At the Met yesterday, a theme: the artist and the model in encounter--Pablo Picasso and his lover Fernande Olivier, Suzanne Valadon and her Reclining Nude, Paul Cezanne and his wife in their sitting room of an evening.
The first job of the representational artist is looking, and of the model, being looked at. Hours, days, or longer, the model has to hold a pose, dressed or undressed, and wait while the artist captures what is interesting about posture and expression, as well as skin and hair color and body form, beauty-spots and blemishes.
The Boston Figurative Art Center which I came across through Meetup sent me an email saying Thea would be model for the last drawing session of the year, clearly a well-known and favorite model.
What does a model think of while posing? The straightness of her stitches in the case of the prim Mme. Cezanne bent over her sewing; why is he examining me as I just do my work? The fact that the artist was once model like herself is maybe what the pensive, fleshy naked woman reclining on the couch must have thought of the self-taught Mlle.Valadon; perhaps I can do the same.. The loyal Mlle. Olivier, an artist in her own right, unclothed on an armchair; why is my talented lover tuning my classically beautiful face and abundant hair into a collection of angular blocks and ridges?
The artist use bodies to launch their personal visions, but where is the model when the impression has been taken and taken flight? Still clothed with the same body or garb, still with chores to do or places to go. Meanwhile the picture, or in the case of Olivier, the sculpted bust as well, take on their independent lives in studios and galleries and museums. Model are left behind, unless they find models of their own.
I can imagine an exasperation, or quizzicality, or resentment in these models as they see what had been done to their visual images, the way they looked. You, they might say to the man or woman behind the canvas or sketch pad, do you see who I am beyond the plaything surface? Models often like doing what they do, and even set up housekeeping with their painters, or else write memoirs. Between posing sessions, and even during, the inner person breaks through, perhaps inevitably and incessantly.
Perhaps the gift of the model is just to be still so the surface can be captured and contemplated. I've been frustrated when people I've tried to sketch don't stay still for more than a few seconds. That line I liked and longed to capture is now gone, another in its places. The configurations change; aspects succeed each other.
There's a financial component to the relationship but there's more. You to whose beauty I wish to do justice, says the artist, and you who gathers up all my ephemeral visual effluvia and assembles them into something noteworthy, says the model: let us collaborate to create.
The first job of the representational artist is looking, and of the model, being looked at. Hours, days, or longer, the model has to hold a pose, dressed or undressed, and wait while the artist captures what is interesting about posture and expression, as well as skin and hair color and body form, beauty-spots and blemishes.
The Boston Figurative Art Center which I came across through Meetup sent me an email saying Thea would be model for the last drawing session of the year, clearly a well-known and favorite model.
What does a model think of while posing? The straightness of her stitches in the case of the prim Mme. Cezanne bent over her sewing; why is he examining me as I just do my work? The fact that the artist was once model like herself is maybe what the pensive, fleshy naked woman reclining on the couch must have thought of the self-taught Mlle.Valadon; perhaps I can do the same.. The loyal Mlle. Olivier, an artist in her own right, unclothed on an armchair; why is my talented lover tuning my classically beautiful face and abundant hair into a collection of angular blocks and ridges?
The artist use bodies to launch their personal visions, but where is the model when the impression has been taken and taken flight? Still clothed with the same body or garb, still with chores to do or places to go. Meanwhile the picture, or in the case of Olivier, the sculpted bust as well, take on their independent lives in studios and galleries and museums. Model are left behind, unless they find models of their own.
I can imagine an exasperation, or quizzicality, or resentment in these models as they see what had been done to their visual images, the way they looked. You, they might say to the man or woman behind the canvas or sketch pad, do you see who I am beyond the plaything surface? Models often like doing what they do, and even set up housekeeping with their painters, or else write memoirs. Between posing sessions, and even during, the inner person breaks through, perhaps inevitably and incessantly.
Perhaps the gift of the model is just to be still so the surface can be captured and contemplated. I've been frustrated when people I've tried to sketch don't stay still for more than a few seconds. That line I liked and longed to capture is now gone, another in its places. The configurations change; aspects succeed each other.
There's a financial component to the relationship but there's more. You to whose beauty I wish to do justice, says the artist, and you who gathers up all my ephemeral visual effluvia and assembles them into something noteworthy, says the model: let us collaborate to create.
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