Take an ordinary photograph (or an extraordinary photograph for that matter), use a program such as Photo Shop, and make something completely original out of it. That’s what the creative minds have done with the pictures in this post. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.
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Compilation of the nude male in art, by Pieter Voogt
From a Pieter Voogt essay called: THE CONSERVATIVE NUDE
“One of the first paintings I fell in love with was this one:” says Pieter Voogt,
“…by Jan Preisler. My mother had an encyclopedia with artists listed by the alphabet and I would often go back to the P, not for Picasso but for the nude, slim body of Preislers boy. Or, do I say this right? There were more male nudes in the book. Was it mainly the body, as a sexual object, or was the atmosphere created by the horse and the black lake just as important for me? I started to make drawings of boys myself, and usually there was an artistic element in the drawing. Either a landscape, some draperies around the body, or something in the lines and the pose that would express more than just sexual desire. However, what was art and what was erotic I couldn’t clearly distinguish. The landscape, for instance, could symbolise loneliness but also function as a story to create an erotic situation. This ambiguity didn’t bother me back then, and also not when I decided to take up art more seriously. I assumed that sexuality was a natural part of art, and that in art everything is confused. Power and beauty, ugliness and loneliness, power and ugliness, beauty and loneliness, endless combinations of concepts in different combinations with different implications could be suggested by a picture. This was the wonderful world of art.”
Pieter Voogt’s Art
Why a series focusing on black men? Hard to explain. There’s something sensual about skin the color of coffee, whether dark or lightened with cream, something hauntingly beautiful about the nuances of African heritage, something captivating in the darker palettes, something uniquely perfect.
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Rita Foster enrolled in the Academy of Art University located in San Francisco, in the spring of 2003. She had no idea that it would change her life forever and in so many different ways. “I can now see everything around me with an artistic eye, nothing can ever measure up to that.”
Rita has mastered the male form, ie. her incredible attention to detail, not just the male form as a whole, but the subtle lines and shadows that capture muscle and limb, usually with charcoal on colored paper.
She draws a wide variety of subjects, but here I’ll focus on her men. To see more of her work, go here: Rita Foster
It hasn’t been explained to me yet why male nudes in modern art are more endowed than in Michelangelo’s day. As such, no one can argue against the fact that Rita’s men are beautiful.
If passion, sensuality and a talent to create beautiful things is something imprinted on our genes, the French and Italians got more than their fair share. You see it in the cars they build, the clothes they design, their architecture, their sculptures and the works they’ve painted since the end of the dark ages.
La Primavera by Botticelli
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Raft of the Medusa by Gericault
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Theodore Gericault
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