Men Nude

"Mr. Big", installation of Ilze Hyder at the entrance to the exhibition

Under a fig leaf. In the Vienna Leopold Museum, one of the most unexpected exhibitions of this season was opened - Nude Men, dedicated to the history of a naked male body. The New Times considered exhibits

While the image of a female naked body has even its own genre - nude, male nudity embarrasses the audience even when the men's intimate places are covered with a fig leaf. Why? In comprehensively, this issue took up this issue in the homeland of the father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud - his museum is in just a few stops from the Leopold Museum building.
Moral censorship

Tightening the judge of Snofruner. Egypt, V dynasty, 2400 BC. e.

For centuries, images of naked male nature in painting and sculpture were filled with a variety of meanings - from the search for the ideal of beauty in antiquity to the turning of a male body into an object of lust in the twentieth century. If erotica has always been present in naked female nature in Western art, then the image of the male body has long remained a pure function - for example, numerous images of St. Sebastian pierced by arrows. But already in the XVI century, the priests of the temple in Florence shot the picture of Fra Bartolomeo with the image of St. Sebastian, after several parishioners admitted to confess that they began to visit fantasies with the participation of this saint. Pope Paul IV then compiled a whole list of works of art that was supposed to be edited - this was concerned with the frescoes, painting, and sculptures, including the works of Raphael, Titian, Michelangelo. Many fig sheets were later impossible to remove, and the disfigured painting of the Sistine Chapel was restored during restoration only in 1980. On the threshold of the 20th century, the leadership of the London Museum also attached a fig leaf to the copy of the David Michelangelo - the classical sculpture confused the Korolev Victoria museum.
Naked and beautiful
Thinking this project, Leopold Museum partially took advantage of the work from his own meeting, but also attracted the works almost from Europe - Dürer, Rubens, Cezanne, Roden, Klimt, Munch, Jacquetti ... The exposition begins with ancient sculptures, including the status of the Egyptian Snofrunepher (2400 BC). There is no eroticism in them - these are symbols of beauty, masculinity, will. Usually a naked male figure was placed by artists in a religious or heroic context. The exhibition shows the picture of Joseph Dezire the map of “Death of Hippolytus” (1825) with the image of the deceased hero, and at the work of William Adolf Bugro “Equality before death” (1848), a naked strong body is covered by the figure of an angel. But already in the twentieth century, artists rejected these conventions. The hobby for naturism in Europe, immersion in psychoanalysis led to the fact that the sexual context began to be clearly traced in everything. The famous German photographer Baron von Gleden, who lived in Sicily, created a huge collection of photographs of naked young Italian peasants, putting scenes from them that simulate their lives in ancient paradise arcadium: Favna, satires, boys in wreaths from grape leaves. Some of the pictures are presented in Vienna. "

With the crisis of sexuality, a naked male body in the 21st century becomes not only an object of lust, but also admiring

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Wilhelm von Galed. "Concert for the flute", 1905
The artists of the beginning of the century ceased to portray modern men as heroes of antiquity (however, later this topic was reflected in the works of the beloved sculptor Hitler Arno Breker: Nazism again needed to heroize the body).

Andy Warhol. Poster to the film "Kerel", 1982

Austrian expressionism gave painting what she was so lacking: she became psychological, naked figures were filled with the experiences and emotions of artists. The largest Austrian artist Egon Shile (1890–1918) sang the first of the painters to portray himself naked. Before dying from the Spanish epidemic at the age of 28, he created many of his naked self -portraits, whose fence and drama are alien to the stereotypes of “heroism”. The naked self -portrait after the act (1908) of another Austrian genius Richard Herstl depicts thoughtfully looking at his spectators. He was finished shortly before the suicide of the artist - he was in love with his friend’s wife, who first went to him, but then, tormented by a duty, returned to her husband. On November 4, 1908, Gerstl went to his workshop, burned his papers, documents and paintings, after which he hanged himself opposite the large mirror, having previously chopped himself with a kitchen knife a couple of times. He was 25 years old.
Throughout the whole century, the goal of the image of naked male nature has changed. From the detached fixation of the body to almost a pornographic context. Freud opened sexuality began to dominate contemporary art over time. The frank works of Andy Warhol, Robert Mapplotorp, Keit Harring determined the current state of this direction. The Vienna Museum wanted to breathe in this subject an exalted note, proving that with the crisis of sexuality, a naked male body in the 21st century becomes not only an object of lust, but also admiring - that is why the enormous work of the Austrian photographer Ilze Hader was established before entering the museum. You can verify this in Vienna until January 28, 2013.