Portraying Males - from Muybridge to Hyperrealistic Art

The human body has long provided a source of interest for artists, as both the subject and object of a wide range of artistic practices throughout history and across cultures. Thanks to image production in social media and bioart practices, the body in art has been the subject of growing analysis in the last decades. I argue that when the issue of portraiture engages with themes such as body performance, body modification practices, masculinity or femininity as the living matter of portraits, an extensive critical reading of the power and the weight of gendered portraits becomes necessary. I go through several examples of modern critique of subjectivity performed in visual arts as a challenge to ‘organic’ body. I conclude by referring to the aesthetic and semiotic power of such images, in terms of understanding gendered relationships and interactions beyond rigid dichotomies around sex and gender still present in the long-standing debate about nature vs nurture.