The human body itself as a sculpture? I came across this idea when I was looking at the pictures of Gaetan Caputo, a Photographer from Brussels. His female body builder series are showing us a woman’s torso with a large bunch of muscles.
What a dedication someone must have to shape and reshape their own body to that size. And what about the result? The female body builder that’s posing on these images did surely cross the line of what the general public, if such a thing exist, finds attractive. But there are a lot of people, both male and female, working on their body this way. And there are also a lot of admirers out there that are considering body building a true form of body art.
Shaping muscles has always been the area of males throughout history. In art there are lot’s of examples of the admiration of muscled males. But for females it was an entirely other story. They were supposed to have feminine shapes, large hips and big breasts. With some variations on this theme now and then. But the muscled female is something of resend years. Spreading as a side effect of the health culture in the western world. If it is really healthy I don’t know, and if it is beautiful, well let’s say that’s in the eye of the beholder. But I do find it interesting that people are transforming themselves in to something they think is beautiful. And if you like it or not, it is one of the most direct forms of self expression I can imagine. And when I consider self expression one of the basics of art, then probably body art is a proper term to use in this context.
Thinking about this term, body art, it makes me curious of other ways of using the body itself as a form of art. So I guess the search continues.
The female body builder series of Gaetan Caputo
The Male body builder images from Photogenic
