Big Man Reprise

[This post originally appeared here in March of 2010.]

About five weeks (and six years) ago I wrote a post titled Big Week. With that post I used a photo of an art work titled Big Man.

I added the following credit to that post: Ron Mueck (Australian, b. 1958). Big Man, 2000. Mixed media, 80 x 47 1/2 x 80 1/2 in. (203.2 x 120.7 x 204.5 cm). Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

But that was clearly not enough. I get a lot of comments about the images I use on this blog but the Big Man generated a small but powerful wave of communication from many diverse places.

Yes, he does look like me or I like he, whichever. So here are more views of the Big Man, including a short video, if you are interested.

And yes, I did use that first picture, the face and hand only, as my look-alike on Facebook for several years.

This last one conveys the feeling I get sometimes when I go looking for companionship, partnership or perhaps love via an online dating service. I call it: Naked Scrutiny.

As of December 2016 that original post has been viewed over 6,000 times, the most eyeballs of any post I have made here in nearly 10 years.

Big Man Revisited

As regular readers know I have an affinity for this sculpture by Ron Mueck. "Big Man" either looks like me or I like him. In several alternative poses I believe he speaks to some essential emotions I experience in my life. Today, however, I have a slightly different take on this piece of art.

I have mentioned in the past that I read Discovery magazine several years in arrears when my friend Gary passes along his old subscription copies. So recently I was surprised to see the "Big Man" on the cover of the February 2007 issue. The accompanying article was about killer fat and visceral obesity. What interested me, however, was the reader response in the April issue's letters to the editor. Here are two samples:

#1 I find the cover of the February issue of Discover highly offensive. In fact, I was embarrassed to find it in my mailbox. While I know it may be someone's art, it is my pornography. If I want a fat, naked man in my mailbox, I will order him.

#2 The cover kinda scared me when I first saw it. I was like, whoa, there's a naked dude on the front. I showed to to my mom, and she said, "Is that your father?" The glare he is giving looks exactly like the one my father gives me when he is disappointed. Kudos for the man on the cover.

"One man's poison is another man's bread." A phrase my father, a druggist, identified strongly with. In that vein, I couldn't agree more with the responses to the Big Man in all of his large, naked glory.