Posing for Artists (1640s - 1990s)

Rembrandt
Study of Model
1646
etching
Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart

Pierre-Paul Prud'hon
Model posed as Adonis
ca. 1810-12
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Alexis Gouin
Model Delphine Herbé
1851-52
hand-colored daguerreotypes (stereograph)
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz)
Study of a Young Woman in a Landscape
ca. 1870
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Mariano Fortuny
Study of an Old Man in the Sun
1871
oil on canvas
Museo del Prado, Madrid

Vilhelm Hammershøi
Standing Model
ca. 1881-84
drawing
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

John Douglas Patrick
Study of Model's Back
ca. 1890
drawing
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Denman Waldo Ross
Seated Model
ca. 1890
oil on canvas
Harvard Art Museums

John Singer Sargent
Figure with Pole
ca. 1890-1900
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Kenyon Cox
Allegorical Figure of Science
(study for mural at Iowa State Capitol)
1905
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Lovis Corinth
Seated Model
1908
etching
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Henri Gaudier-Brzeska
Standing Model
ca. 1913
drawing
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

George Bellows
Figure Study for Riverfront no. 1
ca. 1915
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Norman Blamey
Convalescent Soldier in Sidon Hospital, Lebanon
1943
drawing
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Robert Mapplethorpe
Smutty
1980
gelatin silver print
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Howard Tangye
Richard C. on Ochre Paper
1997
drawing
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Everybody Who is Dead

When a man knows another man

Is looking for him

He doesn't hide.

He doesn't wait

To spend another night

With his wife

Or put his children to sleep.

He puts on a clean shirt and a dark suit

And goes to the barber shop

To let another man shave him.

He shuts his eyes

Remembers himself as a boy

Lying naked on a rock by the water.

Then he asks for the special lotion.

The old men line up by the chair

And the barber pours a little

In each of their hands.

– Frank Stanford (1979)

Postmodern Heads

Magdalena Abakanowicz
Head
1976
molded bast fiber
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Glenys Barton
Jean Muir, Fashion Designer
1991
ceramic with glazed slip
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh

Georg Baselitz
Kopfkissen (Pillow)
1987
oil on canvas
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

Phil Collins
Young Serbs (Siniša)
2001
C-print
Tate Gallery

Michael Druks
Druksland - Physical & Social
1974
lithograph
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Gilbert and George
Happy
1980
gelatin silver prints with dye
Tate Gallery

Paul Graham
Television Portrait (Jack, Bradford)
1989
C-print
Tate Gallery

Richard Hamilton
Derek Jarman
1996-97
digital print from Polaroid
Tate Gallery

Alex Katz
Dark Eyes
2000
woodcut
Tate Gallery

Scott Kilgour
A Sailor
1984
drawing, with added oil paint
Princeton University Art Museum

Roy Lichtenstein
Head
1980
color woodcut
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Péter Pócs
The Situation
(weekly newspaper, Hungary)
1989
lithograph (poster)
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Laurie Simmons
Untitled (Woman's Head)
1976
gelatin silver print
Yale University Art Gallery

Ruth Thorne-Thomsen
Head and Plane
1979
gelatin silver print
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Lee Wagstaff
Head Foreshortened
1999-2000
lithograph
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Tom Wood
Dreaming of Colours
1994
oil on panel
Yale Center for British Art

The Singer

"Out of all my tableware, my prized possession is the blue Waterford crystal which dates from about 1790 and is believed to be the only set of its kind in the world.  . . .  I like to use my things, no matter how precious.  I don't want anything to outlast me."

                                                                                                             Beverly Sills

When she sings, she is always herself, no role

human enough to take her out of herself,

her voice the voice of only her self. 

She knows and doesn't know she knows this.

She sings, if this is song. She cannot think.

She sings, if singing is songless,

for songs have blood, are thought, carry

the singer out of the singer's self,

into the human, the precious intersection,

this tree planted by the true singer, who knows

this song grows slowly, for others, the singer dead

before the self lives in the song's shade.

– William Heyen (1978)

Fashionable Adornments ♂

Richard Gray
Fashion Illustration for BodyMap
ca. 1990
drawing, with added gouache
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Alphonse de Neuville
Two Young Men of Fashion
ca. 1860
drawing
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Corinne Day
Fashion Shot for The Face Magazine, London
ca. 1992
gelatin silver print
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Nicolas Bonnart
Homme en Robe de Chambre
1676
hand-colored engraving
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Anonymous French Artist
Figure costumed as Hercules
ca. 1539
etching
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Anonymous Netherlandish Artist
Portrait of a Man in a Chaperon
ca. 1440-50
oil on panel
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

David Williams
Portrait of dancer Michael Clark
1989
gelatin silver print
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh

