Anonymous Artist The Painter and his Model ca. 1815 oil on canvas Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco |
Paul Gavarni Model Reading ca. 1840 lithograph Yale University Art Gallery |
Alfred-Émile-Léopold Stevens The Psyché (My Studio) ca. 1871 oil on panel Princeton University Art Museum |
Henry Mosler Artist in his Studio with Model on Dais ca. 1874-77 drawing Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio |
Albert Besnard Sleeping Model 1885 etching, drypoint and aquatint Art Institute of Chicago |
Anders Zorn Augustus Saint-Gaudens II (Saint-Gaudens and his Model) 1897 etching Art Institute of Chicago |
Pablo Picasso Painter with Model 1927 etching Art Institute of Chicago |
Reginald Marsh Model 1928 lithograph Yale University Art Gallery |
William Brice Model in Workroom 1949 drawing, with gouache Art Institute of Chicago |
David Park The Model 1959 oil on canvas Yale University Art Gallery |
Pablo Picasso The Artist and his Model 1964 oil on canvas Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York |
Philip Pearlstein Models in the Studio 1968 drawing Art Institute of Chicago |
Philip Pearlstein Two Female Models in Bamboo Chairs with Mirror 1981 oil on canvas Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio |
Tibor Kalman (designer) Print Advertisement for Isaac Mizrahi ca. 1990-91 offset lithography Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
Tibor Kalman (designer) Print Advertisement for Isaac Mizrahi ca. 1992 offset lithography Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
Tibor Kalman (designer) Print Advertisement for Isaac Mizrahi ca. 1992 offset lithography Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
from The Distinguished Thing
It all seems literal and small: the marriage and the moving; the career,
The pension, the prescriptions; the stock banalities of age.
What is that simple truth I want to bring to mind, the truth that lies behind
The willful effort to invest these hours with the distant grandeur
The willful effort to invest these hours with the distant grandeur
Of a different age, and memories that are more about remembering
Then the world they try to re-create? That world is gone,
Supplanted by an unremarkable room where a person sits alone
And tells the story of his life to anyone who's interested, i.e., to no one,
And tells the story of his life to anyone who's interested, i.e., to no one,
For the others all have stories of their own. That leaves the waiting,
Waiting out the season while the afternoons begin to lengthen
Waiting out the season while the afternoons begin to lengthen
One more time into those beautiful spring evenings, though for what?
– John Koethe (2009)