FLEX Faculty Essays

FLEX

More than just blood and fiber, muscle suggests a tissue of aspirations and assumptions. When organizing FLEX, the curators considered three lenses—power, desire, and ritual—through which to view muscled bodies while also acknowledging that these three categories overlap significantly—nothing in the exhibition fits solely into a single rubric.

FLEX is intended as a place to begin conversations rather than to provide easy answers regarding the complex heritage of the physique. To this end, Skidmore faculty from a range of departments and programs have joined the curators to write brief essays for this gallery guide. Drawing upon their areas of expertise, our colleagues share their insights and invite viewers to reflect on the many meanings of muscle.

Translating the human form into works of art involves some level of objectification, especially when subjects have placed themselves on display and deliberately invited the gaze of others. Spectacles, by definition, require spectators. Yet we hope visitors will attend to their own role as viewers by considering who is gazed at, and who does the gazing.

ANATOMY OF AN EXHIBITION What does muscle mean?

From a historical perspective, the muscled physique has long been allied with the classical figure of the hero. For the Greeks and Romans, heroes were high-born and male. The hero sought glory, whether achieving victory in battle or garnering accolades through sport. Christian martyrs inverted pagan values, so that surrendering one’s life achieved a more enduring triumph and made heroic glory accessible to lower classes and women. Christians also valorized the spiritual athlete: by excelling in self-denial, the ascetic trained the soul and turned acts of renunciation into noble deeds. These paths—sometimes diverging, sometimes converging—have led to contested notions of heroism in the present day.

FLEX not only puts these tensions on display, but also compounds them. Black bodies interrupt the presumed whiteness of marble sculptures or other canonical representations of heroes. Women with muscles disrupt expectations to be feminine, and transgender bodies unsettle supposedly fixed binaries. Homoerotic longing finds an alibi in the classical tradition, the trappings of which often adorn and surround muscled bodies. Bodies that are incomplete challenge conventional notions of agency or attraction. And the whole pursuit of perfection entails a painful, sometimes unglamorous process that can exact a heavy toll on those who strive to embody an idealized image.

Reactions to the bodies on display in FLEX will vary from one viewer to the next. Our society has inherited an amalgamation of classical and Christian attitudes, freighted with long histories pertaining to race, gender, age, and ability, and further complicated by nationalist and capitalist agendas.

Working on FLEX has by turns been a Herculean task, a labor of love, and a rite of passage. The curators’ own views on muscle have been tested and expanded every step of the way, as we collaborated with and learned from our friends and colleagues. We invite you to join us in this ongoing exploration.

—Dan Curley, Classics, and Gregory Spinner, Religious Studies

Leonce Raphael Agbodjélou

(born Porto-Novo, Benin, 1965, lives and works in Porto-Novo)

Untitled, 2012

From the series Musclemen Chromogenic prints Courtesy of the artist and Jack Bell Gallery, London Leonce Agbodjélou’s Musclemen photographs in FLEX are a triptych within a triptych. In each of the three photographs, three men pose shirtless and flex for the photographer. Agbodjélou chose his subjects from a group of people who were exercising near his studio, claiming that these young men “. . . remind us that our most able-bodied were deported” through the Atlantic slave trade during the colonial period. Indeed, many historians of the African Atlantic diaspora note the devastation that the enslavement and shipment of primarily young, able-bodied African men to the Americas wreaked upon West and Central African kingdoms. Agbodjélou’s somber message contrasts, however, with the bursts of colors and patterns that seem to cover every surface. Cotton fabrics printed with an array of leaves, hexagonal shapes, flowers, and “Celtic” knots provide a feast for the eyes, and the bouquets of fabric flowers that the men hold before them contrast with their masculine poses and physiques.

Using contrasting patterns for fabric backdrops and clothing goes back decades in West African portrait photography. While Agbodjélou credits his father for his inspiration, one can see strong affinities between the tailored pants and backdrops of Musclemen and portrait photographs created

by Malick Sidibé and Seydou Keïta, two Malians whose studios gained tremendous popularity among the rising middle classes in 1950s and 1960s Bamako. Photographers from other regions of the African continent include Hassan Hajjaj, whose recent portraits of Moroccans build upon Sidibé’s and Keïta’s legacies by featuring motley fashions that pop against brightly-patterned backdrops.

Such juxtapositions between bare skin and fabric, muscles and flowers, may leave us wondering what the flowers and colors symbolize: are they a reference to romantic views of Afro-Atlantic histories? Or do they tap into our anxieties about manhood—a subject that Agbodjélou does not raise, yet one that is relevant given current debates worldwide concerning women’s status, as well as Western concerns about a “crisis” in masculinity.

—Lara Ayad, Art History

Aladdin Industries, retailer American Gladiators lunchbox and thermos, 1992 Plastic Private collection

An amalgam of reality television, sports competition, muscle, and camp, American Gladiators burst onto the small screen at the end of the 1980s. The premise was simple enough: amateur athletes run a gauntlet of strength and endurance challenges for prize money. The catch: rather than facing each other, contestants were pitted against the show’s Gladiators, a buff cast of aspiring actors and models boasting star-spangled spandex and superhero names like Ice, Nitro, Blaze, and Turbo.

Some touchstones for the discerning FLEX visitor: (1) The relocation of ancient Roman gladiatorial carnage within the context of family viewing. (2) The emphasis on America, ostensibly to redeem the violence and decadence of Rome. (3) The prominence of female gladiators, equally as muscled as their male counterparts. (4) The commoditization of muscle, whether packaged as syndicated entertainment or licensed to package, one hopes, a nutritious lunch. Finally, (5) the objects themselves, late-century products of Aladdin Industries, whose lunch boxes and thermoses were reliable barometers of popular culture in the United States from the 1950s onward.

The popularity of American Gladiators resonates with how Roman spectators glorified their own gladiatores, the vast majority of whom would die fighting. Arenas change, however, as do notions of fame. After the show ended in 1996, the fortunes of its cast were varied. Some became fitness gurus. Others faded into obscurity. Others gravitated toward the adult film industry. Still others grappled with addiction or committed suicide. Nevertheless, in their heyday, the American Gladiators were a household name, enjoying the celebrity that comes to those who display their bodies for public consumption. —Dan Curley, Classics

Cassils

Cassils

Time Lapse, 2011

Advertisement: Homage to Benglis, 2011

(born Montreal, 1979, lives and works in Los Angeles) Chromogenic prints Courtesy of the artist and Ronald Feldman Gallery

(born Montreal, 1979, lives and works in Los Angeles)

Chromogenic print Courtesy of the artist and Ronald Feldman Gallery

Cassils is a gender non-conforming, trans masculine, visual artist who uses their own body as a form of social sculpture to consider how the relationship between the physical body and the psychological self impacts the construction of identity.

