Scottish National Portrait Gallery exhibition looks at 500 years of men`s fashion, image and identity
(Artdaily.org)

The evolution of men’s fashion, masculine identity and the male self-image over the last 500 years is the subject of a provocative and engrossing new exhibition which opened at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh this summer. While many investigations into the themes of beauty, image and fashion have focussed on women, Looking Good: The Male Gaze from Van Dyck to Lucian Freud explores the ways in which men have, to an equal degree, indulged their enthusiasm for fashionable clothes, careful grooming and elaborate hair styling, and in doing so, have projected seductive and impressive images of themselves to the world. Looking Good features portraits of ‘stylish’ men – from elaborately attired courtiers of the 16th- and 17th centuries to icons of our own image-saturated and celebrity-obsessed age, such as David Beckham and Tinie Tempah – whose carefully composed appearance