“No image in our culture invokes a more power taboo than the male nude.” – Edward Lucie-Smith, Adam: The Male Figure in Art
ADAM: The Male Figure in Art by Edward Lucie-Smith (Rizzoli, 1998) explores the history of the male figure in art across a wide range of media, including statuary, fine art, photography, pen-and-ink drawing, pop art, and more. It examines themes such as strength, vulnerability, and eroticism. The book traces the heroic nude from ancient Rome to the 1950s “peplum” films, shows the softer, feminized male in French rococo paintings, explains how artists overcame Christian taboos on nudity in scenes of the crucifixion and martyrdom, and explores how Baroque artists exaggerated male features to depict Herculean, heroic figures.
Adam is an interesting but somewhat uneven work. Although the subject matter is rich, the art and models quite diversified, creating a visually compelling collection, the book falls short of delivering a fully coherent and meaningful historical narrative.
One of the book’s central problems is its unclear and unfocused approach. Despite its title, the work often feels less concerned with a sustained examination of the male figure than with abstract theorizing and academic commentary. Adam frequently moves away from close visual analysis into broader discussions of art theory and cultural criticism, which, while interesting to those that appreciate this type of analytic deconstruction (such as myself), it can obscure the very subject the book claims to foreground.
As a result, the male body itself sometimes feels oddly absent, replaced by layers of interpretation that are only loosely connected to specific artworks.
Another odd aspect of the book is that many of the works Lucie-Smith discusses are not illustrated. Conversely, some of the reproduced images are by artists who are barely mentioned or not discussed at all. As a result, fully understanding the text often requires looking up artworks elsewhere. The purpose of some of the included images therefore remains ambiguous; they may be present primarily for their visual impact, or simply because the publisher had permission to reproduce them. I am not entirely frustrated by this, however, as I would rather see beautiful, transgressive, and thought-provoking images of maleness included than have them omitted due to limited space for detailed textual exposition of every work presented.
When all is said and done, the book succeeds as a thematic overview of the changing image of masculinity across time. Lucie-Smith traces the metamorphosis of the male figure through different historical periods, offering reflections on how cultural values shape bodily ideals. While these observations are often more suggestive than exhaustive, they provide an engaging sense of how representations of men have evolved in response to social and artistic change.
Ultimately, Adam: The Male Figure in Art contains intelligent observations and moments of sharp analysis, but its academic density and lack of clear focus prevent it from becoming a fully realized or comprehensive study. For readers interested in theoretical perspectives on sexuality, gender, and masculinity, and in how femininity can be intertwined with these ideas in some representations of men, the book is still quite rewarding. And for all intents and purposes, it is a beautiful coffee-table art book, much like The Male Nude edited by David Leddick, which I featured in an earlier blog post.