Drawing on conceptualism, feminism, gay male aesthetics, and body art, Cassils’s muscle-building works explore transgender not as crossing from one sex to another, but instead as a continually indeterminate and unresolved state of becoming.

In Timelapse, Cassils reinterprets Eleanor Antin’s 1972 Carving: A Traditional Sculpture, in which Antin crash diets for 45 days and photographs her body daily. Cassils inverts Antin’s process, using bodybuilding and diet to gain 23 pounds of muscle over 23 weeks. In contrast to the “feminine” act of weight loss in Antin’s Carving, Cassils’s work involves transformation into a traditionally masculine, muscular form.

In Advertisement: Homage to Benglis, Cassils again references a feminist artist, in this case Lynda Benglis, whose provocative 1974 Artforum advertisement challenged gender stereotypes and called attention to gendered hierarchies within the art world. By re-interpreting Benglis’s advertisement, they ask us to consider the assumptions underlying visual signifiers of gender. Cassils suggest a more nuanced approach to physical transformations of all kinds, and the less visible but no less important psychological shifts, rifts, and paradoxes that accompany them.

—Rachel Seligman, Tang Teaching Museum

Comic books 1965–1980

Captain American 1968

Hercules Unbound 1975

The Savage She-Hulk 1979

Ink on paper Private collection

Cover art by José Luis García-López

Wonder Woman 1997

Cover art by John Byrne

Tarzan Lord of the Jungle 1979

Cover art pencils by Rich Buckler, inks

by Bob Mcleod

The Saga of Original Man 1992

Cover art by Alonzo Washington

Cover art by Jim Steranko

Cover art by Michael Golden

Luke Cage, Hero for Hire 1973 Cover art by Billy Graham

Cage 1992

Marvel Fanfare 1986

Cover art pencils by Dwayne Turner, inks by Chris Ivy

Superman in Action 1995

Batman, Shadow of the Bat 1992

Cover art by John Byrne

Cover art by Jackson Guice

The Mighty Thor 1966

Pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by Vince Colletta

The New Gods 1971

Cover art by Jack Kirby

Cover art by Brian Stelfreeze

The Savage Sword of Conan 1974 Cover art by Boris Vallejo

Superheroes excite our imagination. Beginning with the first appearance of Superman in 1938, superheroes have filled popular media, such as comic books, film, television, and video games.

Superhero storytelling emphasizes bold visuals—colorful costumes and spectacular action sequences—which are designed to show off powerfully-built physiques.

Superhero genres preserve elements of classical heroism. Endless permutations of Herculean strength are the most obvious connection, yet the sheer diversity of superpowers and traits recalls distinctions between Greco-Roman heroes in terms of intelligence, dexterity, and other capabilities.

However, unlike classical heroes, who are prone to antiheroic fits of greed, rage, and lust, modern superheroes typically have a moral imperative to combat evil and protect the innocent. “With great power comes great responsibility” is a notion lost on Achilles, but axiomatic for Superman and the legions of superheroes that followed in his wake.

Superhero stories are fantasies of power, in which ordinary people are gifted with marvelous abilities and burdened with heroic purpose. The genre initially focused on costumed crime-fighters and borrowed liberally from pulp fiction and film noir. During the war years, superheroes were pressed into Allied service to defeat the Axis. In the 1950s, they saved the world from alien invasions, gargantuan monsters, and communists. By the 1970s, the narratives had become cosmic struggles between good and evil, sprawling across time and space—not to mention across individual titles, resulting in extended universes replicated today in the obsessive continuities of superhero movies and television shows.

Superhero narratives are cultural barometers for the underlying assumptions of their times—from the patriotism of the second World War, to the paranoia of the Cold War, and on to the anxieties of our own age of terrorism. Superheroes also signal shifting attitudes toward gender and race. Even as the savage masculinity of Edgar Rice Burrough’s Tarzan and Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian encodes white male dominance, representations of non-white heroes can be a pastiche of progressive and reactionary images. Female superheroes fight on par or better than their male counterparts—although their strength and prowess might operate as a pretext, delivering male sexual fantasies in the guise of female empowerment.

In the past, heroes received prayer and sacrifice, yet today the term “hero worship” is used figuratively, in the sense of zealous admiration. Mythic figures have been retrofitted to serve as entertainment. Jack Kirby—the prolific comics creator who gave the superhero genre much of its verve and grandeur—popularized the splash page: a single, large panel that frequently showcases the epic struggles between heroes and villains, such as Thor grappling with Hercules in a contest of divine strength. In the early 1970s, Kirby debuted The New Gods, with its clashing pantheons of quasi-immortal beings. The very title of the series poses this question: How might modern stories of superheroes function for us in ways that myths did for earlier societies?

—Dan Curley, Classics, and Gregory Spinner, Religious Studies

The Diskobolos (Discus Thrower)

Roman, copy of bronze Greek original by Myron (c. 460–450 BCE), 2nd century BCE Plaster cast from the marble Roman copy in the Vatican Museum, Rome The Slater Memorial Museum, Norwich, CT Created by the Greek sculptor Myron sometime during the fifth century BCE, the Diskobolos (or Discus Thrower) serves as an enduring model of male athleticism. Although the original Greek bronze is lost, Myron’s sculpture is well known through numerous Roman copies crafted in both bronze and marble. The moment captured in the statue is an example of both rhythmos, harmony and balance, and symmetria, proportion and equilibrium. Although renowned in antiquity for his realism, Myron captures the discus thrower in a distinctly unnatural pose, as the top of the backswing is not a true moment of balance.

The discus throw was one of five events that constituted the ancient Greek pentathlon, the sequence of events being discus, jumping, javelin, running, and wrestling. Many, including the philosopher Aristotle, considered the contestants in the pentathlon to be the most attractive and well-rounded of athletes since they needed to be both fleet of foot and strong in body. The pentathlon was introduced into the ancient Olympic games in 708 BCE. Although there is very little evidence about the method of throwing, the phrase used from Homer onward, “whirling around,” suggests that propulsion depended on centrifugal force, a feature that has remained the foundation of all subsequent discus throwing, even to this day.

As in all Greek male athletics, the Diskobolos is completely nude, allowing Myron to capture the essence of athletic energy in the coiled, twisted shape of the body. The figure’s pose creates diagonal lines that anticipate the optimum 45-degree angle of trajectory, recapitulating the Roman poet Statius’s line about the discus in flight “remembering the thrower’s right hand.” A classic example of the pregnant moment, the statue depicts the latent dynamism of the male athletic body in the instant before release. Tension is expressed in the moment of stasis and the raw torso strength and beauty of the thrower invokes a powerful homoeroticism.

