TWO HORSEMEN (Edition of 200)

There is an echo of historic English landscapes and horse portraiture in this image. The beautiful chestnut hunter has stepped out of a George Stubbs canvas. The men are neither gentry nor cavalry, but young men whose tenderness towards the animal suggests a new contract between masculinity and nature. The horse appears to look at the camera approvingly, while the men are unaware. 

Section 2: FORM from our Seeing Men Exhibition

From the Classical world to the contemporary era, the nude form has a long history in art. While this has given the nude some acceptability, it has been within heavily defined parameters.    

Most tellingly, when we think of nudes in art, we think of women. Images featuring the male form disrupt our expectations. Here, male bodies parade in protest against the patriarchal rules and values that have kept them out of sight, or visible only on carefully curated terms.   

Our relationship with our bodies might seem like a simple matter, but the nude in art shows that it is in fact quite complex, steered across the centuries by religious beliefs, aesthetic ideals, and rules of sexual morality.  

Each of these five images references established traditions in art while consciously or unconsciously subverting them all to redefine the nude form in art.