Artwork Information

A Man of the Seventies 1974 further ironizes masculinity by showing a slim-hipped, tight-jeaned and longhaired young male. By opposing his hairless chest, tight synthetic shirt and sultry full-lipped expression with the artwork’s deliberately satirical title, Nigro indicates how much our notions of hippies as long haired sissies was still the way that New Zealand coped with young adult males who did not fit with the visual niche of our once brawny and beefed-up All Blacks. Her vision of the 70s male now corresponds with the clothing and body language currently favoured by our present-day sportsmen who seem more confident in living within a more relaxed sexual identity.