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Masculin Masculin at Musée d´Orsay.



Masculin Masculin at Musée d´Orsay, Paris. Foto: Henning Høholt

Masculin / Masculin.

The Nude Man in Art from 1800 to the Present Day.

PARIS: Musée d´Orsay has also this year a “hit” to show for its very large audienece. This time it is the exposition Masculin Masculin.

After having seen nude female pictures and sculptures, which has been rather discriminating to the audience who prefere the masculinity,

Musée d´Orsay has understod that and has made a wonderful extremely large exposition with sculptures, paintings, photos of nude men. The quees to enter the museum was longvery long. Until 12, January 2014.

By Henning Høholt, text and some of the photos.

Text from Musée d’Orsay. Paris.

Of course, we entered the exposition last Sunday, and was very pleasant surprised
.

From the Masculin Masculin exposition at Musée d´Orsay, Paris, until 12. January 2014. Foto: Henning Høholt

The collection presented is extraordinary well choosen, and presented. Until 12 January 2014. Musée d’Orsay. Exposition temporaire:

Masculine / Masculine

While it has been quite natural for the female nude to be regularly exhibited. – As we just have seen by opening of the new Ekebergparken in Oslo,  the male nude has not been accorded the same treatment. It is highly significant that until the show at the Leopold Museum in Vienna in the autumn of 2012, no exhibition had opted to take a fresh approach, over a long historical perspective, to the representation of the male nude. However, male nudity was for a long time, from the 17th to 19th centuries, the basis of traditional Academic art training and a key element in Western creative art.

Therefore when presenting the exhibition Masculin / Masculin, the Musée d’Orsay, drawing on the wealth of its own collections and of other French public collections, aims to take an interpretive, playful, sociological and philosophical approach to exploring all aspects and meanings of the male nude in art.

From the Masculin Masculin exposition at Musée d´Orsay, Paris, until 12. January 2014. Foto: Henning Høholt

Given that the 19th century took its inspiration from 18th century classical art, and that this influence still resonates today, the Musée d’Orsay is extending its traditional historical range in order to draw a continuous arc of creation through two centuries down to the present day, and will include the whole range of techniques: painting, sculpture, graphic arts and, of course, photography, which will have an equal place in the exhibition.

Jacques Louis David:
Academy Drawing of a Man,
said to be Patroclu
© Cherbourg, musée Thomas-Henry

Also the famouse Norwegian painter Edvard Munch is represented in the exposition, here with a painting from Ramme, south of Oslo, where his former atellier house now is being reastaured by Petter Olsen, the one who sold the famouse Scream painting lately. At the Masculin Masculin exposition at Musée d´Orsay, Paris, until 12. January 2014. Foto: Henning Høholt

Why had there never been an exhibition dedicated to the male nude until Nackte Männer at the Leopold Museum in Vienna last year?

In order to answer this question, the exhibition sets out to compare works of different eras and techniques, around great themes that have shaped the image of the male body for over two centuries.

We must distinguish above all between nudity and the nude: a body simply without clothes, that causes embarrassment with its lack of modesty, is different from the radiant vision of a body restructured and idealised by the artist.

Although this distinction can be qualified, it highlights the positive, uninhibited approach to the nude in western art since the Classical Period
.

Modern photographic Art. Presented at the Masculin Masculin exposition at Musée d´Orsay, Paris, until 12. January 2014

e.g. by walking onan oral drug therapy. viagra vs cialis.

. Foto: Henning Høholt

Emile-Edmond Peynot:
The Belvedere Torso©
Beaux-Arts de Paris,
Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / image Beaux-arts de Paris

Today, the nude essentially brings to mind a female body, the legacy of a 19th century that established it as an absolute and as the accepted object of male desire. Prior to this, however, the female body was regarded less favourably than its more structured, more muscular male counterpart. Since the Renaissance, the male nude had been accorded more importance: the man as a universal being became a synonym for Mankind, and his body was established as the ideal human form, as was already the case in Greco-Roman art.

From the Masculine Masculine exposition at Musée d´Orsay, Paris, until 12. January 2014
. Foto: Henning Høholt

Examples of this interpretation abound in the Judeo-Christian cultural heritage: Adam existed before Eve, who was no more than his copy and the origin of sin.
Most artists being male, they found an “ideal me” in the male nude, a magnified, narcissistic reflection of themselves.

And yet, until the middle of the 20th century, the sexual organ was the source of a certain embarrassment, whether shrunken or well hidden beneath strategically placed drapery, thong or scabbard.

The Classic Ideal

Jean-Baptiste Frédéric Desmarais:
The Shepherd Paris© Photo © MBAC

From the Masculine Masculine exposition at Musée d´Orsay, Paris, until 12. January 2014. Foto: Henning Høholt

From the 17th century, training of the highest standard was organised for the most privileged artists.

In sculpture and in history painting, the ultimate aim of this teaching was to master the representation of the male nude: this was central to the creative process, as the preparatory studies had to capture the articulation of the body as closely as possible, whether clothed or not, in the finished composition.

 

Masculin Masculin exposition at Musée d´Orsay, Paris until 12.January 2014. Foto: Henning Høholt

In France, pupils studied at the Académie Royale then at the Académie des Beaux-Arts, working from drawings, engravings, sculptures “in the round” and life models.

Right up until the late 20th century, these models were exclusively male, for reasons of social morality, but also because the man was considered to have the archetypal human form.

In order to be noble and worthy of artistic representation, and to appeal to all, this could not be the body of an ordinary man: the distinctive features of the model had to be tempered in order to elevate the subject.

Above all, the artists of Antiquity and of the Renaissance were considered to have established an ideal synthesis of the human body without being distracted by individual characteristics.

 

 

Masculin Masculin exposition at Musée d´Orsay, Paris until 12.January 2014. Foto: Henning Høholt

For Winckelmann, the German 18th century aesthete, the ideal beauty of Greek statues could only be embodied by the male nude. But although it inspired numerous artists, the “noble simplicity and quiet grandeur” of Winckelmann’s gods was undermined by other interpretations of Classical art: the torment of Laocoon, a work from late Antiquity, can be seen in the work of the Danish painter Abildgaard, while David advocated a much more Roman masculinity

Even when challenged, reinterpreted and renewed by the 20th century avant-garde, the Classical male nude and its rich legacy remains an object of fascination right up to the inter-war years and up to the present day.

SOUVENIRS:

Of course the Museum is following up with a wide range of souvenirs from the exposition Masculin Masculin, Post cards, Catalogue, osters, T-shirts and many other large and small souc\venirs is for sale, and is popular to the world wide audience lining up for the exposition Masculin Masculin.

Tshirt at Masculin Masculin exposition at Musée d´Orsay, Paris until 12.January 2014. Foto: Henning Høholt

 

Bag at Masculin Masculin exposition at Musée d´Orsay, Paris until 12.January 2014
. Foto: Henning Høholt

 

 

 

 

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