Male Trouble: A Crisis in Representation

Why did the male nude become an object of spectacle and erotic display in French painting and sculpture in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries? And why have art historians turned a blind eye to the "crisis" at this historical turning point in the representation of masculinity, away from idealized models to that of androgynous and feminized male nudes? Why was the male nude later eclipsed in art by the female nude? In this pioneering and compelling book, the author explores how the beautiful male body dominated neoclassical visual culture, and why it spoke so powerfully to male spectators. Whether in the guise of virile heroes or languishing adolescents, in both familiar and now-obscure works of art, the imagery of ideal masculinity raises important questions about the fashioning of masculinity itself, as evident in contemporary mass culture as in the elite culture of the past. Drawing on feminist, psychoanalytic, and critical theory, as well as art and cultural history, Solomon-Godeau proposes a radical reassessment of neoclassical visual culture.