Plato – ideal beauty
Plato was a philosopher during 428 BC who at the time introduced the importance of good and how people at that time where doing it wrong. He done this through philosophising Beauty, justice, and equality, and introduced books for people to access to show them the reality of things, almost to prevent negative concepts that people may think, and even his ideas and writings apply to reality today.
Plato’s theory of beauty had referenced to NOT the beauty of art or with nature, it meant that beauty was the object of love. He explained this though athletes, who where skilled in their sport and loved to do it, which also came along with the physical craft. More importantly he had referred to the Greek Gods, and their Love for people, and their intelligence. They where depicted on statues as having perfect physique with high intelligence and perfect standards for justice. Plato said that they where humans who where like everyone else but had the understanding and intellect of all 3 of these things.
Robert Mapplethorpe
Some of his quotes include: “I don’t understand the way my pictures are … Taking a picture and sexuality are parallels. They’re both unknowns. And that’s what excites me most in life – the unknown.”
Also: “I studied paintings and sculptures. I never really studied photography when i was at school. Photography just kind of crept into me”.
This artists photography uses a lot of the physical appearance with positioning and lighting to show the beauty of the human body and what it is capable of. He references his work with some of the Greek sculptures and paintings that where done hundreds of years, even thousands of years ago. Robert does his own photography with fluent positioning, as if it wasn’t so forced but natural, he shows the images of the body without any identity put towards the person, some of them are anonymise and some aren’t, but both reference to the “beauty” of the human body.
Robert also focuses on specific parts of the human body, female and male, both presented with specific lighting for each muscle or body part, and of course they are in black and white because of the time these images where taken in. But his artistic skills come into play with the persons positioning, even the symmetry all come together to produce art. He presents identity in a natural way with all parts of the body being accepted and shown, as almost a way of showing people the acceptance of themselves.
Modern Day
Not all the time but a majority of the time, muscle represents masculinity, and is the most focused on to show masculinity. Competition wise, there is a lot of different sections for presenting muscles.. like different types of looks in what people might aim for and who is the best in that category but each shows different parts of the body.
Chris Bumstead & Arnold Schwarzenegger:
