TORSO: Male Nude Ephebe Youth Sculpture by Lidbury

(ABOVE: Traditional Male Nude Torso Sculpture created by Malcolm Lidbury)

The TORSO: The youthful adolescent ephebe male torso has been a traditional starting point for the sculptor to practise figurative sculptural art. My own creation of a ephebe male youth torso (above image) is in keeping with that starting point of traditional classical sculptural fine art.

The torso is the part of the human body where the limbs are attached. Often in sculpture with the head and limbs omitted or removed; Some people also call it the trunk. It is made of chest, back, abdomen and in male sculptural representation may frequently include the genitals.

Classical Roman & Greek examples of torso statues & sculpture frequently found in great Museums and galleries.
Example: Torso of a youth: Metropolitan Museum of Art USA.

Another example: Torso Diadumenos in the Louvre Museum, Paris

A more contemporary Torso sculpture example Indiana University Purdue Indianapolis USA

Emasculation by hammer & chisel
There have been frequent lapses in history where by public art/sculpture has been irresponsibly defaced & vandalised by the removal of the genitals from bronze, marble & stone male statuary.

In 1530, the eruption of Counter Reformation fanaticism following the Renaissance, the edict of the Council of Trent forbade the depiction of genitals, buttocks and breasts in church art.

In 1557, the fig leaves were instituted by the bull of Pope Paul IV. Many of the fig leaves that we see were put in place on the personal initiative of Pope Innocent X (1644-1655) who, for reasons of his own, preferred metal leaves to the plaster ones. This Pope, to his credit, spared most of the art in the Vatican.

The Catholic Pope Pius IX in 1857 is reputed to have decided that the accurate representation of the flaccid male penis on the few remain unvandalised statues might by too homoerotic and incite lust inside the Vatican. So Pope Pius IX allegedly had remaining offending attachments hacked off male statue inside the Vatican. An act of criminal damage of some great classical works of art.

The fig leaves were promptly added by his successor to stop the iconoclasm.

All in all, the destructive campaign raged for 450 years and resulted in the destruction of much Catholic visual art.

However, I always find amusing the idea there may be a room somewhere in the vast Vatican City complex simply piled high with the remnant marble penis castrations left over from the various papal ravages.

Unfortunately, even today there are still those who would censor & suppress, even destroy art, history & culture, like the destruction of the Baniyan Buddas in 2001.

Including in Cornwall (UK) where I live, where the Cornish police prefer ignorance and intimidation to cultural enlightenment and have actively targeted with a view to prosecute artists for artistic depiction of the Male Nude. Despite this being contary to the Human Rights Act article 10. The right to freedom of expression, which includes art.

A Male nude watercolour painting which in 2004 homophobic Devon & Cornwall police
 attempted, but failed to prosecute the artist for creating

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In the begining..... My Male Nude Art, Paintings & Sculpture

Male Nude Watercolour painting by Lidbury which
Devon & Cornwall Police attempted but failed to prosecute him for in 2004

My Male Nude Art, Paintings & Sculpture

In the beginning...

It is fair to say my own Male Nude art has been influenced by classical Roman & Greek sculpture, also by the paintings of artists like Henry Scott Tuke RA, and photographic work of the likes of Robert Mapplethorpe & Baron Wilhelm von Glodeon.

It is also difficult to talk about my male nude art & sculpture without raising the issue of oppressive censorship of male nude art by homophobic & prejudicial actions of institutions like Devon & Cornwall Constabulary

In 2004, I used too run a successful internet business selling my own watercolour paintings of Male Nudes. I don’t anymore, following a protracted vicious homophobic vendetta carried out by Devon & Cornwall Constabulary in an ‘unsuccessful’ anti-gay motivated attempt to prosecute me for my male nude art.

(ABOVE:Watercolour paintings created by Lidbury for a South African HIV/AIDS charity. Devon & Cornwall Police withheld documentation stopping charitable sale off the paintings which police deemed as sexually offensive).


Cornwall police even prevented the sale by auction of my African themed watercolour paintings created on behalf of a South African HIV/AIDS charity.

Cornwall Police withheld documentation after the police forensics had deemed there were NO illegal images on my computer. Later Cornwall police had to admit in writing that malicious allegations which had been made against me were in fact false, but by then the damage had been done.

Devon & Cornwall Police later had to admit both in court & in a partial Independent Police Complaints Commission enquiry that there were no illegal images. However, Cornwall police have been abusive, uncooperative & obstructive in refusing to investigate the misconduct of police officers involved in multiple incidents since.

The severe impact & harrowingly traumatic adverse affect due to misconduct of numerous prejudicial & discriminatory Cornwall police officers lead directly to my actually attempting suicide.

I still have not recovered from this abusive trauma carried out by Cornwall’s homophobic police & it has severely adversely affected not only my life, but has adversely affected my family & friends, as well as intruded into the freedom to creatively express myself through my art.

(ABOVE: Another of Lidbury's watercolour paintings which Cornwall Police tried but failed to prosecute the artist for creating)

To this day I still suffer from a form of Agoraphobia & severe panic attacks as a direct result of a continued Cornwall police harassment which has been on going since 2004. I have been accessed by Health professionals who have deemed me logical & rational, but severely traumatised by the police instigated violence & incidents. These have included two violent assaults, the vandalism of my vehicles, theft from my home, intimidation threats against my elderly mother & her tenants, attempted blackmail, attempted extortion, death threats & threats of physical violence. ALL these crimes against me, my family & friends are as a result of the protected homophobic attitudes & practises which still operate within the Devon & Cornwall Constabulary.

As a result I am in receipt of Incapacity benefit for the Agoraphobia & severe heart attack like panic attacks and I do not leave my isolated rural home in Cornwall (UK) without a witness career to escort me. All this oppressive violence upon the creative spirit is as a result of the multiple incidents of Cornwall police dishonesty, prejudice & discrimination.

Unfortunately, my experience is not isolated but in common with that of 80% of persons surveyed by the IPCC who expressed dissatisfaction in that complaints against UK police are investigated unsatisfactorily. The police complaint system in the United Kingdom is deeply flawed, dishonest & highly abusive towards victims of police criminality & misconduct.

I know as fact of personal experience that it is not just in high profile cases police routinely lie, misrepresent the truth & are dishonest by using misinformation to cover up their police abuses of power & violence.

Example : In the police execution of Brazilian electrician Charles de Menezes in London Stockwell tube station or the police beating & violent assault upon Afghan British Army military war hero Mark Aspinall or the unlawful killing of innocent newspaper seller Ian Tomlinson following a beating to the ground by police

Since I physically & emotionally cannot paint anymore due to trauma induced panic attacks I still get as a result of the police misconduct, I now sculpt.

“Where art is censored, destroyed & books burnt, the oppression, destruction & burning of the people tends to follow”

It is fair to say that the extreme homophobic prejudice I have witnessed & experienced from named & identified Devon & Cornwall Police officers in recent years has influenced my determination to challenge prejudicial & discriminatory oppressive violations by Cornwall Police of the Human Rights Act, Right to Freedom of Expression(includes through art) & the Right to Freedom from Discrimination (includes sexuality when in conjunction with another article of the HRA).

(ABOVE: 'Gay Lovers' sculpture created by Malcolm Lidbury)

I may not be able to physically continue to paint any more as a result of Cornwall police multiple abuses & violence upon the spirit, but whilst I can, I will continue to creatively sculpt the naked male figure.