The male nude has been at the centre of Western European art for the past two thousand years: although its place in the public arena has diminished in the post-war era, it stills retains the power to shock and to move audiences. The life-size figure with arms upraised, turns and looks Towards Another. The sensitively modelled surface is reminiscent of Rodin.

Pinacoteca Comunale Casa Rusca. | Septiembre 2016 – Enero 2017 | Locarno, Suiza.

Wine in Greece Greece is truly blessed. A country of great cultural heritage widely recognized for one of the 7-Wonders, the Acropolis, and other famous

Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Standing Youth, 1913; courtesy: Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York

Compiègne - Parc du château - Philoctète en proie à ses douleurs (Jean-Joseph Espercieux) fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philoct%C3%A8te

Ernesto de Fiori (Rom 1884 – 1945 São Paulo) „DER BOXER MAX SCHMELING“. 1928

Remembrance Sunday. On 11 November 2018, 93 years ago, the Armistice was signed that ended World War One. Four years later, on 3 July 1922, the Duke of York unveiled the Cambridge war memorial. Source: Geoff Jones' Flickr photostream. The larger-than-life bronze sculpture shows a bare-headed young man in the Cambridgeshire Regiment uniform of a private, walking purposefully and twisting his head to look towards his right. He smiles. He's not going off to war but returning from war. We can tell this from his jaunty stride, his bare head and the German helmet hanging from his back pack: a trophy taken from the enemy. And the stride is truly a stride: two inches longer than normal.1 In his right hand, the young man holds out his own wreathed helmet and a rose. Three other roses lie behind his feet, resting on the scroll bearing the artist's name. With his left hand, the soldier shoulders a rifle. From the rifle barrel hands a laurel wreath, symbol of victory. The Australian historian Ken Inglis calls the roses 'floral emblems of triumph' although I'm not sure what the exact symbolism of the rose is in this context.2 One side of the stone plinth bears the University of Cambridge's motto. The Latin means 'from here, light and sacred draughts'. A sculpture in use Every year on Remembrance Sunday, veterans, honoraries, the public and members of the armed forces gather around the sculpture to commemorate the British fallen, not only in World War One but in all wars since. As so often, art is central to a public ceremony. But what kind of art is this? Does the sculpture express national pomp and pride, or local grief and mourning? Or is there an uneasy disjunction between the sombre ritual and the vigorous young strider? Who was Robert T. Mackenzie? The sculptor, Robert Tait Mackenzie, was a Scottish-Canadian university professor of physical education. He was interested in anatomy and had been making bronze casts of athletes since the 1890s. Weirdly, he got his male students to pose for him in the nude. He made over 200 nude sporting bronzes. Mackenzie, The Sprinter, 1902 Mackenzie, The Shotputter, 1911 Mackenzie, The Sprinter and The Plunger, in stamp form Source: British North American Philatelic Society The sculptor's biographer Christopher Hussey speculated in 1929 that "living ... among well formed youths, whether lightly clad for exercise or stripped in the changing rooms" had turned Mackenzie to art.3 Indeed. 1886-7 Medals at McGill University, Montreal Source: Physical and Health Education Canada. Soldier or college athlete? The soldier on the War Memorial was supposedly a' carefully researched specimen of the "East Anglian racial type"'. 1. Mackenzie used studies of students from Christ's College in Cambridge for the head. More gown than East-Anglian town, I should think. From W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, 1899 This statue is certainly not the sad, tired, shell-shocked veteran, known from photographs. Source: Imperial War Museum. part of "GEISER THEODORE (MONS) COLLECTION" (photographs) Made by: German official photographer 1918-03 British prisoner of war captured by the Germans during the offensive. Source: Imperial War museum. part of "GEISER THEODORE (MONS) COLLECTION" (photographs) 1918 A shell-shocked British soldier captured by the Germans Instead, he is a fit, healthy and confident university-educated sportsman. I'm not sure if today's onlookers and participants appreciated that they were gathered around an 'East Anglian racial type', based on studies of athletic undergraduates. Title of sculpture: The Homecoming Sculptor: Robert Tait Mackenzie, a Scottish-Canadian sculptor and Professor of Physical Education and Physical Therapy at the University of Pennsylvania Date: 1922 Where? Hills Road, junction with Station Road, outside the Botanical Garden More: For more photos of the Remembrance Day ceremony, check out Sir Cam's atmospheric series. For thousands more memorials, visit the War Memorials Archive. References 1 D. Boorman, At the Going Down of the Sun: British First World War Memorials, York: Ebor Press, 1988, p.242 ↩ 2 K.S. Inglis, 'The Homecoming: The War Memorial Movement in Cambridge, England', Journal of Contemporary History,/i>, vol. 27, 1992, p.583. ↩ 3 Quoted in N. Penny, 'English Sculpture and the First World War', Oxford Art Journal, Nov. 1981, p.38. ↩ Permalink: http://artincambridge.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/the-peculiar-history-of-cambridge-war.html

If you want to admire nice male Olympic athletes sculptures, we suggest you travel to Rome (Italy) where is probably the largest outdoor collection of double-than-life-size (12 feet) white marble sculptures, most of them naked or with just some accessories. Just go to their Stadio dei Marmi (Marbles' stadium), in the North of the city. White marble sculpture detail - photo by Petr Svarc White marble sculpture detail - photo by Petr Svarc It is located in the 'Foro Italico', a large sport complex which includes a running track, a soccer field, the Sports stadium, and an Olympic stadium, all designed in the 1920s by Enrico Del Debbio, and built during Mussolini's fascist period in Italy. It is a beautiful location on the banks of the Tiber river, surrounded by the nice hill of Monte Mario. Some bronze fig leaves have been added to cover the athletes' nudity. Next to it was the Academy of Physical Education, which today is the seat of the Italian Olympic Committee. We will see in another post some mosaics from that Academy building. Handball player - Sculpture by Bernardo Morescalchi - 1931 - photo by Petr Svarc Archer - Sculpture by Bernardo Morescalchi (1895-1975) - 1932 It took 8 years to be achieved. Each sculpture was offered by a province of Italy. The stadium was inaugurated in 1932. Ancient Warrior - sculpture made by Aroldo Bellini (1902-1984) - 1932 More recently, it hosted some of the field hockey preliminaries for the 1960 Summer Olympics, and the Stadio dei Marmi was also the host for the 2009 World Aquatics Championship's opening ceremony. Hercules - Sculpture made by Silvio Canevari (1893-1932) - 1931

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