Beefcake Art
Recently, I have been thinking a lot about masculinity and the imagery associated with manliness.
I have also been thinking about the nude body, and life drawing, and the strange thing that happens when you look at a naked person in an art class setting, and you see the body as an assemblage of shapes, volumes, shade values, colour tones. In an art class setting, the nude body is de-sexualised and de-mystified. In turn, it’s like we are given permission to look unabashedly, to stare even, but that looking and staring is also a kind of consumption, a kind of digestion, before re-presenting on paper or canvas.
What happens when the image created of a naked person has an unclear purpose? What is it about the image, about the way the body is unclothed and shown, that makes the purpose clear or unclear? What role do objects and setting play in creating a narrative in an image of a naked person? When does an image of a naked person read like a nude? When is an image of a naked person shift to being pornographic, not just nude?
I suspect the answers to the above questions mostly come down to how exposed we are as viewers to nudity, the body, pornography, and the relationship we have to shame and pride and our own bodies.
Discovery of Beefcakes
I feel that the images I have in my conscious mind of naked men have mostly come to me through exposure to art, erotic photography, and pornography. As a gay man, my first viewing of a naked man was through online pornography - this was of course viewed in secret, hidden in shame, never spoken about. The naked male body, other than my own, was shrouded in mystery, difficult to come by, and existed mostly in my imagination. In this sense, the image of the naked male body was a crucial component of the walls of my own “closet”, out from which I would emerge in my late teens. The association of male nakedness is still, to me, one I make to secretiveness, and in a certain sense, to a feeling of privacy and secrets.
I first came across beefcake imagery in a collection of art postcards I picked up in a quirky and sexy alternative shop in Lisbon’s backstreets in about the year 2001 or so. The shop has long since closed, but those postcards stuck with me. They were a collection of front covers and centrefold images from a notorious 1950s bodybuilding magazine called “Physique Pictorial”; men glistening in the sun or under bright studio lights, unclothed, smiling, sometimes posing cheesily, sometimes not. I later learnt that this magazine used bodybuilding and classical art figure posing as a cover for homoerotic male images, often to evade charges of obscenity, published during what were deeply frightening times for anyone who was LGBTQ+.
Show Us Your Classical Shot
Beefcake photography is fascinating to me. I look at these photographs and I am caught between this feeling of observing these bodies as an assemblage of forms to be studied, and observing these bodies as objects of desire. The images carefully compose the naked body so nothing is left to the imagination; the lights on the models are usually very bright and multidirectional, with minimal, yet saturated shadows. These are bodies to be looked at, stared at, ogled over - there’s no mystery, no shroud of coyness here. I like to think of all the gay men who were finally able to fully see themselves in these photographs, these images of secret gay defiance and careful, calculated pride.
Often, images of these naked men have the penis as the geometrical centre of the photograph. However, it is rare to see an erect penis. I look at these photographs though, and it feels like they are on the threshold of being pornographic, even though there is no obvious arousal, even though the poses are classical art poses, even though there is no look of desire in the model, fabricated or real. Beefcake imagery is, to me, caught between several opposing meanings: exposure and concealment, pride and shame, sexual energy and chaste passivity.
Eat the Beefcake
I have set out to draw a series of these beefcake models, and have recently completed the first drawing of what I hope will be about six drawings. I thought it would be interesting to use these images with the intention that was assigned to them to prevent them being seen as obscene images: these are art study photographs, right?! The first shot I worked on showed the model on a white fabric-covered box shape, sitting with his legs astride, one arm resting on a raised leg. The pose isn’t exactly relaxed, and looks like it was carefully crafted to resemble a pose an actor playing a farmhand might have on an old-Hollywood film set. The image is sensual and cold at the same time, the model’s skin glistening under the harsh studio lights.
Perhaps my favourite aspect of the photograph, is the model’s expression. He is looking to his right (the viewer’s left), most likely because he was told to, but he has a knowing look, a half-grin, a face that says “I know you are staring”. The look is one of defiance, of pride, of a relaxed kind of joy. I like to think of this image as a precursor to the gay joy that was to follow, and that is still so important to recognise and celebrate today.
Detail of a front cover of an edition of Physique Pictorial, full image available here