic gold frames. His website features a single painting for sale, Crossroads, which as described by the artist, “explores a pivotal moment in humanity’s history: the point where we must decide the direction of our technological development. It is a visual reflection on the tension between the utopian potential and dystopian risks posed by emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI)”. The painting (and the essence of the artist’s bare nipples) could be yours for a mere £12,245.
@augusta_alexander’s content combines large-scale flaccid, abstract landscapes frequently accompanied by the bare soles of his feet. Our biggest gyration criminal, he can often be found dry humping his unstretched canvases on the floor and rolling around barely clothed. Although no works are for sale on his website, I was able to find a series of works listed on Artsy, including The Smoker (2023) priced at a respectable €10,000.
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Whilst some critics might declare these works ‘low art’ and bar their entry to the contemporary canon, art, like sexuality, is a spectrum. It can’t be defined simply as high or low. These boys are carving out their own market, independent from that of contemporary art. When bolstered by the artists’ naked bodies, the paintings seem to amass a new currency. This comes at a time when emerging painters in the ‘traditional’ market are increasingly putting themselves front and centre of their own ‘brand’ to be seen and sold. In an era where it’s almost impossible to be a full time artist without the help of mummy and daddy’s bank account, why should anyone condemn these works when they have proven market value? Why is it such a faux pas for artists to publicly flog their works? I wonder whether there’s something we can all learn from the #algo-art #artreveal #thirsttrap boys. I am reminded of The Apprentice season one episode five, where candidates were required to flog professional artists’ works in Cork Street galleries as though they were apples and pears down the market.
Instagram reels were only invented in 2020, and TikTok only became popular in the UK a year before. Though I fear these social platforms are destroying the ‘purity’ of painting forever, perhaps this is evidence of the democratisation of the elitist art market I have so desperately longed for. Maybe it’s time we all get naked and join the Insta boys, dry humping our canvases into the hands of collectors. Has this new-age-chronically-online-internet-era murdered art forever or can grass grow from the concrete? Only the future will tell. Vive la révolution!
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PLASTER MAGAZINE
March 2025
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