For the most part, the Greeks restricted participation in athletics to free, white male citizens. Do we not today still elevate men’s over women’s sports? And have sports not historically served as expressions of elitist white male social and political privilege? The Greeks also believed that the gods took pleasure in displays of physical excellence, and athletes, like Myron’s iconic discus thrower, were ultimately endowed with religious significance. Do we not still treat our contemporary athletes as sacred figures? Are not the passions, rituals, and myths of modern sports a form of secular religion?

—Jeff Segrave, Music

The Dying Gaul

Roman, copy of bronze Greek original (late 3rd century BCE), c. 240–220 BCE Plaster cast from the marble Roman copy in the Capitoline Museum, Rome The Slater Memorial Museum, Norwich, CT The Dying Gaul is a plaster cast of a marble sculpture discovered on the grounds of the Villa Ludovisi in the early 17th century and much copied since. The fallen figure rests heavily on his right arm and leg. Blood oozes from his chest. His face registers both the anguish of his wound and the agony of his defeat. His body is well-muscled, as befits a warrior. (Walk around the statue to see details like the wrinkles and tendons in his legs and feet.) Nude, his only adornment is a torque, the twisted necklace he wears. On the ground, a trumpet encircles his body, since he was probably tasked with calling troops to battle, although he does have a sword in case he must wage war.

What kind of emotional response does this work evoke from us? We are accustomed to seeing Greek and Roman sculpture as white marble. In antiquity, artists painted stone sculpture in bright colors so that they stood out, especially in the Mediterranean sun. Imagine this figure with light brown skin, brown hair, and a golden trumpet. Moreover, his thick hair and mustache, and his torque indicate his status as Celtic or Gallic—that is, an enemy who must be subdued. In light of this, how does our reaction to the sculpture change?

Placing this sculpture in its historical context has proven vexing. Initially, scholars declared it a Roman copy of a now-lost Greek bronze, since Romans coveted Greek artwork and copied many original Greek sculptures. Sometimes the copies were exact replicas; at other times they were interpretations. While this statue is similar in style to Hellenistic sculpture, with its expressive emotional qualities, some scholars today think it is a Roman original from the early second century BCE. While Greek art tends to focus more on the victors, the representation of the Gaul in defeat fits better with the Roman focus on the vanquished noble savage. Whatever the historical context, this sculpture emphasizes the heroic qualities of the defeated figure. Although Gallic warriors often wore tunics and pants, representing the dying Gaul nude renders him heroic, a worthy adversary and worthy of empathy.

—Leslie Mechem, Classics

Georg Gerlach & Company (established Berlin, 1874)

Katie Sandwina with her husband Max and sons, c. 1900 Photographic print Collection of David Chapman

Had Sandow never existed, would there have been Sandwina?

If her origin story is to be believed—the mighty Eugen Sandow challenging Katharina Brumbach to a weightlifting contest, getting roundly and publicly vanquished, and having to endure the ignominy of his surname being feminized and adopted by Brumbach—the answer is, No. By any other measure, however, she was inevitable.

Born in Vienna in 1884 into a family of circus performers, Brumbach came of age during the European physical culture movement and the era of women’s suffrage movements worldwide. Given the times and her family’s occupation, she had the freedom to develop superior strength and, by age 16, to build an act around her wrestling prowess. According to another improbable legend, Brumbach wrestled her future husband, Max, into submission. The two were soon married and began performing together throughout Europe, with the petite Max hoisted, like a human barbell, one-handed by his wife.

While Brumbach would have become famous without Sandow, his exemplar proved useful to shaping her career as The World’s Strongest Lady—beyond being the putative source of her stage name. As Sandow had linked his brand of physical perfection to the classical past, so Sandwina adopted Greco-Roman motifs after coming to America. Her costumes evolved from white corsets to heavier, Amazon-style skirts and boots. Her repertoire expanded to include an elaborate Romanesque set piece: a veritable army of soldiers and cavalry marching over a wooden bridge, of which Sandwina’s body furnished the sole means of support. A Barnum & Bailey poster touted her Herculean strength and placed her beauty on a par with Venus.

At the same time, these classical gestures betray early 20th-century anxieties about female empowerment, anxieties that persist to this day. Amazons were problematic figures in antiquity, disruptors of patriarchy and agents of chaos. Moreover, to call Sandwina a Herculean Venus is simultaneously to aggrandize and to temper her strength; to confirm her femininity for the (male) spectator in spite of—or perhaps because of—her physicality. Muscled men like Sandow, whose masculinity was never in doubt, rarely experience such “gender trouble.” Women bodybuilders of every era, however, have encountered it firsthand.

Time has been kinder to Sandow’s legacy than Sandwina’s. Like many a female pioneer, she became overshadowed in the charge to valorize her male counterparts. Fascination with Sandwina has been rekindled in recent decades, due in large part to historian Jan Todd, director of the Stark Center for Physical Culture and Sports and former holder of the World’s Strongest Woman title. Today a statuette of Sandwina is the first prize in the annual Arnold Pro Strongwoman Championship, just as one of Sandow is awarded to winners of the Mr. Olympia competition. If Sandow has long been hailed the patriarch of modern bodybuilding, the sport is finally finding its matriarch in Katie Sandwina.

—Dan Curley, Classics

Hendrick Goltzius

(born Brüggen, Germany, 1558–1617)

The Farnese Hercules, c. 1592

Engraving on paper University of Michigan Museum of Art, Museum Purchase made possible by the Friends of the Museum of Art, 1994/2.13 Of the many sons of Zeus in the canon of classical heroes, Heracles or Hercules (to use his Roman name) was most like his divine father in temperament and physical prowess. Revered throughout the Greco-Roman world and renowned for his labors, which saw him test the very boundaries of life and death, Hercules remains to this day the epitome of strength in the popular imagination. This engraving by Hendrick Goltzius, a triumph of contour and shading, offers a dorsal view of the celebrated Farnese Hercules, an ancient marble statue of the hero recovered in Rome in 1546 and displayed for many decades in the palazzo courtyard of the powerful Farnese family. Two awestruck spectators at lower right suggest the statue’s larger-than-life scale, as well as the impact of its powerful musculature, which is on ample display even from behind. The inscription on the plinth declares that Hercules stands victorious. Yet his victory is hard won, for the hero is shown in a rare moment of vulnerability. Propping himself up on his trademark club and lion skin, here fashioned into a makeshift cushion, he hunches forward, weary from his labors. Which one? The trio of fruits in his right hand provides a clue: Hercules has just procured the lethal Apples of the Hesperides, for which he had to bear the vault of the sky on his shoulders. In one relatively small image, Goltzius has captured the essence of Hercules: a hulking form both pushed to the limits of human endurance and exposed to the envy of ordinary men. The hero as object of envy is one of the few constants in the myriad versions of his legend from antiquity onward, nowhere more so than in peplum movies of the 1950s and 1960s. However weary Hercules appears, we never seem to tire of meeting him with our gaze.

