Many of us must have been told at some point that if you ever feel intimidated by a powerful man, just imagine him standing in front of you stark naked. In Striking a Pose Anita Kunz provides us with plenty of inspiration and support, with more than a hundred well-known men stripped of all their sartorial protection.

Inspired by her own art students' struggles and triumphs with nude life drawing, she turns her brushes to speculative portraits of famous figures, stripped of their vanities and as unpretentiously posed as life models. Alone or grouped, male marvels and monsters and musicians stand, lean and sit for the imaginary eye of the acclaimed painter and illustrator. Drawn with a casual wit, Kunz's caricatures combine with naturalism to undercut the mystique of her subjects. The well-known faces become less significant than the unknown bodies, as though the celebrities and creators are descending from their pedestals in order to pose.

Striking a Pose offers a feminist flip on the role of the nude model, upending historical gender prejudices within the fine art world while also finding welcoming humour in the bathos and vulnerability of the naked male body.

We have included just twenty of Kunz’s chosen ‘models’; the 148-page book, published by Fantagraphics, can be ordered from any good bookshop or online.