The Idealization and Irony of Body Image in Paintings of Physical Fitness
Life imitates art far more than art imitates life
As a trained art historian, my scholarly focus often coincides with my passions both in and out of the visual arts. While I was working in the field of education, I researched and contextualized the history of modern pedagogy through the lens of art (see: “Portraying Pedagogy’s Progression”). Lately, I have been investigating various works of art that relate to my interests in physical fitness, personal training, body image and physical identity.
I wrote an earlier post on the theme of exercise and identity, featuring artworks by Claude Cahun, Cassils, Shaun Leonardo and Augustas Serapinas (see: “Training the Mind, Body and Soul”). While those artists utilized a variety of artistic media, this post will have a sole focus on the most time-honored form of visual art: painting. I have selected paintings by Marsden Hartley and Caitlin Albritton. Their depictions of the human figure convey how aesthetics of fitness and athleticism are idealized and shape certain expressions of cultural identity.
Marsden Hartley
Modernism was reaching its apex in Europe when Hartley was emerging as a young American artist. During the early twentieth century, modern art was less of a factor across the United States cultural landscape, but artists like Hartley ensured that it went from a nascent movement to a full-fledged aesthetic zeitgeist.
Hartley’s paintings reflect several elements from the modes of art he admired, such as abstraction and German Expressionism. After spending time in Berlin during World War I, he returned to the United States, where the American social scene became a major theme in his paintings. His mature works of art depict his fascination with the well-endowed bodies of athletic men, which has led some scholars to speculate about his sexual orientation and identity. In his writings Hartely has left small, yet obscure hints about his queerness, but never outright declared himself to be a gay man. A 1980 retrospective at the Whitney Museum and catalogue essay written by critic Barbara Haskell, offered fairly concrete evidence of Hartley’s gay identity (see: Perrault, 1980).
Hartley’s paintings of the male figure can certainly be described as homoerotic. Although his early portrayals of men coded his fondness for the male body via symbolism and abstraction, his later paintings, made when he was in his sixties, are overt representations of queerness. Flaming American (Swim Champ), painted in 1939, highlights the physical features and stature that Hartley seemingly found appealing. The swimmer’s blasé expression accentuates the visual impact of brawniness rather than a specific persona or emotion. The prowess of the subject in the painting is defined by their broad shoulders, large pecs and calf muscles. It’s the body of a well trained athlete, although Hartley took liberties amplifying the swimmer’s proportions. When compared to the bodies of some of the world’s greatest aquatic athletes, the subject in the painting is nearly twice their width. The dramatic effect adds to its romanticism, as well as the expressions of queerness that Hartley grappled with in and outside of his work.
Caitlin Albritton
I don’t know much about Caitlin Albritton’s background or biography, but her paintings are a nice counterpart to Hartely’s figurative work in terms of painterly style and subject matter. Albritton’s imagery of the human physique addresses gym culture and body politics. She says that: “instead of idealizing the body, I’m interested in exemplifying its strangeness, as well as the peculiarity of certain gym exercises and the awkward, compromising, sometimes sexual positions they put people in.”
As much as it is transformative and rewarding, partaking in gym culture can also be uncomfortable, and in many instances sexualized. The way that Albritton crops and composes the figures in her paintings emphasizes these aspects. For example, One Arm Rows (Pink Cheetah) is presented through a perspective that focuses more on the gaze of the viewer than the gains of the subject depicted in the scene. The focal point is on the woman’s voluptuous glutes, rather than the biceps and triceps, which are the muscles targeted by dumbbell rows. By doing this, Albritton is obscuring the featured exercise, and heightening the performative voyeurism and vanity associated with gym culture.
At its core, art encourages us to appreciate and scrutinize the aesthetic and conceptual nature of everyday life. In his influential treatise, Art as Experience (1934), philosopher and educational reformer John Dewey states that we learn when we engage in a deep observation of sensory information that are present in our environment, and are able to attach vivid language, emotions and meaning to what we are taking in. Poet and playwright Oscar Wilde wrote that art helps us to do this because our sensory and communicative ability “results not merely from life’s imitative instinct, but from the fact that the self-conscious aim of life is to find expression, and that art offers it certain beautiful forms through which it may realize that energy” (Wilde, 1891). In other words, as Wilde (1891) has famously espoused, “Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.”
Artistic depictions of the human body can certainly inspire our own path to wellness and self-love, but they also can also lead us down a dark path of body dysmorphia and poor self-esteem. Both Hartley and Albritton’s figurative paintings of fit individuals offer insightful musings on the human body, and address how certain individual and sociocultural perspectives about body image influence personal and societal trends. Nearly everyone initially interprets a work of art by analyzing its broad formal and archetypal qualities. But spending ample time with art allows us to transcend these baseline perceptions by taking our eyes and minds on a journey that makes connections between the subject matter and our own lived experiences.
References, Notes, Suggested Reading:
“Caitlin Albritton,” New American Paintings, 2017, Issue #130. https://www.newamericanpaintings.com/artists/caitlin-albritton
Dewey, John. 1934. Art as Experience. New York : Minton, Balch & Company.
Perrault, John. “I’m Asking Does it Exist? What is it? Whom is it for?” Artforum, November 1980. https://www.artforum.com/features/im-asking-does-it-exist-what-is-it-whom-is-it-for-208796/
Wilde, Oscar. The Decay of Lying in Intentions, 1891.