tlavideo.com

Grady Harp wrote on 04/10/2011:

Only in men’s imagination does every truth find an effective and undeniable existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as life. Joseph Conrad, 1912

Nineteenth Century French writer and draughtsman Victor Hugo said ‘An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.’ And perhaps after perusing the dramatically beautiful imagery of the male nude represented in the works of the many contemporary artists in this volume, POWERFULLY BEAUTIFUL, the long standing discussion of the place of the male nude in art today and indeed throughout history may have just found Hugo’s words a conclusion! The male figure’s time has come. Or returned!
Though the history of art has always portrayed the presence of man – as guardian/warrior in the early cave drawings, as the architectural ideal in ancient Greece, as tuniced statesman in Roman temples, as defender of land and wealth in the Middle Ages et cetera – the progress of the painted and sculpted male has been a challenging lesson in representation. Perhaps the greatest period of depiction of the male was in the hands of Greek sculptures, anatomically correct, virile, and idealized athletic tropes that were to remain the matrix for the sedate Romans whose aging heads were affixed to cautiously draped Grecian ideals.
But as the Roman Empire fell and the influence of Christianity flourished the return to the Edenic expulsion of the ashamed Adam and Eve not only found frequent presence in the paintings of the Middle Ages, but also intimidated the depiction of males as beings cloaked in costume to provide visual expression of the written word of the Bible. Men were clearly under the influence of an all-powerful judge whose supposed idea it was to keep the fig leaf in all its permutations ever present. Even as late as 1450 depictions of man were more in keeping with the sexually ambiguous form of young youths as in Donatello’s bronze David [insert image of Donatello’s David].
Enter the Renaissance and the glories of enlightenment as artists such as Michelangelo celebrated the beauty of the male form unfettered by concealment of the robust power of man: ‘The marble not yet carved can hold the form of every thought the greatest artist has.’ His famously brilliant sculpture of David, Michelangelo’s response to a commission for a large-scale public monument, proved to be virile, muscular, passionate giant of a man, a figure of mature pride and potency. [insert Michelangelo’s David] For subsequent years the body beautiful, reflections of Michelangelo’s bold and courageous figure, graced the palaces and courtyards and public places, heralding the magnificence of man. The art of Michelangelo, Titian, Raphael, and da Vinci remains a pinnacle, imitated or referenced by the Baroque Rembrandt, the fantasies of the Rococo Boucher and Watteau that feminized the male figure in pledges of restraint, and finally returning to the humanity and vulnerability of man with the Neoclassicism works of Jacques- Louie David and Fragonard, making way for the revolutionary Romanticism era.
As kingdoms and class disparities altered, so did the artists’ vision and painting of man as struggling for the order of existence. One artist - Goya - turned from the elegance of the wealthy class to the horrors facing the peasant and soldier and the image of man grew more vulnerable to the rhythm of the times. But the duplicity of the Victorian era shrouded the ‘indecent’ male nude figure with false prejudicial values. It took the renegades of the late 19th Century to dare to depict man as a glorious creation of nature, much like the tentative removal of that ubiquitous fig leaf. The strange world of the Pre-Raphaelites yielded to the Impressionism and Post-Impressionism of man as both a creature of fantasy and dreams that became more and more sensuous and less fearful of the body image.
The Great Wars of the 20th century divided artists’ attention from depicting man as the struggling hero to man as victim of the disintegrating fission of the atom and Abstraction was born. The wars altered the world in many ways. Some of the key changes in the arts came with the rise of Feminism: Rosie the Riveter discovered the ‘secondary role of female’ was a myth crying to be dispelled. The female form could be viewed without the beautifying accoutrements of the feminine Ideal. With the resistance at Stonewall in the 1960s men reclaimed their status as complete beings, no longer hidden by the at times self imposed cages of gatherings in the dark, but by making public statements in the form of art. As Sir Francis Bacon noted ‘There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in proportion’, and indeed the rise of the feminine status was joined with a now fresh freedom of being male. And the rise of photography as an art form aided the representation of both female and male, stepping out of the early placement in magazines into the galleries and museums, allowing the public at large to decide for themselves the values of human beauty.
There are many brilliant figurative artists from both the 20th and the 21st century who now, free from the constraints of prejudice no matter the source, are presenting to the public the beauty of the male figure. It is as though the times are once again reflecting the Greek ideal. And while there may seem to be a schism in the audience for depicting the male as sex object (not unlike the long history of using the female in that role) versus simply presenting the masculine form as an object worthy of acclaim, the collection of paintings in this survey adamantly provides evidence that these works are the Hugo ‘idea whose time has come.’
Some of the artists represented in this volume directly reference and compare the contemporary male with the ideals of the past: Gerard Huber’s Classical Figure 10 [insert Huber Classical Figure 10] certainly suggests that as does the praise of the solitary athlete of Wade Reynolds [insert Reynolds’ Racquetball Player] or the contained elegance of the E. Gibbons’ ‘Just Breathe’ [insert E. Gibbons’ Just Breathe]. Addressing painting periods of the past as backdrops for celebrating the contemporary male are evident in the José Parra ‘View of the Tower’ [insert Parra’s View of the Tower] and Wes Hempel’s ‘Fatherhood’ [insert Hempel’s Fatherhood]. The sensitive curatorial eye of E. Gibbons has gathered artists whose approaches to the male nude vary in technique from classical to surreal, abstract to photorealism, illustration to near religious or mythological iconography. These artists may be a disparate group from around the world, some addressing the sensual aspect of their subjects, others electing to open windows for metaphors and philosophical statements. But they are seamlessly connected in their desire and ability to reinstate the male figure in all his glory in the art of today.
Each of the fine artists here assembled encourage us to rethink the image of man, not as imitations of past realities or conceptions, but simply as the full spectrum of Man, and it is most appropriate that these paintings are presenting man as POWERFULLY BEAUTIFUL.

When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other. Eric Hoffer