Two Female Models Reclining on a Cast-Iron Bed (Primary Title)
Philip Pearlstein, American, 1924–2022 (Artist)
"All I’m trying to do is see things as they are at a particular moment." —Philip Pearlstein
Choosing the human figure as his subject, Pearlstein rejected the prevailing emphasis on abstraction in painting and sculpture of the 1950s and early ‘60s. Yet his focus on surface and contour and his radical cropping of models’ heads and limbs at the edge of the canvas treat the human figure more as an object than as a sentient being.
Working directly from live models in the studio, Pearlstein downplayed psychological interpretation and erotic content in his approach to the nude. He described the human body as a “constellation of still-life forms,” to be analyzed in terms of the problems the body’s form presented in relation to the surrounding space.
Phillip Pearlstein: A Retrospective, Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI, April 19 – June 19, 1983; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY, July 14 – September 15, 1983; The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA, December 15 – February 26, 1984; Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH, March 18 – April 29, 1984; The Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, PA, May 19 – June 15, 1984
American Figure Painting, Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, VA, October 16 – November 30, 1980
Representations of America, Pushkin Museum, Moscow, December 15, 1977 – February 15, 1978; Hermitage Museum, Leningrad, March 15 – May 15, 1978; Palace of Art, Minsk, July 15 - August 15, 1978
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