Skip to main content
Home

Main navigation

  • Visit
  • Exhibitions & Events
  • Art & Design
  • Give
  • Search

Visit Main Menu Block

  • Hours & Admission
  • Accessibility & Amenities
  • Tours & Group Visits
  • Visitor Guidelines

Exhibitions and Events Main Menu Block

  • Exhibitions
  • Events

Art and Design Main Menu Block

  • Collection
  • Collection Research
  • Past Exhibitions
  • Watch / Listen / Read

Footer Main

  • Become a Member
  • Who We Are
  • Opportunities
  • Rent the Museum
Installation view of The Figure: Contemporary Works from the Collection on view 03-12-2010 through 03-03-2011 at the RISD Museum.

The Figure

Contemporary Works from the Collection
March 12, 2010 - March 3, 2011
Installation view of The Figure: Contemporary Works from the Collection on view 03-12-2010 through 03-03-2011 at the RISD Museum.

Introduction

Representing the human figure has been fundamental to art throughout time. Over the course of the 20th century, however, profound social, political, and artistic developments greatly expanded how the human form is rendered in art, liberating it from illusionistic demands for physical likeness. Comprising a range of mediums and approaches, including painting, printmaking, sculpture, video, and needlework, this exhibition explores various themes and issues that guide contemporary artists' approaches to the figure.

Acting as the literal interface between an individual's physical and psychological worlds, the figure has become a powerful vehicle for artists to make their internal realities visible. Some artists use themselves as subject matter while others work with live models, photographs, or personal memory as a starting point. They then employ processes of stylization and embellishment, enlist the universal language of symbols to make their interior worlds tangible to others, and/or reinterpret art history while reflecting the world in which they live. The selection of objects in this exhibition includes a number of recent acquisitions that are being exhibited at the Museum for the first time.

Judith Tannenbaum

Exhibition images

Selected Objects

Grayson Perry

Map of Nowhere

Joyce J. Scott

Spirit Siamese Twins

Tracey Emin

Bath White II

Alice Neel

Nancy Selvage
No Image Available

Lucky DeBellevue

Untitled

Cheryl Laemmle

Self-Portrait with Bottle and Cage

Judy Glantzman

Untitled
No Image Available

Raquel Paiewonsky

Parida (Birthed)
  • More objects +

Exhibition Checklist

The Figure : Contemporary Works from the Collection

March 12, 2010 - March 3, 2011
View Checklist pdf
View Checklist pdf
Download

/

RISD Museum

  •  Facebook
  •  Twitter
  •  Instagram
  •  Vimeo
  •  Pinterest
  •  SoundCloud

Footer Main

  • Become a Member
  • Who We Are
  • Opportunities
  • Rent the Museum

Footer Secondary

  • Image Request
  • Press Office
  • Rent the Museum
  • Terms of Use