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Two Female Models on Eames Chair and Stool
Artist
Philip Pearlstein
(American, 1924 - 2022)
Date1976
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsFramed: 61 x 73 x 1 5/8 in. (154.94 x 185.42 x 4.13 cm)
Credit LineCollection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Museum purchase, The Friends of Art Endowment Fund
Object number2014.8
Status
Not on viewSignedSigned and dated lower left
Copyright© Philip Pearlstein
Category
Label TextTwo Female Models on Eames Chair and Stool, 1976, is a prime example of Philip Pearlstein’s commitment to rendering what he called the “visual truth” of the human body. The composition displays the artist’s signature cool, hard delineation of the figure closely observed (the artist painted three to five feet away from his models). Two Female Models on Eames Chair and Stool depicts precisely what the title indicates. The bodies carry no sentiment, emotion, allegory, or narrative allusions, nor are they sexual objects. In this human still life, everything receives Pearlstein’s equal visual concentration. The leather folds in the chair and ottoman, designed by Charles and Ray Eames in 1956, claim the same scrutiny as the models’ flesh. This democracy of vision has characterized Pearlstein’s compositions since the early 1960s. Nevertheless, it is the models’ large scale and frank nakedness that command our attention.
Pearlstein inflated the figures’ scale by a seemingly ruthless cropping of their forms. However, since he paints from the center out after identifying a body part that sets figural scale, he was not so much cropping the figures as he was packing whatever portion of them he could within the confines of his canvas. The resulting image generates a dynamic tension between expansiveness and containment.
Pearlstein inflated the figures’ scale by a seemingly ruthless cropping of their forms. However, since he paints from the center out after identifying a body part that sets figural scale, he was not so much cropping the figures as he was packing whatever portion of them he could within the confines of his canvas. The resulting image generates a dynamic tension between expansiveness and containment.