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Cheers! My name is Pedro Leão, and I'm a male artist.
There was a time when power, knowledge and providing for one's family were ideas specifically
associated with men. But in the mid-twentieth century, women began venturing into these and other
traditionaly male activities and behaviours. Feminism was a movement of self-analysis.
In their quest for equal rights, women learned a lot about themselves and what it is to be a woman.
During the Second World War, with most men fighting in the trenches, women back home
were discovering that they could do everything a man could. Sometimes even better!
We're half a century later, and women are managing businesses as CEOs, and even
running countries as presidents and chancellors such as Cristina Kirchner in Argentina
and Angela Merkel in Germany. It's a great time for women.
But what about men?
In the past fifty years, we witnessed as social and political change made the old paragons of
manhood become obsolete and ridiculous. Feminism preached equal rights to women, and the idea of
man as the political gender with exclusive rights ceased to exist. The pointlessness of the last
wars fought by the USA turned the archetype of the soldier, the fighting man, into a stupid brute.
And when men turned to their fathers for guidance and wisdom, they found industrialization had
them working in factories and offices all day long.
They were absent fathers who taught them nothing about manhood.
Gradually, they became the Homer Simpsons of the world. Surrounded by more capable women while they
were constantly made the butt of the joke. Warren Farrel once wrote that "In the past quarter
century, we exposed biases against other races and called it racism, and we exposed biases against
women and called it sexism. Biases against men we call humor."
As women raised their own awareness of the issues regarding the female gender and started standing
up for themselves, the younger generation of men took for granted that they would one day rule the world.
They sunk back into apathy, only to wake up to a complete role reversal.
And you know what? In my opinion, they deserved it.
And I don't mean it as revenge for the years men spent bullying women, but because of their complacency.
Of course, not all men just sat back and ignored the red flags going up. In the United States,
some men began discussing male issues as early on as the 1970's with Warren Farrell's book
"The Liberated Man", where he discussed the dynamics in families with working mothers and
care-giving fathers. Robert Johnson wrote "He: understanding Male Psychology" in 1989, where he
explored male psychology based on the myth of Parsifal and the quest for the Holy Grail.
But it wasn't until the 90's that the discussion really caught on. Robert Bly, wrote "Iron John: A Book About
Men" in the 1990's. His work is considered as what started the Mythopoetic men's movement in the US.
In Iron John, Bly explores the absence of the mentor or father figure in male upbringing starting in the industrial age.
As more and more books began to sprout about the subject, the term "Masculism" surfaced to define
the work of these authors. By the turn of the century, it encompassed literary, philosophical,
sociological and legal areas. But alas, it also started gathering critiques. The most notable of
these came from feminist groups considering Masculism to me a sort of backlash against Feminism,
an attempt to reverse the victories of the Feminist movement. They usually target what became known as
"Patriarchal Masculism", a subdivision of the Masculist movement that indeed sought to enphasize and
defend traditional male gender roles. But the core principle of the Masculist movement has never
been to reverse the women's movement, but to accelerate it and extend it's principles of self-awareness
to the male gender as well. Warren Farrel, who wrote "The Liberated Man" in 1974, was initially a
supporter of the Feminist movement himself and even today, is still active on both fronts.
"Progressive Masculism", as the main subdivision of the movement is called, struggles for gender
egalitarianism, a way for both genders to coexist in a respectful relationship.
Here in Brazil, although the movement itself is still widely unknown, there have been the first few
personalities to address the issues of manhood. Ivan Martins writes articles for local ÉPOCA magazine,
often commenting on gender issues from the male perspective. Last year, renowned psychoanalist
Contardo Calligaris, who writes a weekly column for local newspaper Folha de São Paulo, had his
monologue "O Homem da Tarja Preta" (The Censor Strip Man) enacted for five months. In the monologue,
as well as in his weekly column, Calligaris goes straight to the point in confronting the confusion
of what it means to be a man today, the pressures, contradictions and obligations. On the internet,
the site Papo de Homem (Man Talk) was launched in 2006, a sort of lifestyle magazine for the modern man.
Although some of it's collaborators tend to adopt points of view of Patriarchal Masculism, most
of the site discusses relevant issues and tips for contemporary men.
It is noticeable that in Brazil, the gender discussion still revolves largely around *** orientation
and practices and around men's relation to women. Calligaris' monologue, for example, spends minutes
debating why there seems to be such a wide array of labels to male sexuality, you have the straight,
bissexual, transvestite, drag queen, ***, passive or active homossexual, metrossexual,
überssexual... While women seem to be plainly straight, bissexual or lesbian.
Anyway, matters of manhood itself, like male upbringing and legal issues, are still less
frequently the target of media attention.
I took part in the selection process for the Chelsea MA Fine Arts program in 2009. My research project
stemmed from my personal experiences of displacement and inadequacy as a man after the
advent of twentieth century Feminism. Being raised by women babysitters, taught by women teachers,
hired by women employers. Meanwhile, adult men were mysterious beings who vanished early
in the morning and spent the day doing God knows what at the office,
insuficient role models for a young man.
What was my project? Simply put, I proposed comming to London to study the origins of the Feminist
movement first, and how it was translated into art over the years by Europeans like Nikki de
Saint Phalle and her shooting paintings, for example. After that, I'll wish to establish guidelines
for Masculist art and end my MA project with an exhibit, both of my own work, and that of other UAL
students who fit the guidelines. My project was highly recommended by my interviewer. However,
the tuition fees for the course were more than I could pay. After being accepted into Chelsea,
I applied for one of 16 scholarship grants created that year. However, my application wasn't successful.
And I believed that was largely due to the fact that I had a very good idea, but almost no previous
production to back me up on it. After all, I had only just begun thinking and reading about the subject.
So I deferred for a year, to do some initial research and produce what I thought could be the first
Masculist works of art. I am currently finishing a painting based on Robert Anderson's play "Tea and
Sympathy", where a young and fragile man's masculinity is scrutinized by his peers. It is part of an
art project that has lasted for five months now, a hommage to my grandparents, who were amidst the
first professional actors in Brazil. These paintings will be part of a small solo exhibit in August,
just before I leave for London.
Please feel free to take a look at my flash presentation, if you haven't done so already.
It contains some of the work I've been doing in the past year, as well as my personal take on the
issues I believe should be addressed by Masculist art.
The time for this project is now! These issues are gaining the media and I don't know of any other
institution that has a specific project to deal with them in the area of Fine Arts.
We can make Chelsea the first of it's kind.
Thank you very much for your time, and I'm looking forward to meeting you all very soon.