—Dan Curley, Classics

Paul Harding Studios

(established Astoria, Queens, 2001)

Super Powers Martian Manhunter, 2018

Cold-cast resin Licensed by Warner Bros, manufactured by Tweeterhead Courtesy of the artist

Super Powers Batman, 2019

Licensed by Warner Bros, manufactured by Tweeterhead Cold-cast resin Courtesy of the artist

Wolverine ’80, 2018

Licensed by Marvel Entertainment, manufactured by Gentle Giant, LTD Cold-cast resin Courtesy of the artist Paul Harding, a commercial artist and digital sculptor, designs impressive collector’s maquettes and articulated action figures. The term “action figure” was coined by Hasbro in 1964 to market G.I. Joe, as “doll” sounded too girlish, even though young boys dressed their action figures in different outfits (sold separately) and outfitted them with accessories (albeit military-themed). While originally produced as children’s toys, action figures have since become collector’s items, with new products aimed squarely at adult connoisseurs. Harding’s output both encompasses the broad range of the current market, and exemplifies its artistry.

Harding can adopt various styles, from cartoonish to hyperrealistic, the latter aesthetic represented by the figures on display here. While he initially sculpted in wax, Harding now models his figures on a computer, etching each detail onto the screen. When rendered in polymer resin through 3-D printing, Harding’s sculptures exhibit incredible precision. Translating superheroes from the pages of comic books into three dimensions, Harding constructs iconic poses that capture the visual élan of these revered characters.

While the scale has changed from the monumental figures on pagan temples to sizes better suited to a place on the mantel, the visual language of classical heroism is still evident in Harding’s work.

Even in repose, the expressive anatomy of these muscled figures allows the viewer to imagine them leaping into action, while the looks on their faces, showing steely determination and heroic purpose, artfully realize characters who are “larger than life.”

—Dan Curley, Classics, and Gregory Spinner, Religious Studies

Skip Faulkner

(born Havre de Grace, MD, 1956–2011)

Photographs, c. 1990–2002

Black and white and color photographs Collection of the Tilghman Family Born in 1956, Francis “Skip” Faulkner grew up on a farm on the Eastern Shore of Maryland when that area was largely rural and remote. The gift of a Kodak Brownie camera when he was a young boy launched him on a life-long obsession with photography. Largely self-taught, Faulkner lived an itinerant existence, following work wherever it took him. Over time, he developed an eye for inventive composition and an ability to capture the essence of a moment in a single frame.

Eventually, Faulkner made his way to steady work in athletic photography and the fitness industry.

In the late 1990s, he traveled the country covering competitions and conventions, and working with athletes on their modeling portfolios. Skip’s open and honest manner made it easy for his subjects to accept his presence and trust his eye. His attention to detail and his collaborative spirit made him a favorite of many of the athletes. His photographs are never voyeuristic, nor do they contain any sense of irony. Whether a posed image or a candid shot, they reflect respect, and even affection, for his subjects.

Over his career, Faulkner provided images for many of the top fitness publications in the United States and Canada, including Fitness for Men, Oxygen Magazine, and Muscle and Fitness. In 1998, he became the first official photographer for the Tri-Fitness Challenge, an annual multi-part athletic competition for women and men which had begun the previous year. In 2002, Faulkner decided to return to his family home in Maryland where he continued to work until his unexpected death in the summer of 2011. In 2012, he was posthumously inducted into the Tri-Fitness Hall of Fame.

Throughout his life, Faulkner brought a fresh eye and a sense of engagement to each photographic opportunity. His photographs allow us to see more than chiseled bodies; they open us to the individuals who are fitness athletes.

“A tender heart. A loving eye. His photographic images nudge us towards an awareness of the importance of the ordinary and the nuances that accompany our everyday surroundings.

They are filled with warmth and, it seems to me, a sense of longing that makes us return to them again and again.”

—Anne Nielsen, photographer —Jennifer Cholnoky, Geology, with Margo Tilghman

Skip Faulkner

(born Havre de Grace, MD, 1956–2011)

Photographs, c. 1990–2002

Black and white and color photographs Collection of the Tilghman Family Skip Faulkner’s career coincided with the rise of the fitness craze of the 1960s and 1970s. His work not only documents a long-established tradition of male bodybuilding but it also celebrates the emergence of competitive women’s bodybuilding, a dimension of the fitness boom that challenges conventional definitions of femininity and pushes the boundaries of social acceptance for women’s athleticism.

The photographs on display here offer a diversity of images, not only in terms of gender, race, and age, but also in terms of settings and dynamics. Some of the images are purposely posed, others are spontaneous; some are taken at rest and some in action; some are located in natural settings and others in contrived environments. Faulkner also uses both color and black-and-white film.

Black-and-white images accentuate body definition, highlight musculature and physique, and aestheticize the body. Color images suggest celebration and ritualized performance as spectacle.

Faulkner’s images also present differential gender narratives. Women invariably look out at the camera, engaging with the male gaze, while men typically look away from the camera, defusing homosexual and homoerotic tension. Poses also suggest the various dimensions of a ritual—whether the preparation of repetitive, sequenced training and rehearsal in the gym, or the stylized performance inherent in aesthetic posing and choreographed posturing on stage.

Ultimately, all of the photographs depict extreme bodies, inviting us to confront questions about the nature of bodies and what it means to view others’ bodies. Do the images objectify the body? Or do they treat it with respect? Above all, Faulkner’s photography invites us to confront the tension between muscularity and traditional notions of gender. How do we, as embodied beings, connect with Faulkner’s images? How do we respond in terms of our own notions of what is natural for male and female bodies? Is the sport a source of personal empowerment for women? An avenue of soft-pornography for men? And how does the photographer construct these dilemmas with the aim of his lens?

—Jeff Segrave, Music

John Lesnick

(born New York, 1953–2003)

Extravagence is its own reward, 1986

Silkscreen on paper Leslie-Lohmann Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, Estate of John Lesnick, 2003.1159 John Lesnick’s Extravagance is its own reward brings to light the beauty of the human form as both product and process. The intricacy of the musculature in these figures not only celebrates welldefined bodies, but also evokes the personal sacrifice necessary to achieve them. What are the rewards of extravagance? And what are the costs of perfection?

