Charles Atlas

by Charles Atlas (Contributor), Raphael Gygax (Editor), Jennifer Harris (Contributor)

For almost 50 years, New York–based artist Charles Atlas (born 1949) has been a leading figure in film and video art, creating seminal works documenting dance and performance art, involving choreographers such as Merce Cunningham and Michael Clark, as well as the fashion designer and performance artist Leigh Bowery. His network of collaborators and associates largely coincides with his circle of many of his works from the 1980s and 1990s are portraits of fellow protagonists of the New York underground scene and the contemporary milieu, employing a sub- and pop-cultural idiom to scrutinize aspects of bio-power and the politics of bodies and identity. The publication features commissioned essays by art historians and curators, reflecting on Atlas’ strategies and the themes that have shaped his oeuvre over the years.

128 pages, Hardcover

Published April 23, 2019

About the author

Charles Atlas (born Angelo Siciliano) was an Italian-American bodybuilder best remembered as the developer of a bodybuilding method and its associated exercise program which spawned a landmark advertising campaign featuring his name and likeness; it has been described as one of the longest-lasting and most memorable ad campaigns of all time.

Atlas trained himself to develop his body from that of a "scrawny weakling", eventually becoming the most popular bodybuilder of his day. He took the name "Charles Atlas" after a friend told him that he resembled the statue of Atlas on top of a hotel in Coney Island and legally changed his name in 1922. He marketed his first bodybuilding course with health and fitness writer Dr. Frederick Tilney in November 1922. The duo ran the company out of Tilney's home for the first six months. In 1929, Tilney sold his half of the business to advertising man Charles P. Roman and moved to Florida. Charles Atlas Ltd. was founded in 1929 and, as of 2020, continues to market a fitness program for the "97-pound weakling" (44 kg). The company is now owned by Jeffrey C. Hogue.