Batman, the dark knight of Gotham city, is the inspiration for the sculpture “Stillman”. With great craftsmanship Martin Gut re-worked a standing batman figurine into a caring father, sitting on the edge of the pedestal nursing his baby.
He is – as the double meaning in the title suggests – still a man (in German “Stillen” means to Breast feed). Art history is overflowing with images of the breastfeeding mother. Just think of the countless images of the breastfeeding Mary (maria lactans) glorified in Christian iconography. On the other hand, it is rare to find images of the breastfeeding man because he contradicts our binary understanding of gender.
Yet the male breast has all the physiological prerequisites for breastfeeding: The naturalist Alexander von Humboldt reported about a farmer in a village in Venezuela who breastfed his son with his own milk:
When the mother became ill, the father, in order to calm the child, took him to his bed and pressed him to his breast. Lozano was 32 years old and until then had not felt any milk in the breast; but the irritation of the nipple on which the child sucked caused an accumulation of this liquid. The milk was fatty and very sweet. The father, amazed at the swelling of his breast, handed it to the child and breastfed him two or three times a day for five months.
And Humboldt notes that Lozano's lactation had no effect whatsoever on his other physiological characteristics as a man - he's still a man.
– In the popular culture universe of superheroes and action heroes, it has become fashionable to replace the worn-out male specimens with female fighters like Wonder Woman or Lara Croft.
Martin Gut takes the feminist message “We can do it too” but unexpectedly turns it on its head, thus cryptically questioning traditional male role models - that's what makes gendering fun!
Guy Markowitsch, on the occasion of the vernissage at Galerie Vitrine, 2020
Stillman