In the early 1980s, Lesnick photographed a series of dancers. Although the muscled bodies seen here might at first glance differ from the physiques traditionally associated with dancers, the parallels between the two art forms are numerous and the process by which individuals achieve their extraordinary appearance is similar. In the culture of concert dance, performers are commonly encouraged to sacrifice their bodies for the sake of art. Injuries are commonplace and personal wellness is often overlooked. It is not unusual to see a dancer limping into a studio, only to then perform movements that defy gravity. In elite bodybuilding, although competitors frequently use dietary supplements, they might also have increased rates of body dissatisfaction. While injuries are less frequent in competitive bodybuilding than dance, bodybuilders frequently report upper-extremity pain during training. In both cultures, health is subordinate to aesthetics. The ideology of perfection is fundamental, such that devotion to physical appearance and the promotion of “spectacle” become shared values.

Lesnick’s portrayal of confidence, dominance, and strength must be counterbalanced with an acknowledgment of the personal expense likely borne by the individuals portrayed. Furthermore, Lesnick was openly HIV positive and experienced frequent episodes of poor health throughout his life, passing away in 2003 at the age of 49. The juxtaposition between his own embodied experience and the aesthetic of perfection portrayed in his work is worth reflecting upon.

—Sarah DiPasquale, Dance

Magazine advertisements for the Charles Atlas exercise program, 1946–1968 Ink on paper Private collection

Before he was “Charles Atlas,” he was Angelo Siciliano (1893–1972), an Italian immigrant from Calabria growing up in Brooklyn, New York. According to the legend he would tell in his adult years, he was just “a 97-pound runt” of a kid when a muscle-bound lifeguard kicked sand in his face on a Coney Island beach. That moment made a lasting impression. Little Angelino took up isometric bodybuilding, packed on the pounds, and in 1922 was named America’s Most Perfectly Developed Man in a competition against nearly 800 other contestants. That same year, when a friend remarked that he was beginning to resemble the statue of a certain ancient Greek Titan, the newly buff Angelo adopted the name Atlas and became one of America’s most iconic muscle men.

He was also a shrewd businessman who, in an era of rapidly expanding mass media, knew how to capitalize on his personal journey of self-transformation. Decades before the rise of Men’s Health magazine, Atlas discovered how to market at-home workouts to anyone aspiring to superhero status. Over the 1930s and 1940s, his allure spread through printed images like those featured here, advertisements for his mail-order training program, “Dynamic Tensions.” The ads ran in magazines for teenage boys and sometimes featured the sand-kicking incident in comic strip format, in the style of a superhero origin story, depicting a “weakling’s” rapid transition into a Hercules.

Looking closely at these ads, we might inquire about the way they address us as readers and viewers, and how they activate both our insecurities and our desires. Atlas is not just selling a fitness regimen. Rather, by making his body into a myth, or better yet, a brand, he promises his consumers salvation from the shame that threatens us when we fail to satisfy culturally embedded norms of ability, health, beauty, and gender. “In only 15 minutes a day,” you too can know the elusive pleasures of “HANDSOME, MUSCULAR MANHOOD.” You too can be remade, assembly-line-style, like a car! You can escape the daily humiliations and insufficiencies that gendered life imposes!

Charles Atlas wants you “to really live!”

The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote: “What is it that we long for at the sight of beauty?

We long to be beautiful, we fancy it must bring much happiness with it. But that is a mistake.” Still, the traps of beauty can be hard to resist. We may want to snicker at these Atlas advertisements, dismissing them, either for seeming “old-fashioned” or for the subtle violence they inflict upon their impressionable viewers. But we may also feel aroused by them, in spite of ourselves. Insofar as these images put the viewer into a “dynamic tension” between excitement and personal inadequacy, they have accomplished their task as advertising. Let’s not imagine we’ve outgrown the cult of the titanic He-Man. Atlas has many living counterparts today, including the traditionally photogenic physique of Pietro Boselli (born 1988), another Italian-born bodybuilder and “influencer,” whose 2.7 million Instagram followers would likely make Angelo Siciliano more than a little envious. ­—Joseph Cermatori, English

Nicholas Muller’s Son & Company (established New York, 1873)

Eugen Sandow, 1894

Painted brass Collection of David Chapman The guy was ripped, a self-made strong man, a cultural icon.

“Sandow is the most wonderful specimen of man I have ever seen,” declared Dudley A. Sargent, director of Harvard’s gymnasium and the nation’s leading physical educator in the late 19th century.

“He is strong, active and graceful, combining the characteristics of Apollo, Hercules, and the ideal athlete.” A physical marvel, something like a Greek statue come to life, Sandow was widely proclaimed to be “the perfect man,” the personification of masculine strength and virility, yet he was also refined, “a perfect gentleman,” Sargent added.

Eugen Sandow (1867–1925) was remarkably popular in the United States and Britain. A weightlifter and “the father of modern bodybuilding,” according to historian John F. Kasson, Sandow (born Friedrich Wilhelm Müller) devoted much of his early life training to be an acrobat and then transforming himself into a modern Adonis. A muscular performance artist and a shrewd showman and entrepreneur, Sandow exhibited his strength and chiseled body for countless buttoned-down yet admiring Victorian and Edwardian men and women, whether in posters and photographs or in person. After many of his public events, one biographer writes, “He gave private ‘receptions’ wearing little more than a G-string.” In this way, he embodied, literally, power and desire, heterosexual as well as homoerotic. One hesitates to think of Sandow as a fin de siècle soft-core porn star, but he has been described as “the first great male pinup in modern history.”

Thomas Edison’s 1894 Kinetoscope of Sandow reveals a stocky man flexing his well-defined abs and biceps, with nary an ounce of fat on his taut, alabaster body. What it does not show, however, is Sandow in relation to other men. We do not get a sense of scale. According to Sargent’s measurements, Sandow was five-feet eight-inches and weighed 180 pounds; that is, he was no colossus. Today, Sandow would be among the smallest men on any NFL team. He was, nonetheless, a phenomenon in his lifetime, a household name, a symbol and hyper-idealized version of what it meant to be a strong man during a period of shifting gender roles in a rapidly-modernizing society.

—Daniel A. Nathan, American Studies

Photographs, c. 1935–1959

Gelatin silver prints Collection of John Sonsini and Gabriel Barajas Included in these cases is a small survey of the great male physique photography studios of the mid-20th century, including Edwin Townsend’s photographs of bodybuilder and model Tony Sansone from 1935, through 1950s prints from the studios of Russ Warner, Al Urban, Lon of New York, and Studio Arax in Paris. The bodybuilder George Eifferman is shown photographed by Bruce of Los Angeles (Bruce Bellas) on Santa Monica’s Muscle Beach in 1948, the same year he was crowned Mr. America. Mr. America contests were organized by the Amateur Athletic Union beginning in 1939 in Schenectady, New York, and the award was considered for over 40 years to be the most prestigious honor in bodybuilding. The international Mr. Universe competitions would follow in 1948, first held alongside the London Olympics of that year. Like the Olympics, both bodybuilding competitions were rooted in the Greek ideals of health, fitness, and beauty.

