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Christopher and His Wrestling Togs (Male Nude Athletes, Oil, Bruce Sargeant)

Christopher and His Wrestling Togs (Male Nude Athletes, Oil, Bruce Sargeant)

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Mark Beard
Christopher and His Wrestling Togs (Male Nude Athletes, Oil, Bruce Sargeant)
date unknown

About the Item

Academic style figurative nude oil painting of handsome male athletes in wrestling togs (singlet) Painted by Mark Beard as "Bruce Sargeant" Oil on canvas, signed upper left 23 x 11.5 inches unframed, 30 x 18 x 1 inches in silver frame This vertical, figurative portrait painting of two male athletes was painted by Mark Beard under his fictitious artistic persona, Bruce Sargeant. This painting is a perfect example of the style Mark Beard is perhaps most well known for, which include portraits depicting men engaging in sports or leisure activities, scantily clad in vintage attire. Beard's paintings offer an engaging story line that he leaves up to the viewer to imagine. He expertly captures each personality of his models, which he paints from life, often times in his Parisian studio. The figurative painting on canvas is framed in a silver frame measuring 30 x 18 inches and is signed in the upper left corner. Painted in a style that evokes the portraits of John Singer Sargent, Mark Beard is a living artist who paints under the pseudonym "Bruce Sargeant". Assuming the artist persona of Bruce Sargeant, an early twentieth century painter (who never actually existed), contemporary painter and sculptor Mark Beard teases the queerness out of an era in art history that often refused to acknowledge the homosexuality of its leading luminaries. Beard’s creative rewriting of history is outright convincing as he seizes the opportunity to insert bold visuals of homoeroticism into traditional academic painting style. Beard’s coquettish audacity coupled with a good dose of naughty humor results in delightful scenes of sexy men engaging in socially accepted environments such as on the field, on the hunt, or even in the locker rooms. Beard simultaneously paints the anatomy and sexuality of men with an ease and freedom that doesn’t exist in the historical texts. About the artist: Mark Beard is perhaps the most literal example of an artist pulled in so many different directions that he chose to “invent” six different personae in which to channel his overflowing energy and need for expression. Each painting style is radically different from the next, so it remains entirely believable that the work could stem from six completely different people of different time periods and different schools of thought. With a background in set design, Beard has always been one who could conjure total magic with anything available. For this exhibit, he returns as the beloved 20th century painter from England, Bruce Sargeant, featuring a parade of Arcadian scenes suggesting afternoons of young men sporting in the countryside, rowing, bicycling, hunting or wrestling. Clean shaven, well manicured youths pose casually, indulging every opportunity to display a titillating flex of stone-like musculature. Like modern Greek statues, Beard paints these prestigious figures oftentimes in pairs of twos and threes in a lazy state of beautiful passivity. Mark Beard keeps himself fresh with challenge, undertaking ambitious commissions and committing to weekly sketch sessions with live models in his Manhattan studio. The result of this dedicated practice is a stunning array of graphite and conte crayon drawings on Arches paper. A visit to Mark Beard’s studio is like discovering Michelangelo’s lair: oil paintings layer the walls, lifedrawings litter the table at the feet of heroic bronzes; ceramics, architectural maquettes are everywhere; virtuosity, in every medium. And then it gets even more interesting. Mark’s talent is so overflowing that, years ago, he needed to channel himself into alter egos. Mark invented the persona of “Bruce Sargeant,” an imagined English artist, contemporary of E. M. Forster, Rupert Brooke, and John Sloan. Mark also created Bruce Sargeant’s teacher, Hippolyte-Alexandre Michallon, a 19th-century French Academist. Michallon also taught Edith Thayer Cromwell, an American avant-gardeist; and Brechtolt Steeruwitz, the German Expressionist, a most complex personality. Peter Coulter, the newest persona, represents the "third generation" as he was taught briefly by Thayer Cromwell and Streerowitz. The style of each of these artists is individual, brilliant and true. Mark Beard is unprecedented, but not singular. Accomplished in every medium, he is more than a complete artist—he is at least six. Mark Beard, born in 1956 in Salt Lake city, now lives in New York City. His works are in museum collections worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City; the Museum of Modern Art, New York City; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City; the Boston Museum of Fine Arts; and the Harvard, Yale, and Princeton University Art Museums; among many others. We would not be the least bit surprised to see new ‘personas’ emerge in the coming years.

Creator:
Mark Beard (1956, American)
Creation Year:
date unknown
Dimensions:
Height: 30 in (76.2 cm)Width: 18 in (45.72 cm)Depth: 1 in (2.54 cm)
Medium:
Canvas,Oil
Movement & Style:
Academic
Period:
2010-
Condition:
Gallery Location:
Hudson, NY
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU2275178272

Shop All Mark Beard

Mark Beard

Contemporary New York City-based artist Mark Beard has long demonstrated command in a variety of mediums — he works in oil paint, bronze, ceramics and more. Beard is known mainly for his portraits and figurative paintings, but he is prolific in figurative drawing and nude photography as well.

Beard was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. In 1986, he began working as a set designer, and for the next decade, he created more than 20 sets in New York City, London, Frankfurt, Vienna and Cologne. As a painter and printmaker, Beard didn’t wish to confine himself to a rigid style and instead sought to explore Impressionism, Art Nouveau and other movements in a range of mediums. In order to freely move from one style to the next, Beard created several different personas, assigning a specific biography to each one.

Beard's most prominent artistic alter ego is Bruce Sargeant, whom the artist has positioned in exhibitions as an early 20th-century painter. Beard's work as Sargeant is a detailed study of the male physique. The paintings often feature sculpted athletic men engaged in physical activities like wrestling and rowing. The work is steeped in homoeroticism, and the artist’s name itself is a reference to painter John Singer Sargent — while he’s best known for his Edwardian-era portraits, John Singer Sargent also created murals and drawings of male nudes that were similarly reflective of a homoerotic sensibility.

Beard is also an accomplished landscape painter. His great-grandfather, George Beard, was a regional painter and photographer of the Rocky Mountains. Mark spent summers at his grandfather's 19th-century log cabin retreat as a child. These formative experiences are reflected in his own stunning landscape paintings.

Beard's artwork is held in many high-profile museum collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Today, Beard resides in the Manhattan loft that he purchased in 1994 with his partner, James Manfred. It serves as both his home and his studio. The space is filled with his oil paintings, drawings and sculptures.

On 1stDibs, find Mark Beard paintings, drawings, photography and more.

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