Muscle Study 7.

Muscle Study 7 is a drawing of arm muscle – hand, forearm and bicep as seen from a foreshortened perspective, below the body. The composition includes the hand, arm and left side of a man’s torso, cropped from the rest of the body and silhouetted against a dark field.

Themes

This piece fits with the muscle study series – a group of works about bodybuilding and the process of physical transformation. These feature monochromatic drawings of various posing torsos – drawing of arm muscle and veining featuring prominently.

See this post – The Art Of Bodybuilding – for more on the themes surrounding this work.

“For some years I’ve been interested in the history of the male figure in Western art, but that’s not the main reason why I’ve started to make art about bodybuilding.

“It’s the actual process of transformation that I find interesting, and the determination behind that process. We’re all being physically transformed, whether we like it or not: children grow, we get old, and most of us get a bit fatter with time. Passive transformations like these happen to us without being noticed, until we end up in a very different state after a few years have gone by.

“Bodybuilding is a process of wilfully transforming from one state to another through a violent process; it’s the ripping of muscle fibres on a minute scale that creates the need for the muscles to repair and grow. There’s a fascinating force of will that goes into trying to control one’s body and manipulate it into something it would not naturally become.

Materials

Charcoal on paper drawing, mounted to A4 size.

Size

With the mount, this measures 21 cm high and 15cm wide.

Framing

This item will be delivered unframed unless otherwise requested. See framing options in a separate listing.

Related works

This work relates closely to Fight as well as the Muscle Study series.