Also pictured are Ed Fury, Steve Reeves (Mr. America 1947, Mr. Universe 1950), and John Grimek (the only two-time Mr. America in 1940 and 1941, and Mr. Universe 1948) all photographed at Spartan of Hollywood. Spartan was the physique studio of Greek photographer and former ballet dancer Constantine Hassalevris. The bodybuilding champions Fury and Reeves would go on to star in dozens of “sword and sandal” movies throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

Many of the images are from photographer Bob Mizer’s legendary Athletic Model Guild (AMG) studio, which was a center of male image production for five decades in Los Angeles. As with the other studios, Mizer photographed men, fully nude or wearing a posing strap, and in Mizer’s work their settings often mixed references to Greek statuary with a playful eroticism and Hollywood glamour. Mizer also founded the influential magazine, Physique Pictorial, and later in the 1960s created hundreds of thousands of color photographs and thousands of homoerotic films, becoming a pioneer of beefcake, muscle-bound male imagery. AMG and the other physique studios and magazines were an important place for gay culture to express itself when homosexuality was illegal across the country, and Mizer himself was arrested and convicted for distribution of male nude imagery. Some of these photographs include drawn-on coverings in removable ink to avoid these persecutions. Illinois was the first state to decriminalize homosexuality in 1962 and it was not until 2003 that the United States Supreme Court confirmed the same freedoms for the entire country.

The majority of these photographs are from the collection of Los Angeles painter John Sonsini and his partner Gabriel Barajas. Sonsini worked at AMG studios from 1986 to 1994, painting backdrops for Mizer’s photo shoots and studying the way he shot his models. Sonsini painted several AMG models during this time and later saved substantial archives and objects after Mizer died in 1992 and AMG closed. Sonsini, in conversation with Allan Jalon for the Los Angeles Times, recounted that his years at AMG shaped his interest in “men who must fight for a place in the world,” a category in which he places the “drifters and bohemians” of whom Mizer took his pictures and the Latino workers Sonsini paints today. “These men are crossing borders to get to Los Angeles, and the Mizer men crossed all kinds of borders to get here, and the life both groups found wasn’t easy.”

—Ian Berry, Tang Teaching Museum

Physique magazines, 1934–1953 Ink on paper

Superman, 1941 Muscular Development, 1970 Strength and Health, 1953

Muscle Power, 1951 Your Physique, 1944

Collection of John Sonsini and Gabriel Barajas

Your Physique, 1952

Collection of David Chapman

In the mid-20th century, the male body became an object of obsession in the United States, inextricably connected to the global spread of physical culture in the previous century. From New York to Istanbul, educators, doctors, intellectuals, and sports aficionados celebrated the construction of a strong, defined male body. In the United States, physical culture was a discourse and movement that envisioned physical exercise as the most effective means to creating the ideal physique. Illustrative magazines were one of the main spaces in which physical culture enthusiasts “worked out” the contours of what David L. Chapman refers to as the “American hunk.”

Magazines like Strength & Health, Superman, and Muscle Power served as some of the leading periodicals focusing on weightlifting and muscle culture during the period. With their photographs of seminude men flexing their muscles and articles praising the virtues of beautiful, chiseled bodies, these publications offered readers, young and old, a guide to creating the ideal male form.

Magazines like these almost exclusively presented American hunks as white, sculpted, and hairless.

Who were these muscle men? They were as storied as Jack Delinger, champion of the 1948 Mr. America contest, and as local as Joe Peters, Captain of the Schenectady Police Department in the 1940s. By featuring both professionals and amateurs, weightlifting periodicals encouraged readers to identify paragons of masculinity across the country. Magazines reminded readers that American hunks were not born that way; rather, they cultivated their muscular physiques through exercise, discipline, and hard work. Advertisements promised young men that the cultivation of such a body was only a purchase away. For example, Your Physique Equipment Co. assured readers that purchasing their barbells could turn a “weakling” into a “superman.” This rhetoric of transformation connected the isolated reader to an expanding community of bodybuilders, from the municipal, to the national, and beyond—a network of “champions around the world.”

Weightlifting magazines promoted the idea that they served as instructive guides to cultivating a distinct corporeal aesthetic. Did readers always envision them this way? What alternative purposes might they have played in the United States during the mid-20th century? Did the magazine’s images of seminude men market softcore pornography in the guise of bodybuilding and physical exercise? What is the relationship between the didactic and erotic functions of these publications?

—Murat C. Yildiz, History

Stephen S. Sawyer

(born Paris, KY, 1952, lives and works in Versailles, KY)

Undefeated, 1996 Ink on paper Private collection

Stephen Sawyer makes art that praises Jesus, consistently picturing him as a handsome and heroic savior. In this allegorical picture we find Jesus looking triumphant in a boxing ring. Contrast his selfassured pose with that of the Seated Boxer, the Hellenistic sculpture replicated on the center plinth.

That mortal athlete is bruised, with a broken nose and damaged ear; weary from his struggle and perhaps contemplating his defeat, the boxer turns away. Yet Sawyer’s figure stands tall and meets the gaze of the viewer, certain of his victory. This Jesus fights for YOU, and his confident visage assures us that the outcome of such spiritual warfare is never in doubt.

Sawyer updates Jesus for a contemporary audience, yet his imagery connects back to ancient biblical traditions (Exod. 15, P. 136, Rev. 19) that depict God as divine warrior. The only marks visible on Sawyer’s boxer is the scar on his side, indicating where the lance pierced Jesus while he hung on the Cross, along with traces of bandaged blood from that sacrifice. Dramatic lighting shows off this fine specimen of Muscular Christianity, a movement emphasizing the manliness of Christ as a model for Christian men. Originating in the 19th century, Muscular Christians promote exercise and equate strong bodies with moral discipline and patriotic duty. Sawyer’s redeemer inherits this way of viewing Jesus as physically massive as well as spiritually impressive, inviting both admiration and imitation.

—Gregory Spinner, Religious Studies

Andres Serrano

(born New York, 1950, lives and works in New York)

Lesa Lewis, 1998

Cibachrome print Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris and Brussels This photograph is a portrait of female bodybuilder Lesa Lewis: her biceps are flexed, showing profound musculature and visible veins. Her eyes are averted and head titled to look away from the camera. In contrast to the feminized and sexualized head-on, sultry stare of the typical 1980s supermodel, her portrait draws the eye to the jawbone, the tendons in the neck, and her bulging biceps and pecks.

