brad@bradguarino.com
When I was a kid, I wanted to be a garbage man when I grew up, because garbage men were strong, drove a big truck, and did something that was useful. It was a respectable occupation, something decent, clear and practical. And it seemed very manly. For a young boy, the idea that he would someday grow up to be manly was an important source of self-assurance.
I remember the first time I heard the word “homo.” I asked a friend what it meant. He said it was a “man who isn’t a man.” The way he said it made it sound horrible. Although I was not gay, much of my childhood energy was spent dissimulating behaviors that could be interpreted as effeminate. By the time I had reached adolescence, I had learned many lessons about heterosexual male identity, yet I knew very little about what a man was; most of my education concerned what he was not.
Much of what boys learn about the codes of conduct for appropriate masculine behavior is rooted in fear and ignorance, and their role models are often less enlightened about these matters than they appear. For many boys, childhood and adolescence are consumed with the search for the perfect masculine performance—one that suits them but also projects an image to the rest of the world that they are authentic men.
Boyhood ideas of manhood are straightforward, but reductive—being a man is more complex than being strong, useful, and good—and they do not account for individual differences and alternative masculinities. But ideologies set in childhood are enduring, and we carry vestiges of these expectations and fears throughout our lives. My work explores these lingering cultural constructs of masculinity and how they affect the way men act and relate to one another. The figures in my compositions are drawn or painted from photo-based collages made by recombining parts from various images of men. These images come from the mass media and from my own photographs. The collage process references how boys form their concept of male roles—by piecing together the perceived characteristics of cultural icons and stereotypes with those of influential men in their lives. The awkwardness of the figures resulting from this method reflect both the struggle men face to integrate these disparate qualities and the difficulties they encounter in their efforts to live up to society’s ambiguous role expectations.