Delightfully direct and dirty

The best of BUTT magazine, 2001-now

Pocket-sized, pink and super gay, the first issue of BUTT magazine arrived in the spring of 2001, sweeping aside the clichés of the mainstream homo press. Ever since, BUTT has maintained its independence, resisting clean-cut commercialism in favor of frank Q&As, revealing photography and a delightfully direct take on sex between men. Just by being its horny, happy self, BUTT has attracted contributions from the world’s best writers and photographers. Meanwhile, frequent BUTT parties and the CLUB BUTT social network have mobilized an international army of loyal friends and fans in sexy solidarity.

This meaty anthology, FOREVER BUTT, revisits some of the magazine’s finest and most thrilling moments from more than a decade in print. Material from now rare and collectible editions of BUTT is here made available again here, including sexy pictures, and candid interviews with such spectacular men as Gore Vidal, François Sagat, Marc Jacobs and Your Big Dick Host. In true BUTT style, the book not only celebrates sex as something joyous, social and silly while but is also, as artist Wolfgang Tillmans writes in his introduction, “first and foremost an exhilarating read”.

With sexy pictures of, and candid interviews with: AA Bronson, Aiden Shaw, Andy Butler, Bernhard Willhelm, Bruce LaBruce, Christopher Ciccone, Dennis Cooper, Didier Lestrade, Don Bachardy, Ed Droste, Edmund White, Francesco Vezzoli, François Sagat, Gore Vidal, Jason Whipple, Javier Peres, Jayne County, Joe Gage, John Holland, John Waters, Jonny Wooster, Julian Ganio, Karl Kolbitz, Marc Jacobs, Marco Flores, Nico Muhly, Paul Antonio, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Perez Hilton, Greek Pete, Rick Owens, Roger Payne, Rosa von Praunheim, Ryan Trecartin, Slava Mogutin, Stephen Galloway, Stephin Merritt, Tommy DeLuca, Ian & Marc Hundley, Vince Aletti, Walter Pfeiffer and Wolfgang Tillmans.

The Dutchmen Jop van Bennekom and Gert Jonkers are the editors, publishers, entrepreneurs and all-around media obsessives who’ve been at the helm of their inimitable publishing house for more than a decade. Both born forty-something years ago in the underpopulated Dutch province of Gelderland, they only met in the late ’90s, while working on a monthly magazine in Amsterdam. They founded BUTT in 2001 after a boozy work appointment in that city’s illustrious Spijker bar. By putting the sex back into homosexuality, BUTT shook up the world of gay publishing. Its popularity was sealed in 2006, when a digest of the first five years of the magazine, BUTT BOOK, was published by TASCHEN and became an absolute bestseller.

Jop and Gert broadened their focus to include dressing up as well as stripping off with their launch of ‘Men’s Style Journal’ FANTASTIC MAN in 2005. Defined by rare wit and a refusal to address its readers as mere consumers, FANTASTIC MAN has categorically turned the tide in fashion publishing with its fastidious long-form interviews, style anthropology and stark art direction. A sister publication, THE GENTLEWOMAN, was born in London in 2010, again to great critical acclaim.

Jop and Gert divide their time between their offices in Amsterdam and London.