Elliott Erwitt: Arnold Scharzenegger 1976

On February 1976, the New York's Whitney Museum did some pioneering with a symposium called "Articulate Muscle: The Male Body in Art"—a presentation of three Mr. Universe types as living objects of art. It was rather ironic that body building, a sport with a low repute in the USA at the time, was the one to bridge the gap between art and athletics and that its classical implications were substantial enough to be celebrated in a world-famous and highly respected museum. Yet the more than 2,500 people attending this exciting and ground-breaking esthetic happening left feeling as if they'd just been to a compulsory night-school class. There was so many people that the staff museum had to take cash and through it out on the floor. The event was inspired by a book called Pumping Iron, perhaps the first serious book ever written about body building. Its author, novelist and former weight lifter Charles Gaines, helped persuade the Whitney to organize the event and was a member of a panel chosen largely from the academic community to see and discuss the bodies of Frank Zane, Ed Corney and Arnold Schwarzenegger, not in athletic terms but as artists living inside their own creations. Gaines, an aristocratic Southerner who looks as if he ran a string of plantations in his spare time, is quoted in Pumping Iron as saying, "The body itself is an art medium: malleable, capable of being aesthetically dominated and formed the way clay is by a potter." When every available inch of floor space was occupied by sitting bodies—except for a central revolving platform where the musclemen would bare themselves to polite society—Charles Gaines and the professorial panel were introduced. Then came the star, the man the audience had been waiting for—Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was before he became first a celebrated actor in Hollywood, and then Governor of California. Gaines called him "the greatest body builder who ever lived." Schwarzenegger leaped onto the platform in skintight brown briefs, his body shining like the August moon. He was the tallest and biggest of the three, and the most impressive, despite the fact that he has not been in top shape since he retired last November. He drew wild applause when he sailed into a perfect imitation of The Thinker. When he finished posing, he threw up his arms and bounded off the platform while the audience cheered enthusiastically. Then he blew a kiss to his fans, in a sense simultaneously kissing off any detractors. The body builders dressed before reappearing to answer the panelists' charges. Unlike the panelists, they had no notes and spoke straight and clear. Maybe because they each carried big sticks—arms and legs—they spoke very softly, even graciously. Zane suggested that people who view him with antipathy must be "Projecting their own feelings of inadequacy" onto him. But neither he nor the other two men pretended that art was their main concern: they consider themselves primarily athletes. When Schwarzenegger spoke in his rich Austrian accent, he was glowing with obvious rapture. "I actually feel that I'm in heaven being here tonight," he said. "It is the greatest night of my life." The next day he was more qualified in his praise. He told some of his friends that he had ambivalent feelings about the whole thing. "In a personal sense it was terrific. But in every other way," he said, laughing, "it was a total disaster." Elliot captures the body of the star as a floating statue immerse with light, playing on the contrast with the darked room, where only Enlightened faces of laughing man break the darkness and very few women can be seen – you can try to count them but they are clearly less enthusiastic about the subject. See below for the number.