The Ideal Copy
The ideal copy is the same
The ideal copy has your name
When you can't, it makes you can
When you aren't, it makes you am
This post concludes with a short photo essay of altered self-portraits. The lyrics quoted above are from the English post-punk band Wire’s song “Ambitious,” off their 1987 album The Ideal Copy.
Wire’s lyrics have intrigued and perplexed me for a while. They’re abstract, surreal and conceptual. I’ve had to revisit them many times before understanding the full breadth and complexity of the subjects they reference.
Lyrics from The Ideal Copy inspired my series of self-portraits, also titled “The Ideal Copy.” In this series, I superimpose the faces of Greek sculpture over my own face. While each face changes, the body, a photograph of me flexing my muscles, remains the same.
The underlying idea behind these portraits, is that perceptions of the perfect body is a figment of cultural tradition. Culture is a living organism, and therefore, traditions tend to grow or shift course as time goes on. Portrayals of the lived experience are not concrete, even if they’re carved in stone. This is evident by looking at the evolution of Greek sculpture, where shared beliefs and symbols of an ideal human form have progressively changed over generations.
The first image in my series features the face of a kouros, which are archetypal sculptures from the archaic period of ancient Greece. They have a clear resemblance to the rigid stance and deadpan gaze of the ancient Egyptian sculptures they were influenced by. The kouros figures were succeeded by more realistic, yet idealized sculptures that were unlike any known prior artistic depiction of human figures.
The following two images from my series show the later developments of ancient Greek sculpture, each getting more realistic with regards to human proportions and emotional expression. I’m employing these formal progressions to symbolize my transformation as a result of my fitness journey. In doing so, my work contributes to a flourishing tradition of fitness and art that draws from Grecian ingenuity.
The distinct style of sculpture that the ancient Greeks developed was highly influential to other contemporaneous and coexisting civilizations like the Etruscans and Romans. It was revived several times in modern eras, notably by artists during the Italian Renaissance and in the late nineteenth century by bodybuilders who coined the term “Grecian Ideal,” wherein they literally interpreted the physical attributes of ancient Greek artwork as a formula for obtaining a chiseled physique (see: “Chiseled: The Relationship Between Abs, Bodybuilder Aesthetics and Art”).
In my artwork, I seek to metaphorically define and expand upon my own type of “Grecian Ideal,” through a combination of philosophy, visual lexicons and physical fitness training. I use ancient Greek sculpture as a point of departure because I find a lot of significance behind both its form and ethos, which I can relate to my mission to improve and tone my mind and body. The imagery expresses my pathway to an ideal state of mental and physical well-being.
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Interesting and deep post.
People often workout for a combination of a few reasons relating to looking good, feeling good, performing well, and longevity. You can argue that many exercise in effort to “look good” which can be highly influenced by culture. There is no wrong reason to workout, especially as a novice, but the hope would be that once other benefits are realized that the scale of importance regarding one’s why begins to change.
Nothing looks better than authenticity.
Good stuff brother.