The Masculinity Muscle In Art
Does It Still Need Training Today?
“I got gas in the tank / I got money in the bank / I got news for you, baby / you’re looking at the man,” Brandon Flowers sings in the 2017 The Killers’ single “The Man”. The light, ironic song is accompanied by a rather hilarious music video, where Flowers, a slim, elegant indie rock vocalist known for his love of black eyeliner, parodies aggressive, superficial manliness. In 2022, as we are more and more exposed to variations of masculinity, thanks to art, entertainment and pop culture at large, the joke carries on still.
Despite the recent satire around the concept of ‘toxic masculinity’, it seems as if art has traditionally been kinder to men than women when it came to gender stigma. Though both male and female anatomy – the prime subject of study in classical art - are celebrated by the old masters, the tonality differs. Catherine McCormack, the author of “Women In The Picture”, notes:
“The male nude body in art, from its very beginnings in ancient Greece, was about heroism, strength and even intellect”. <…> Sculptures of nude male bodies represented aspirational intellectual and political ideas for the ancient Greeks. Nudity was not considered to be a state of undress or vulnerability, but rather it represented a form of heroic external dress, with muscle depicted to resemble armour.”
Naked men = heroic and intelligent, got it. On the other hand, female naked body is reduced to the beauty of it and to the derivatives of its beauty and lacks a more sophisticated association queue being connected to it. It seems that for the Greeks, a woman that possesses added value is doomed to be clothed: while Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty, is always pictured naked and almost lustful, Athena (wisdom) and Artemis (virginity) are consistently imagined dressed.
Is the Greek notion of what masculinity represents still relevant to this day? The short answer is yes. Though we are rather smitten by the ‘soft boy’ aura of Harry Styles and Timothée Chalamet, when we hear the word ‘masculine’, we are, however, tempted to entertain a very particular image in our mind - but what is the definition of masculinity? Merriam-Webster dictionary describes it as “the quality of nature of the male sex: the quality, state or degree of being masculine or manly”. Interestingly (and similar to other definitions available), while this interpretation tells us nothing about the particular traits of ‘manliness’, it nevertheless weighs on the aspect of perception and implies an existence of a masculinity spectrum – hence, ‘degree’. In other words, it does leave a lot of freedom of interpretation, but by whom? Who decides what is manly? And which criteria allows for the movement across said spectrum?
From ancient Greece to nowadays, if we follow the depiction of manliness that we are accustomed to, a masculine man is tall, big, strong, dominant, even violent. He is powerful - while a woman is, at best, empowered (derived from a passive verb). The power is given to women, while men – in case they are not somehow inherent to power – take it themselves, which is the motif of one too many works of art. But if power can be taken by brutal force, then it can be taken away from the man, thus leaving him ‘emasculated’.
In Joe Houston’s Ruins (2021) – a series of small-scaled canvases - emasculation becomes literal in the form of genitalia mutilation. Houston’s seventeen photorealistic oil paintings revolve around a singular concept – a closer look at the disfigured penises of classic Greco-Roman sculptures. Historical note: ancient statues often suffered in the crotch area as a result of what is believed to had been early Christian awakening that opposed an erotic portrayal of men. In this way, not just masculinity as a whole but male sexuality as an integral part of it – has limitations on how – and how explicitly – it can be demonstrated. Restricting what is acceptable for men is paradoxically part of the masculinity cult. We live in… you’ve guessed it, a society, alas – a patriarchal one, and rigid gender roles are not exclusively a women’s struggle. If we utilize the lens of art, this contradiction becomes particularly evident. It would seem that throughout history, phallus, precisely an erect one, is a recognizable token that symbolizes power and vitality, just think of ancient obelisks and steles.
Houston refers to classical sculpture for a reason – the Greek mythology it is indeed where our perception of masculinity originates from, but a different angle can be traced in the Renaissance period. Enter: Michelangelo Buonarotti’s David, quite possibly the most well-known male statue in the history of art. David is the standard of masculine beauty and, interestingly, is often ridiculed for not being well-endowed enough for such a fine specimen. Michelangelo’s David is portrayed as a young, in-bloom man rather than a teenage boy other old masters painted him as, and much more muscular – but also, somewhat vulnerable. The fear of witnessing Goliath who is not even depicted, the tension depicted in David’s facial features and his posture commands compassion for a very understandable feeling, yet David stands at over 5 meters tall – taller than Goliath could ever be, signalling larger-than-life mission and bravery.
Back to our days. Now that men are far from being the sole actors of culture and given that it’s been all about them thousands and thousands of years, are we still interested in exploring masculinity in this day and age? Are we not fatigued? It seems there is still room left for discussion.
In 2021, photographer Paul McDonald released a photo essay titled Study of Self, for which he shot his nude male friends in vulnerable, even provocative poses that are nonetheless filled with a sense of comfort, tenderness and acceptance. In fashion photography - Brad Pitt’s 2017 photoshoot for GQ magazine, in which the famed actor opens up about his alcoholism and divorce from Angelina Jolie. Photographer Ryan McGinley depicts Pitt as fragile, exhausted man – in one particular frame the actor is even captured crying in what is a very honest and rare depiction of a man in his fifties going through a complicated divorce. A #WhatMakesAMan campaign run by Ermenegildo Zegna and featuring Mahershala Ali – a black Muslim man who starred in 2017 Oscar-winning ‘Moonlight’ – a drama centered on life as a closeted gay man in African American community. A statement released by Zegna claims: “Masculinity is a state of mind, not a set of given rules. One thing does not make a man. Men have been learning that love is strength, kindness is power, openness is freedom”. The values Zegna attributes to masculinity in their press release – “courtesy, humility, courage, patience, vulnerability, wisdom, eccentricity” - are universal human values, but most would attribute them to the feminine, as was shown by the dismay the campaign received from a number of conservative customers.
The topic of masculinity is overall a tricky one and revolves around many paradoxes and even double standards, sometimes favoring traditional manliness and sometimes not. We are so overwhelmed by men that, even though they seem to take up most of the space in cultural narratives, we dismiss their quest for self-discovery and self-acceptance as not worthy of our attention at best and frustrating at worst. It is rare to observe something so predominant in our society that does not appear to resonate with the art world on a bigger scale and seems to mostly exist in the grey area between art, psychology and pop culture. Was it Oscar Wilde who first said: “Life imitates art”? If that is true, maybe we could one day learn to overcome our uneasiness with Houston’s zoom-ins on damaged genitalia as a symbol of emasculation and start seeing the violence inherent in the traditional perception of masculinity as a true act of castration - of the gender-obsolete human soul. God knows we need it now.
