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Tel Aviv-- "These paintings depict gay male couples in intimate situations of daily life, such as in the kitchen, in the bath, and in the toilets." So declared an invitation too-good-to-pass-up from www.gaypaintings.com to look at the work of Israeli artist Raphael Perez. The Louvre has many nice pictures, thank you very much. But where are the great paintings of, say, men pissing? One is in Perez's oeuvre.

Does the palette of the toilet bowl, with its cheery yellows and chocolatey browns, find expression in Perez's work? Not so much. "Two primary styles dominate the paintings," according to Gaypainting's curator: "a realistic style in which red is the dominant color and naive style, which has been influenced by my experience working with children." Other works tackle "more political and assertive themes such as a gay version of the Garden of Eden, gay parades, and gay couples raising a baby, gay families, male birth-giving, and other subjects."

Perez's pictures are charming and droll, often rising above their overt styles and subject-matters to succeed in the realm of the purely painterly.

Or, as declares Perez's webmaster (perhaps the artist's alter ego?), "The paintings put to test the boundaries between eroticism and art, while characterizing homosexual relationships and love as they are expressed in everyday life."