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Melanie Bühler. Foto: Flavio Karrer
2026
Melanie Bühler: “What does it mean to be a man today?”
In connection with the opening of the exhibition 'Beyond the Manosphere, Masculinities Today' at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, which includes the work Garden with Pomegranate (1975) curator Melanie Bühler wrote the following about Melle:
Melanie Bühler. Foto: Flavio Karrer
What does it mean to be a man today? This question has become increasingly urgent with the rise of the "manosphere," a loose network of online spaces where a brash, misogynistic masculinity is asserted that, to many, feels threatening. Fueled by the spread of Trumpism, this brand of masculinity has become increasingly mainstream.
Providing a counterpoint to such developments, this exhibition departs from the notion of the manosphere andreads it against the grain, asking: If we were to imagine masculinity itself as a “sphere,” what would we see inside of it?
Melanie Bühler. Foto: Flavio Karrer
Through selected works from the collection of the Stedelijk Museum, loans, and new commissions, Manospherecritica
Melle—born Melle Oldeboerrigter in 1908 in Amsterdam, where he also died in 1976—paints absurd landscapes in which the penis, fantastical and isolated, is a recurring symbol. Melle saw the world as overloaded with male sexual energy. The loneliness of the phalluses depicted, overdetermined by their sexuality, might be said to resonate with how boys and men are framed by many as victims of a “crisis of masculinity,” trapped by their sexual desires, having no way to channel them.
Garden with Pomegranate, 1975. Collection Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam