Friday, November 20, 2009

Hard Targets: Homoerotiscm and Sports


Here's some info on the show I brought up in class yesterday. The exhibition, Hard Targets, which was on view earlier this year at The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and explored images of masculinity (and homoeroticism) in profession sports. Here's the exhibition statement (courtesy of LACMA) and the picture above (Shaun El C. Leonard's Self Portrait (Promotional) courtesy of the artist), if you're interested there's more information and a wonderful essay by Christopher Bedford here:


Mark Bradford, Harun Farocki, Brian Jungen, Shaun Leonardo, Collier Schorr, and Joe Sola—the six artists included in Contemporary Projects 11: Hard Targets-Masculinity and Sport —all work to revise the time-honored archetype of the male athlete as an aggressive, overtly heterosexual, hyper-competitive, and emotionally remote subject. Instead, they offer opposing views of masculinity and sport, and of the entire theatre of athletic play, including the rituals and accoutrements that surround this intimate, male dominated world. Each examines the way masculinity is characterized and performed in a sporting context, and each suggests the existence of complex systems of desire and identification that accompany the way we view and consume athletes and sporting events
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