Celebrating the opening of the exhibition Posing Modernity: The Black Model from Manet and Matisse to Today on view at the Wallach Art Gallery through February 10, 2019.
"Posing Modernity" proposes that the changing representation of the black female figure has been central to the development of modernism from Édourd Manet's "Olympia" (1863) to the present. It begins with a consideration of the role of Laure, the black model in "Olympia," and the black models in works by Manet's contemporaries, including Frédéric Bazille, Edgar Degas, Nadar and Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux. Through these works the exhibition brings to light little-known connections between the avant-garde circles of 19th-century Paris and the post-abolition community of free black Parisians.
"Posing Modernity" also traces the impact of Manet's reconsideration of the black model into the 20th century and across the Atlantic to New York, where Henri Matisse visited Harlem jazz clubs and later created portraits of black dancers as icons of modern beauty. The exhibition ses these and other works by Matisse in dialogue with the "New Negro" portraiture style with which diverse Harlem Renaissance artists--such as Charles Alston, William H. Johnson and Laura Wheeler Waring--defied racial stereotypes. "Posing Modernity" concludes with a look at the legacy of Manet and Matisse as seen in the works of artists from Romare Bearden to Mickalene Thomas.
This exhibition has been developed through the generous support of the Ford Foundation.
