Introduction
In every epoch there were different representations of men as symbols of masculinity. Various activities, professions and images replaced each other in different times and different places. One particular activity that almost did not change with time is sport. The word almost, here stands as an approximation, where sports of men accordingly had changed, along with the image of the sportsmen themselves. Various forms of arts such as sculpture, paintings and photography have always tried to correspond to the image of men and manhood.
With the entrance of media these images has shifted in certain way where sportsmen and men in general became a mere visual, although an attracting one, it distanced itself from the real sport and pure masculinity.
In the exhibition titled “Hard Targets—Masculinity and Sport” demonstrated in Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the presented works attempted to revise the stereotype of the men athletes. This paper analyzes the ideas presented in the exhibition in general, and the live performance presentation titled “Bull in the Ring” by Shaun Leonardo presented at the exhibition in particular.
The essay reviews the underlying reason of such work in the context of the idea of male identity through history, stating that male identity becomes vague with time and with such demonstration at the exhibition a desire is expressed to revise its initial form.
Masculinity and Art
Athletics and powerful sports have always been men’s interests, where graphical arts, starting from ancient times, propagandized them no less than military deeds. Physical exercises and sport competitions allowed the artists to uncover the potential and the beauty of the male body.
The overwhelming majority of ancient Greeks’ male images were athletes. In the paintings of the nineteenth century, sport scene, were often used mainly to demonstrate beautiful half-naked body, where also the images of athletes, archers and wrestlers, were extremely popular with sculptors at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century.
The athletic masculine body as with the sport, started to occupy a noticeable place in the mass culture. The transformation of the sport and the physical culture into a public spectacle, which expanded the possibilities in demonstrating masculine images, affected the image of men implementing the ideology of “muscular masculinity”.
The changes in body ideology resulted in subsequent changes in masculine behavior. Modern men started to take care of their appearance and clothes as much as the women, spending more money and time caring of their body, make up, and etc. A gradual form of blurring the gender stereotypes has occurred, where despite the emphasis of physical activities many of the male distinct characteristics started to disappear.
Sports
A shift occurred at the end of the nineteenth century, the attention of artists was drawn toward the popular and somewhat aesthetically not pleasing sport – boxing. Many artists devoted many of their works to the scenes of desperate boxing fights, where the interest was not as much on the bodies of the boxers, but rather on the tension of the brawls, which was reinforced with the presence of the public.
The presence of the public allowed focusing not only on the bodies of the boxers, but on the gaze on which by which he is directed and in some way creates him. These representations could be paralleled with ancient Rome, where the boxers are gladiators and Caesar is the public.
The interest in boxing as sports and as an inspiration for artistic representation, is mentioned in “George Bellow’s Stag at Sharkey’s: Boxing, Violence, and Male identity” by Robert Haywood, where these representations were far from being close to current image of men and masculinity.
When describing a painting Bellows created from memory of a bout in The Sharkey athletic club, it could be understood the intensity of testosterone from both the public and the boxers and the kind of emotions that are only inherent to men. “Wrapped around the ring’s corner pole are two shouting men who, enthralled by the match, emerge out of the background toward the spotlight ring as if to propel the fighters. The two fighters swell above the boxing ring and crush into each other with excruciating force. The strength of the boxers locking head to head is so insistent that the hefty referee’s efforts to break their clinch seem futile.”
When the author analyzes the motives of such sport, the motives behind it, and the huge interest of male public, he admits that this sport was viewed as combat of barbarians.
The same interest in physical body development that captured the public later in the twentieth century, back then in masculine sports was in “giving the well-developed body a function”. This sport was similar in the representation of brutal masculinity to the fights of gladiators, where similarly the both events represented a sense of eroticism and demonstration of male potency.
The sport allowed discharging of the violence the obsession with which engaged the symbol of the supreme, potent male. In Haywood article the representation of such manly sport was a pure demonstration of masculinity, “boxing provided many men with a forum for understanding and reinforcing a conception of masculinity that was constructed out of conflicting method sand desires”. If relating to the exhibition’s theme in this paper something is missed in modern men.
Shaun Leonardo
Following the same ideology presented in the aforementioned article, Shaun Leonardo does not make a secret of his motives in his artistic works. In his artistic statement on his website Shaun admits that the images of hyper masculine heroes from his childhood as quoted developed “the ongoing tensions between my desires to represent male virility and the vulnerabilities within my identity”.
Shaun works has always been a discussion of issues of masculinity. Having a BA in painting from Bowdon College and MFA in painting from San Francisco Art institute he is famous for his staged performances that implements demonstration of manhood such as the wrestling play called “The Vulnerable vs. The Invincible”.
“He has exhibited work at the RUSH Arts Gallery in New York City, the LAB in San Francisco, the Ice House Cultural Center in Dallas, and the Diego Rivera Gallery at the San Francisco Art Institute.”
