Changing Poses: The Artist’s Model at RISD Museum

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Thursday, November 25, 2010

GoLocalProv Arts Team

Since ancient times, models have been an essential tool for all artists depicting the human figure, and an intrinsic part of expression.

Now, the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art offers a fascinating exhibition on the role of the artist’s model, demonstrating the range of bodies that have fueled artistic creativity from the Renaissance to the present. The exhibition showcases more than 50 works from the RISD Museum’s esteemed collection of prints, drawings, and photographs, including several recent acquisitions never before on view.

From male nudes forward

The exhibition begins with a remarkable group of figure drawings created in the first art schools in Italy and France, including the delicate and beautiful Two Male Nudes (1710) by Louis Boullogne the Younger. Certain period-specific themes and trends come through in the exhibition: 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 the worlds of high art and fashion advertising. Changing Poses concludes with a selection of contemporary works in which models are employed as actors staged in elaborate installations.

A unique relationship

Changing Poses shows that the working relationships between artists and models are continually evolving while also responding to the past. At various circumstances, 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. Visitors will find pieces by Rembrandt, Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent, Pablo Picasso, and Andy Warhol, as well as lesser-known figures.

The perfect RISD exhibition

“Changing Poses is a perfect RISD exhibition," said Ann Woolsey, Interim Director of the RISD Museum. "To this day, art students, including those at RISD, work from living models. This selection of works from the Museum collection illuminates these dynamic relationships and the art they inspired."

Organized by Crawford Alexander Mann III., the Museum’s Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellow, Changing Poses: The Artist’s Model runs through June 5, 2011.