The juxtaposition of feminized attire (bikini and earrings) with bulky musculature highlights the tension between the masculinizing effects of building substantial muscle mass and the feminizing requirements of competitive female bodybuilding (and, perhaps more broadly, of being a femalebodied person on display). The paradox of feminine muscularity has been core to female bodybuilding since its inception. According to Steve Wennerstrom, a scholar of bodybuilding, women’s competitive bodybuilding started as bikini pageants held alongside men’s bodybuilding competitions—women’s bodies were on hyper-feminized display alongside the hypermasculine muscular bodies.

Fast forward to the early 2000s, when the International Federation of Bodybuilding (IFBB) continued to wrestle with the impact of gendered expectations on female bodybuilding. Specifically, the IFBB formalized the inclusion of “femininity” in the criterion for judging women’s bodybuilding, including the explicit requirement that the participant’s face would be judged. Importantly, the gendered tension highlighted in this portrait and in the IFBB’s new judging criteria is not lost on the bodybuilders themselves: Lewis was known for embracing this tension and making it overt for audiences: during competition, she would take the stage and announce herself by saying “And you thought the Terminator was a man!” ­—Jessica Sullivan, Psychology

Nancy Spero

(born Cleveland, OH, 1926–2009)

Mirror Image, 1990

Ink on paper, hand-printing, and printed collage on paper Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Art by Women Collection, gift of Linda Lee Alter, 2011.1.37

For me as a feminist artist, to depict the female body is to depict ranges of difference . . .

Woman in the process, never a fixed or stable identity, Woman as a continuous presence . . .

—Nancy Spero

Nancy Spero, a feminist artist whose work unflinchingly expressed the complexities of being a woman, strove in her work to reassert the agency and potency of women throughout history. Drawing on imagery from Greek and Roman myth, the middle ages, and popular culture (“I ransack from art history and photographic sources”), Spero created an all-female cast of characters she used over and over again in her works.

In Mirror Image, the figure of a female bodybuilder (possibly Lisa Lyon) is doubled, one darker, one lighter.

The two face each other, like a reflection in the mirror. Does this doubling signify the unfixed and unfixable identity that Spero endeavored to capture in her depictions of women? As this woman confronts the manifold realities of her being, Spero stakes a claim for the physical and psychic power of women.

—Rachel Seligman, Tang Teaching Museum

Michael Stokes

(born Berkeley, CA, 1963, lives and works in Los Angeles)

Sergeant Taylor Urruela, 2014–2015 Photograph Courtesy of the artist

The composition of this photograph connects it with famous artistic depictions of nude bodies, particularly women like Titian’s Venus of Urbino or Manet’s Odalisque. Those reclining women are depicted as both ideally beautiful and sexually alluring, staring directly (and perhaps invitingly) at the viewer. The figure in Stokes’s photograph, in contrast, looks away, seemingly lost in a reverie that does not concern us. The erotic dimensions of this image, the ways in which this nude evokes our desire, are bound up in his conventionally masculine air of self-containment. Recognizable immediately as a soldier by the drape of his iconic dog-tag necklace, the subject here is presented for our adoration and veneration in the style of a mythic warrior. He emulates the pose of the reclining Dionysus on the east pediment of the Parthenon. Among the objects on display in this exhibit, however, he might remind the viewer most strongly of the torso of Poseidon from the west pediment. Like the torso, he is powerfully muscled, the lines of his body, even in repose, conveying an impression of tremendous strength. On his trio of pedestals, he suggests a timeless, classical stability.

This impression is disrupted by his right leg, which fills the lower foreground of the image and terminates above the ankle. This leg unsettles expectations, challenges a tendency toward vague idealization, and yanks the viewer back into specifics. We may begin to search for a story, to wonder how the leg was lost, and what produced the scars and knots that run its length. This encounter with the soldier’s body, with the physical effect of war and trauma, is at the heart of all of Stokes’ many photographs of disabled veterans. This soldier, Sergeant Brian Taylor Urruela, lost his leg to a roadside bomb in Iraq. Stokes’ photograph encourages us to honor his recovery, to appreciate his physical strength as part of a narrative of survival and growth after trauma. Yet the full complexity of the image is only revealed at the intersection of these two impressions, when we see this as an image of a disabled American soldier and as a riff on classical ideals. Suddenly, we might look back at the Poseidon torso, and see not a damaged fragment, but a human form without arms and legs.

How, this photograph asks, are we taught to see bodies, and to sort them into categories? Do we become accustomed to separating muscular bodies from disabled bodies, or ideal bodies from bodies that are somehow “marred” or “broken”? Are we reluctant to think of an armless Hercules as disabled, and equally reluctant to think of a disabled soldier as ideally beautiful (and sexually desirable)? How, by looking at the alluring, powerful form and scarred leg of Sergeant Taylor, might we start to see the muscled body in new ways? ­—Nick Junkerman, English

Michael Stokes

(born Berkeley, CA, 1963, lives and works in Los Angeles)

Sergeant Taylor Urruela, 2014–2015 Photograph Courtesy of the artist

This portrait of Sergeant Taylor is a site of provocative contradictions. The details of the top half of the image—the dog tag, the figure’s chiseled upper body, the tattoos, the buzz-cut hair—clearly identify the figure as a soldier, young and powerful. But his spread arms, loin cloth, turned head, crossed legs, and cross-like midriff tattoo, depict Christ on the Cross, the embodied epitome of mercy. What is that expression on the man’s face: pain, bewilderment, resentment, embarrassment, pleasure? The rope by which he seems to hang—though he may also be holding himself up—suggests bondage but also fetish (or bondage and fetish). Is this a soldier/martyr trapped by systems of power? It seems he could simply let go of the rope, which also connotes the artistry of the acrobat, a Cirque du Soleil performer; perhaps he enjoys the theatricality of his own pose.

Because the figure’s legs are crossed, we might not immediately notice that his right leg is amputated mid-shin. As we take in this detail, the dramatic symmetry of the image begins to unbalance, and what we might have surmised about this figure gets more complicated. The missing leg seems obviously an injury of war, but it also, if obliquely, references the woundedness of Christ. Two forms of sacrifice, then, are evoked, but they do not necessarily coincide. In the same way, the strikingly masculine torso, boldly displayed, and the impaired leg, hidden as if in plain sight, together invite us to consider why certain bodies inspire desire, or envy, or pity, or disgust. Does the top half of the body compensate for the lower, or does the missing foot erode the stereotyped beauty of the chest and arms? Do we forgive the soldier his impairment because it is earned in war, where less valorous disabilities would be deemed uglier, more shameful? Or does the image provoke our horror, using the missing foot as convenient shorthand for all that is wrong about war? Then again, does the allure of the photograph rewrite the impact of that impairment, making it integral to, rather than a detraction from, the allure of stylized erotic art?