Anthony Crickmay
The Railroad Photographs
1992
poster
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Allen & Ginter's Cigarettes
Greece
(series, Natives in Costumes)
1886
lithograph (trade card)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The Face Magazine, London
Nirvana - In the Court of King Kurt
1993
lithograph (promotional poster)
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Howard Tangye
Wes Gordon with Blue Scarf
(fashion illustration)
ca. 2000
drawing, with watercolor
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Richard Kilroy
Fashion Illustration for Homme Style Magazine
(design by Thierry Mugler)
ca. 2012
drawing
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

John Savage
Prince Giolo
Son to ye King of Moangis or Gilolo
ca. 1690-1700
etching and engraving
British Museum

Robert Mapplethorpe
Smutty
1982
gelatin silver print
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Egon Schiele
Self Portrait
1914
drawing, with added gouache
Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart

Wilhelm von Gloeden
Young Man's Head crowned with Leaves
ca. 1895
albumen silver print
Philadelphia Museum of Art

"In contrast to "clothing," fashion often functions as a gendered concept, which is inextricably linked to women and feminity, and only occasionally extended to young and/or gay men. In everyday discourse, men are somewhat excluded from active engagement with fashion, and their role in it is often reduced to passive observers of female engagement with it. In contrast, Reilley and Cosbey (2008) comment that, historically, menswear more than womenswear "has been decorative, impractical, erotic, changeable, revolutionary, idealistic, oppressive and restrictive, subject to strict protocols, and laden with meanings." 

– Ania Sadkowska [et al] in Clothing Cultures (vol. 4, no. 3), 2017 

Idealized Wrestlers in World Art at the British Museum

Anonymous Attic Greek artists
Wrestling Youths
ca. 430 BC
red-figure kylix
British Museum

Anonymous Attic Greek artists
Wrestling Match
332-31 BC
black-figure amphora (Panathenaic Prize)
British Museum

"Milo won six victories for wrestling at Olympia, one of them among the boys; at Pytho he won six among the men and one among the boys.  He came to Olympia to wrestle for a seventh time, but did not succeed in mastering Timasitheus, a fellow citizen who was also a young man, and who refused, moreover, to come to close quarters with him.  It is further stated that Milo carried his own statue into the Altis.  His feats with the pomegranate and the quoits are also remembered by tradition.  He would grasp a pomegranate so firmly that nobody could wrest it from him by force, and yet he did not damage it by pressure.  He would stand upon a greased quoit, and make fools of those who charged at him and tried to push him from the quoit.  . . . They say that he was killed by wild beasts.  The story has it that he came across in the land of Crotona a tree-trunk that was drying up; wedges were inserted to keep the trunk apart.  Milo in his pride thrust his hands into the trunk, the wedges slipped, and Milo was held fast by the trunk until the wolves – a beast that roves in vast packs in the land of Crotona – made him their prey.  Such was the fate that overtook Milo."

– Pausanias, from The Description of Greece (2nd century BC), translated by W.H.S. Jones (1933)

Anonymous Roman artists
Wrestler
ca. AD 200
mosaic fragment
British Museum

Daniele da Volterra
Wrestlers
before 1566
drawing
British Museum

Melchior Lorck
Public Wrestler
1582
woodcut
British Museum

Antonio Tempesta
Seven Wonders of the World - Statue of Jupiter at Olympia (wrestlers in foreground)
1608
etching
British Museum

Anonymous copyist after Parmigianino
Nine nudes including wrestlers
ca. 1620
drawing (probably made in London for the Arundel collection)
British Museum

Johannes van den Avelen after Jan Goeree
Classical statue of wrestlers in Roman arena
ca. 1698
etching, engraving (book illustration, title-page)
British Museum

William Walker after Charles Elsen
Hercules defeats Antaeus, who opposes his passage into Africa
ca. 1774-78
etching (working proof, book-illustration for Ovid)
British Museum

Toshusai Sharaku
Kabuki Actors (named) portraying famous Wrestlers (named)
ca. 1794-95
color woodblock print
British Museum

Katsukawa Shuntei
Famous Sumo Wrestlers (named)
before 1820
color woodblock print
British Museum

Utagawa Kuniyoshi
Tattooed Wrestler (named) defeating opponent
ca. 1827-30
color woodblock print
British Museum

Kagaya Kichiemon
Tattooed Wrestler (named) throwing opponent (named)
ca. 1830-32
color woodblock print
British Museum

after Georg Volmar
Lutteurs dans le canton de Berne
before 1831
hand-colored aquatint
British Museum

Rodolphe Julian
Lutteurs
ca. 1860
drawing
British Museum

Henri Gaudier-Brzeska
Wrestlers
ca. 1910-15
linocut
British Museum

Maurice Busset
La Parade des Lutteurs
1920
woodcut
British Museum

Daphne Lindner
All-in Wrestling
1936
etching
British Museum

Khosrow Hassanzadeh
Iranian wrestler and hero Takhti
2007
multimedia assemblage
British Museum