Nude for Thought is a London-based group of male artists who work with the concept of the male as a muse.

Focused on the male body, this exhibition allows visitors to experience a contemporary take on the historical portrayal of the male nude.

From 3 to 7 November Leyden Gallery presents re: Defining beauty. This exhibition invites the viewer to explore and celebrate the male nude from the point of view of Nude for Thought's fourteen artists. Nude for Thought are a London-based group of men who paint men, creating art from life with the male as a muse in the great tradition. Inspired by the British Museum exhibition Defining Beauty which examined the invention of the modern idea of the human body in art, the works presented have been created in a variety of traditional and non-traditional media to consider the male nude as "an object of beauty and bearer of meaning". There will be a performance by Roy Joseph Butler on Saturday 7 November from 11 - 12.30pm & 3-4.30pm.

Nude for Thought's Re: Defining beauty comes at a time when there is a rising international interest in the male nude, particularly following three large shows at major European Museums. In 2012, the Leopold Museum, Vienna, presented Naked Men, the first major exhibition focused exclusively in the male nude. In the words of of curator Tobias G. Natter, the exhibition highlighted “ that categories which had previously seemed established, such as ‘masculinity’, ‘body’ and ‘nakedness’, have today become unstable.”. This exhibition was followed in 2013 by Nude Men at The Ludwig Museum, Budapest and Masculine/Masculine at the Museum D’Orsay, Paris.

Focused on the male body, this exhibition allows visitors to experience a contemporary take on the historical portrayal of the other ‘beautiful sex’.

Re: Defining beauty sets out to reconsider the raw form of the naked male body and the ancient artistic tradition of the male nude seen as an object of beauty and bearer of meaning. The combined result is a collection that invokes questions of the terms beautiful, powerful, and masculine. These questions are prompted through the prism of pleasure and looking. Who can look and who can enjoy looking at the naked male form in the contemporary world of art? The exhibition will include two ticketed life-drawing events on Saturday 7 November.

Exhibiting a range of work from abstraction to realism, from digital animation to oil paintings, the works created for re: Defining beauty revisit the historic celebration of the male form, looking at modern man’s perception of himself.

'In portraying ideal types of beauty... you bring together from many models the most beautiful features of each' – Socrates

“Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter… it is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself.” - Oscar Wilde

Exhibiting artists: Jonathan Armour: photographs, Ed Bucknall: oil paintings, Marc Bush: drawings, Roy J Butler: performance, Andres Canovas: drawings, Brian Dennis: oil paintings, Richard Dickson: ceramics, Raymond Elliot: drawings, Neil Groom: paintings, Tim Healey: oil paintings, Martin Ireland: oil painting, Rupert Record: paintings, Barry Robison: oil paintings, Richard Roy: drawings.