In his recent work presented in Los Angeles County Museum of Art as a part of “Hard Targets—Masculinity and Sport”, Shaun visual depiction is very simple at first glance. The show starts as a circle of professional football players surround Shaun in circle, going in rounds around him while he turns himself in visible tension. Each of the players in random order charged Shaun unexpectedly.
After each hit, Shaun rose from the ground, those maneuvers continued again, and again. It could be seen that while the actions were expected, the order in which they occurred was improvised and the hits were really hurting Shaun, a fact that did not stop him from repeating this procedure until all of the players made their “hit”.
As the presentation ended viewers applaud while staying in a state of trance, with a written question on their face, about the logic behind this show.
Ina review on The Washington Post “Art and Sports, Meeting on a Level Playing Field” by Jessica Dawson, the author described it as a setup that “mimics a training routine in which one player is attacked from all sides as if he were a matador surrounded by bulls. Meant to sharpen the player’s peripheral awareness, the scrimmage is aggressive, masculine and ritualistic.”
In another review of the exhibition posted on DailyServing.com, Leonardo’s motives were explained as highlighting the sport as “a kind of spectacle of hyper-masculinity” and an examination of “his own tenuous and complicated relationship to his own gender identity”.
Analysis
The works of Leonard, as witnessed by the audience reaction, is more related to the subject addressed to the occurrence of boxing. Although, the football is a popular and a familiar game, the show should be considered neither as a training routine, nor as a setup mimicking a training routine.
The show is more of a demonstration of a desire of a place where the men can demonstrate the masculinity, their built aggressiveness and the accumulated violence. The audience had definitely witnessed similar situations in football, where they might have been more brutal, but still they stayed in confusion.
The same confusion that surrounded boxing at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, as if asking why any person would suffer and engage in such a brutal activity. In the current world of sports where, all engagement is safety first, such demonstration is questioned. Therefore, the show should be taken deeper than it looks like.
There is a direct message that can be followed in the Shaun visual spectacle. Men have to have a function for their body, an “agent for maintaining and reinforcing an ideology of the dominant, virile male.”
It’s still a sport, as it might be understood from the spectacle. No bad blood, no personal feelings, all of the negative emotions inherent and accumulated were left there in the field. They could be left in the ring, in the gym, the main idea that they are not left on boards, on underwear ads, male strip clubs or any other activity that distance the man from his initial masculinity and leave his body without a “function”, and his emotions buried deep within.
Even the title of the show itself was somewhat indicatory ad provocative. Bulls as a remark of fury, and rage, and at the same time it is a reference to bull fights, where matadors are risking their lives fighting a raging bull.
It could be seen that Leonardo was making a parallel of both activities, being the matador that has no fear in front of large men. Similarly, to bull fights the matador is praised for his courage, he’s actions are not always approved or understood.
While “Ring” is a direct reference to sport and as Leonardo had already made shows that implement wrestling, he is familiar to that kind of sports.
The exhibition was demonstrative of its title, with such works as Leonard’s and Collier Schorr’s. However, some of the works were only distantly connected to the theme of the exhibition in a way that some abstract works were far from expressing their idea directly.
In general, stating the sports as one of the factors that hold the theme of the exhibition is a good implication that despite the expressive claims, the sport is the main context within which these works should be considered.
It can be seen that due to the diversity of the ways selected by the artists to express their ideas, technological, abstract, images or shows, all of them are more connected to each other in sport thematic than the issue of masculinity.
Many of the works were not so self-explanatory, in that sense many of the exhibitions supportive materials were a good aid to start. The exhibition was a good experience and the works were innovative and informative, and while the ideas are not new the originality of each work in delivering those ideas helped assessing the main theme from a new perspective.
Conclusion
In developed societies the tendency to establish the culture of behavior is a good sign to eliminate violence. Thus, the focus on sport is a good way to remain in the area of social life culture and at the same time give chances of body expression, which in the era of elimination of gender distinctions is rarely given. The depiction of masculinity in art throughout history is an indicator that this issue has always been a subject of interest and concern. The exhibition in that sense is no different, the works of the exhibition obviously point out that there was a shift made in the standard masculinity stereotype. Some works, showed the results of such shift, others such as Shaun Leonardo’s work, show signs of alertness and awareness. The main conclusion is a general call to revise these positions, and there is no better way to revise it than implementing sports in our lives.
References
Dawson, J.. (2008). In Art and Sports, Meeting on a Level Playing Field. (chap. Wshington Post). Web.
Derrick, A.. (2007). In The Battle Continues: The Vulnerable vs. The Invincible. Web.
Haywood, R. (1988). George Bellows’s “Stag at Sharkey’s”: Boxing, Violence, and Male Identity. Smithsonian Studies in American Art, 2 (2), pp. 3-15.
Lee, S.. (2008). In Hard Targets: Masculinity and Sports @ LACMA. (chap. Daily Serving). Web.
Leonardo, S. In Shaun El C. Leonardo. (chap. ARTIST STATEMENT). 2008. Web.