Fitness of Art: The Body Subject

Bodies on bodies— Of ink, of flesh, of stone.

Fragment of grave relief, Greek hoplite. The behind of the Hercules Farnese. Pompeian Fresco. Statue of Antinous. William Adolphe Bouguereau. Self Portrait of Egon Schiele.

3 a.m. and I wake up for pee + oat bar. Just a month ago it would have been pee and mud cake, but my cholesterol levels have taught me otherwise. The night before I had been searching for some old photos on Google Photos and was suddenly faced with the reality of my weight gain. 2017, a (younger!) shiny face adorned with a smile and…abs. Noticeable abs. Sure, many feelings and questions have come to mind, namely “What happened?”, “Do I care?” and “I wish…”, but then, as a vision, in front of my (mental) eyes, Greek gods and goddesses.

We are bodies. The body is also both tool and lens with which we understand, aside from the world around us, markers such as gender, sexuality, and identity. But first of all, the body can be a mirror to the understanding of the body itself. Which is to say, in essence, us.

Human capacity for interpretation and understanding of the world is complex and moves precariously in balance between the objective and the subjective. Beauty itself might not be fully objective, but it often is (either as perceived, e.g. symmetry; or shared, e.g. trend). And it drives us: beauty gives us pleasure.

While the objectivity of beauty can be derived by what the majority of people in the world think as beautiful, and…