Barnes workshop on “Sexuality and the modern male body”

When it comes to art depicting the male body, art historian Ty Vanover asks, “Who knows what meaning viewers can read into these works?” Vanover will attempt to answer that question in an online course hosted by the Barnes Foundation this month. As part of Pride Month, the Barnes Foundation will host a full-day online workshop titled “Sexuality and the Modern Male Body.”

According to Barnes’ press material describing the workshop, “The 19th century saw fundamental shifts in concepts of masculinity and male sexuality in European society. This one-day online workshop will explore how these changes were reflected in the art of the period and into the 20th century. Drawing on queer, feminist and postcolonial theories, we will explore the art academies of neoclassical Paris, the studios of Victorian London and the streets of Weimar Berlin to explore what artistic representations of the male body can tell us about sexuality in modern Europe.”

The workshop will be led by Vanover, a doctoral student at the University of California, Berkeley. Vanover specializes in Central European art and visual culture of the 19th and early 20th centuries. His research focuses on drawing and graphics in the context of German sexology between 1869 and 1933.

Human nudity in art, particularly of the male body, has generated a complicated and often problematic discourse in recent centuries, much more so than that of the female nude. While the classical Greeks and Romans venerated and idealized the male body, in the Christian era the Church typically strongly opposed any depiction that might provoke a sensual response (Michelangelo, for example, was both praised and denigrated for his male nudes). After the Renaissance, female nudity in art was much more common, and was usually seen as non-threatening, an ideal of beauty. The male body, however, was perceived as threatening, aggressive, and disturbing.

Vanover will examine how the perception of the male body in art has undergone a dramatic evolution.

“The male form was seen as having one of two purposes,” Vanover said. “One was desirable, the other less so. One was a political/propaganda purpose and a moral/sensual purpose. The former began to gain traction during the French Revolution, when tall, strong men were portrayed as heroes of the revolution. This portrayal of strong, admirable, heroic men to be emulated was also common in the propaganda art of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.”

There were also artists during this period who depicted less political and more moral/sensual themes. These depictions, while still showing morally upright figures, could also elicit a sensual response—if you knew what to look for. A notable figure in this vein was the late 19th-century English artist Frederic Layton (who was “probably gay,” says Vanover, “but we don’t know for sure”), one of several possibly—or openly—gay artists who flourished during this period.

“Sexuality and the modern male body” will take place online on June 20th from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Further information and the opportunity to register can be found at barnesfoundation.org.