Martin de Crignis: The Beauty & The Boys

Male nudes have always been an expression of strength, beauty, and desire. Today, the naked male body is often viewed as a symbol of homosexual desire and is subject to a similar objectification within the community as the heterosexual female body — despite the social narrative of diversity and body positivity. This raises important questions: which bodies are worthy of representation, which poses stimulate desire — and whose desire is being aroused? We are exposed to a non-stop, endlessly repetitive production of images in everyday life. This has long since led to a standardisation of the masculine body image, but only few people can identify with the ideal of a slim, muscular, and angular figure. In his work the beauty & the boys, Martin de Crignis displays his own photographs of the bare male body in the context of historical nude depictions. He sets his own visual language against these archive photos: while it imitates the aesthetics of a reality format in which the portrayed persons seem to openly present themselves in a domestic setting, the staged poses contradict both the genre and the masculine body ideal. With this special juxtaposition of images and their conflicting aesthetics, de Crignis subtly touches on issues of body cult, naturalness, and masculinity in his exceptional artist’s book.