iMuseo Nacional de San CarlosTabacalera, Cuauhtémoc
El imaginario del cuerpo heroico y sus avatares
This exhibition has ended.
"The Heroic Body and Its Avatars": artworks, teaching casts, imagery and audiovisual media critically tracing the Western classical ideal of the (male) body.
Museum websiteMore in Mexico City
Near the start stand two plaster athletes, the Doryphoros and a resting Discobolus: copies of Greek sculptures from the 5th and 4th centuries BC, sent to the Academia de San Carlos so students could learn the body by drawing them. You still can. The museum has set aside spaces for live drawing in front of the sculptures.
About 130 pieces follow that ideal forward in four sections: the ideal, the hero's path, agony and glory. Manuel Vilar gives the Tlaxcalan warrior Tlahuicole a European classical body. Then come Soviet posters, bodybuilders from the 1953 Mister Latinoamérica contest in Mexico City, Leni Riefenstahl's 1936 Olympics films and Rocky's run up the Philadelphia museum steps. Somewhere in there is most of what your gym's mirror wall still sells.
Director and curator Jorge Reynoso Pohlenz puts the male body at the centre and reads the ideal critically. Entry is MXN 75, free on Sundays and for students, teachers and INAPAM holders. Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00 to 18:00, until 25 October.
Look for
The plaster Doryphoros
Look for the spear-carrier cast from a Greek original, one of the academy copies San Carlos students learned anatomy from.
Manuel Vilar's Tlahuicole
A bronze of the Tlaxcalan warrior by the Spanish sculptor, a Mexican hero given the musculature of a classical statue.
José Díaz's El rapto de Ganímedes
In La agonía, a sculpture of Ganymede being carried off, shown beside works by José de Ribera about bodies pushed to the limit.
Mister Latinoamérica, 1953
In El camino del héroe, prints of bodybuilders who competed in Mexico City, alongside Josep Renau's lithograph posters for workers' sports games.
Vernet's funeral games for Patroclus
In La gloria, Horace Vernet's painting of athletes competing at a hero's funeral, near a bust of Mercury and Soviet propaganda posters.
Good for
- Cheap Culture
- Nerding Out
- Rainy Days
Also at Museo Nacional de San Carlos
On now nearby
Nearby
Image credits
8
- Museo Nacional de San CarlosAlejandroLinaresGarcia / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Alexandre Estrela. RedSkyFalls: RéplicaCourtesy of Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC)
- El Códice de AzcatitlanCourtesy of Museo Nacional de Antropología
- Julian Rosefeldt. ManifestoCourtesy of Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC)
- Museo Mural Diego RiveraJosé Luiz / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Museo KaluzYmblanter / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Museo de Arte PopularAlejandroLinaresGarcia / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Museo Memoria y ToleranciaMuseo Memoria y Tolerancia / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0