No single reaction sufficiently captures the many vectors of power, idealism, and beauty in this photograph. The stakes of the performance evoked here, to whom it is being played, are ambiguous.

Sergeant Taylor’s portrait implies that we are sacrificed to social conventions. But we are not entirely passive in this transaction: we bind ourselves, too, in cages of our own making. At the same time, we can flaunt the rules of engagement, display ourselves in all our variability, actively solicit the gaze of onlookers. Disability scholars have proposed, moreover, that Christ’s is the ultimate human body not just because it embodies the divine but specifically because it is vulnerable—a formulation that construes disability as the ideal (or at least the norm) rather than an aberration.

But if Sergeant Taylor courts our veneration, as a muscled, militarized, wounded, bared, bound, male body, it is surely a self-conscious, even ironic exchange, one that unsettles our expectations about what it means to be fully, and always fallibly, human.

—Susannah B. Mintz, English

Torso of Poseidon, Figure M

Greek, c. 438–432 BCE Plaster cast from the Pentelic marble original in the British Museum, London, and the Acropolis Museum, Athens Fairfield University Plaster Cast Collection, gift of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2004 As you walked through the Acropolis gateway, straight ahead was a 30-foot bronze statue of armored Athena. To the right, towards the sea, the Parthenon commanded your attention. In the pediment, or gable, on the western side of this temple, above towering columns, a scene depicted the founding of your city, Athens. Splayed out horizontally on either side of the central figures were Athenian men and women and local deities. In the center, the patron goddess Athena stood to the left, while to the right was the robust figure of Poseidon, lord of the sea. Each had offered the Athenians their gifts: Athena, the olive and its fruits, representing control of the land; Poseidon, a spring of saltwater, representing the sea and naval authority. Athena would have been draped in bold colors of blues, greens, and reds. Poseidon would have been nude, striking the ground with his trident and offering the spring which could be heard gurgling nearby. He would have been flesh colored, and his broad, muscular torso would have defined his powerful form. While Athena may have won the contest to patronize Athens, Poseidon would have commanded your attention as well—the embodiment of masculinity and the male, divine form, offering command of the sea and the promise of empire.

This plaster cast of the original, whose carving was overseen by the Athenian master sculptor Pheidias, reminds us of the ongoing struggle over the Parthenon marbles. Half reside in Athens, in the recently inaugurated Acropolis Museum. The other half, including the remains of the marble original of Poseidon, welcome visitors to the Duveen Galleries of the British Museum. Today the torso, with its carefully wrought muscles and veins, is a reminder of the robust majesty of this sea god, and of the sculptural excellence of Athens in the golden age of Pericles in the fifth century BCE. The 17th-century bombardment and subsequent explosion of the Parthenon, and the removal of the marbles by Lord Elgin in the early 19th century, have left us with this fragment—damaged and incomplete, but vigorous just the same.

—Michael Arnush, Classics

Boris Vallejo

(born Lima, Peru, 1941, lives and works in Allentown, PA)

Jesus Christ, 1969

Ink on paper, reproduction of oil on Masonite Private collection Boris Vallejo is a highly successful fantasy artist, known for his vivid depictions of muscled barbarians and beefcake cosmonauts. Here he draws on his own experience as a bodybuilder to produce an image of sincere Christian devotion. Since the first century when Paul preached Christ Crucified, the cross has been at the very center of Christian thought, as source of atonement and symbol of faith. Yet in contrast to visual traditions depicting Christ’s body broken upon the cross, Vallejo shows him breaking the cross instead. Christ flexes the way to salvation, as his redemptive love is shown to be “stronger than death” (Song of Sol 8:6).

Here the Word is not only made flesh; the flesh is now superbly muscled. As the perfect man, Jesus offers himself as the perfect sacrifice (Heb. 9), thereby fulfilling God’s love for the world (John 3:16).

Instead of taking his crucifixion as a sign of defeat, Christians have understood the brutal event as Christ’s moment of triumph, wherein sin and death are vanquished (John 11, Acts 2, Rom. 6).

Reversing the dynamic of worldly power, Jesus rises to eternal life; in some sense, Vallejo’s image of flexing Jesus combines his crucifixion with his resurrection.

We are being presented here with a visual theology, trumpeting the incredible heroism of Christ’s Passion. Perhaps some viewers might think Vallejo’s muscled Jesus looks more like Superman than one expects of a religious savior. Does this image belong with those in the comic books? Or perhaps superheroes fighting to save the world are more messianic than we generally acknowledge?

—Gregory Spinner, Religious Studies

Heinrich Weishaupt, lithographer, after Samuel Moore (born Germany, 1810–1883)

Apotheosis of George Washington, 1830–1850 Ink on paper, reproduction of hand-colored lithograph Private collection

The apotheosis of George Washington was a popular subject in 19th-century American art. This hand-colored lithograph imagines Washington ascending into heaven in the company of Faith, Love, and Hope. Dressed as a pagan god, the first president sports the requisite muscular physique.

The Greek term apotheosis refers to mortal beings becoming deities, whether heroes such as Hercules or rulers who were posthumously elevated to divine status. In the 1860s Constantino Brumidi painted a fresco in the rotunda of the United States Capitol Building showing Washington taking his place in heaven surrounded by a pantheon composed of Roman gods and allegorical figures. What are we to make of this Americanized form of hero worship?

Scholars borrow the term “civil religion” from Jean-Jacques Rousseau in order to describe this reverent combination of nationalism and piety, as displayed in public symbols and written into collective memory. Not only are Washington’s personal achievements being celebrated in images of his apotheosis, but he becomes the very embodiment of all that is noble and great in American history. Here Washington has become a figure of myth, much like Hercules or Neptune or Minerva.

It is interesting that the Apotheosis of George Washington uses a decidedly pagan model to “deify” its national hero. Perhaps more overtly Christian imagery would have proven uncomfortably close to Catholic images of saints, at a time when most US citizens maintained Protestant sensibilities.

While Washington was not literally considered divine, the visual impact of his Apotheosis is still profound, as the line between secular leader and sacred being is completely blurred. Such veneration of a founding father offers a prime example of civil religion. Do Americans still think of presidents in such lofty terms, or are they remembered and represented in more irreverent ways today? Do we portray our leaders as physically strong? Do we still expect our leaders to be exemplars of virtue?

—Gregory Spinner, Religious Studies

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