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Introduction

Changing Poses

The Artist's Model
November 12, 2010 - June 6, 2011

Studying with live models has been a core element of art and design education at RISD since the school's earliest decades.
—Crawford Alexander Mann III, Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellow

Since ancient times, the model has been an essential aid for artists depicting the human figure. An artist's model could be female or male, amateur or professional, anonymous or intimately known, and of any age, body type, ethnicity, or class. These two galleries offer a chronological look at the model, from figure drawings made four centuries ago in Europe's oldest art academies to elaborately staged photographs produced within the last decade. Each work tells a unique story, inviting you to ask who these models are, why they were chosen, and what kind of exchange developed between artist and model during the creation of each image.

Drawn primarily from the Museum's permanent collection, Changing Poses: The Artist's Model reveals the variety of ways in which models have been assistants and muses for generations of artists. Exploring this history, you may recognize such period-specific themes and trends as the focus on the male nude within early art schools, the interest in costume in the 19th century as a signifier of cultural or class identity, the prevalence of the eroticized female body in modern art, and the recent dialogue between high art and fashion advertising. In addition, the model often participates in larger ongoing aesthetic and philosophical debates, most notably that between the real and the ideal. Does the artist see the model as a link to something tangible, natural, and true? Or is the model instead a starting point for stylistic experimentation or pursuit of a higher beauty?

This exhibition demonstrates that as the patterns and possibilities for working relationships between artists and models continue to expand and evolve, they also remain in dialogue with the past. The practice of working from the model links artists across time-informing, inspiring, and guiding many of the greatest figures in the history of art.

Selected Objects

Anton Løvenberg

Seated Male Nude, Sketching, ca. 1845-1850

Italian

Study of Seated Male Figure, 1680 - 1750

George Wesley Bellows

Nude Boy: Hand over Head, study for Riverfront No. 1, 1915
No Image Available

George Grosz

Man with Nude, 1933

Eric Gill

Pencil Sketch:Nude, 1926

François Boucher

A Warrior, ca. 1750

Bruce Bernard

Leigh Bowery and Nicola Bateman Posing for "And the Husband" by Lucian Freud, 1993

Josef Breitenbach

Academie de Sculpture, Paris, 1935

Rembrandt van Rijn

The Artist Drawing from the Model (Het Beeldt van Pigmalion), ca. 1639 (printed ca. 1652)
No Image Available

Eric Fischl, designer

Untitled, 1993

Norman Rockwell

I Meet the Body Beautiful, 1960

Paul Cadmus

Male Nude, TS5, 1954

Aaron Siskind

Bill Lipkind 33, 1960

Manuel Alvarez Bravo

The Good Reputation Sleeping (La Buena Fama Durmiendo), 1938

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

Little London Model, 1896

Marco Benefial

Study of a Decapitated Male Figure, mid 1700s

Jean-Pierre Sudré

Grand Odalisque, 1826

Edward Weston

Nude, 1936

John Singer Sargent

Two Half-Length Sketches of a Youth, ca. 1890-1925

Aristide Maillol, designer

The Wave (La Vague), 1898

John Singer Sargent

Study of Minerva for The Judgement of Paris, ca. 1922

Erich Heckel

Am Strand (At the Beach), 1923

Eadweard Muybridge

Animal Locomotion, Plate 469, 1887

Philip Pearlstein

Model on a Stool, 1971

John Singer Sargent

Male Nude Lying on Back, ca. 1890-1925

Adolph von Menzel

Head Studies, ca. 1882-1884

Rembrandt van Rijn

Male Nude, Seated and Standing (Het Rolwagentje), ca. 1646

John Singer Sargent

Male Nude, ca. 1890-1925

James Van Der Zee

Nude, Harlem, 1923, printed ca. 1973

Henri Matisse

The Model in Repose, 1922

School of Giovanni Battista Piazzetta

Reclining Male Nude, mid 1700s

Jacob Gole, designer

The Drawing Lesson, ca. 1680-1725

Édouard Manet

Le Guitarero (The Guitarist), 1861

Edgar Degas

Two Seated Women, ca. 1878

Pablo Picasso, designer

Sculptor, Model, and Sculpture: Seated Woman (Sculpteur, modèle et sculpture: femme assise), 1933

Richard Lippincott Denison Taylor

Smile, 1939

Paul Delaroche

Eight Studies of Fighting Soldiers, ca. 1827-1828

Gustav Klimt

Nude, ca. 1905-1918

Louis de Boullogne the Younger

Two Male Nudes, 1710

French

Male Figures, 1800 - 1899

Alfred Edward Chalon

The Life Class, 1832

Marlene Dumas

White Lies, 2001

Bill Brandt

London, 1953

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Female Nude, ca. 1924-1925

Eve Sussman & The Rufus Corporation

Disintegration at Hydra, 2005

Gregory Crewdson

Untitled (Interior Production Still), 2003

Lillian Bassman

Untitled, ca. 1950s

Gérard Audran

Les Proportions du Corps Humain mesurées sur les plus belles Figures de l'Antiquité (The Proportions of the Human Body Measured on the Most Beautiful Figures from Antiquity), 1683

Reinier Vinkeles

The Drawing Academy at the Association of Artists Felix Meritis in Amsterdam, 1801

Isidore Pils

Costume Study (woman), ca. 1838-1855

Mary Cassatt

Standing Nude with a Towel, ca. 1879

Andy Warhol

Juliana Siu, 1981

Andy Warhol

Juliana Siu, 1981

Andy Warhol

Juliana Siu, 1981

Andy Warhol

Unidentified Woman (Short Dark Hair), 1980

Andy Warhol

Unidentified Woman (Short Dark Hair), 1980

Andy Warhol

Unidentified Woman (Short Dark Hair), 1980

Andy Warhol

Unidentified Woman (Short Blonde Hair), 1985

Andy Warhol

Unidentified Woman (Short Blonde Hair), 1985

Andy Warhol

Unidentified Woman (Short Blonde Hair), 1985

Paul Burty Haviland

Seated Nude, ca. 1908-1916

More objects +

Exhibition Checklist

Changing Poses : The Artist's Model

November 12, 2010 - June 6, 2011
View Checklist PDF

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