ART 2201/02 Life Drawing - Krista Varsbergs: Introduction

Welcome! This guide contains links to resources to help you research your artist for your presentation.  

See the blue menu on the right to find books, articles, and museum sites related to the study and appreciation of art.  If you need additional help, stop by the Reference Desk or contact references services for assistance.  

To access Library online resources, you need to know your COD MyAccess username and password. 

To get print books from the Library, you'll need your library card number, which can be obtained using this online form. Student and Staff ID Cards can be activated online.   

Image:  Angela Fraleigh. Slight. oil on panel, 2007. JSTOR, https://jstor.org/stable/community.14220761.

Library Overview

• Getting Help
• Library Card
• Citations
• Research Guide

Finding Sources

• Searching for names of artists 
• Searching for images
• Searching for biographical information
• Searching for criticism and/or reviews

Artist Presentation

Since you’re involved in drawing the human body, it's good to pay attention to the way other figurative artists work with the same subject matter. Each of you will choose and research one contemporary or historic artist whose work directly or indirectly references the human body. You will then present a slideshow to the class.

TASKS:

1. CHOOSE ONE contemporary or historic artist whose work directly or indirectly references or employs the human body in a way that interests you conceptually. The person must be someone with a national or international presence in the art world, meaning that you can either find them in a book in the library stacks, or exhibiting in major museum shows.

2. RESEARCH: Find and download at least TEN quality images of the artist's work and basic biographical info (see step 3 for specifics).

3. PREPARE a Powerpoint (PPT), Google Slides or Keynote presentation that takes 5-7 minutes. Include the following slides:

Intro: Name, headshot, artist's current age or era in which they lived, location (and birthplace, if different), brief description of their artistic interests and ideas that drove their work.

Image slides: Keep them simple! Use a plain black or white background—no textures or patterns—and place ONE IMAGE PER SLIDE, as large as possible.

Finding Sources

• JSTOR is an excellent source for historical and major artists’ images. Login w/your COD credentials.  In the “Advanced Search” window, select the "All content" (for articles) or “Images” tab; type artist’s name in that search bar.

• Personal websites and/or museum or gallery sites (especially for contemporary artists). Try to download images by right (option)/clicking on them and selecting “download image” if possible.

• Google images: make sure the artwork is by the artist you searched for! Click through to websites to download higher-res images than the thumbnails that show up in a Google search. DO NOT just take screen shots of the tiny images—they’ll be blurred when viewed on screen in class.

Finding the names of artists who employ the body in their work

Search the COD Library Catalog using these terms - you can put them all in the same search box

• Human figure in art

• Human beings in art

• The body in art

• Feminist art

• Homosexuality in Art

• Women in Art

• Men in Art

Listed below are a few names of artists organized by periods whose has created work that is connected directly or indirectly references the human body.  

Classical to Early Modern

• Leonardo da Vinci – anatomical studies; Vitruvian Man

• Michelangelo Buonarroti – idealized sculptural and painted bodies (David, The Creation of Adam)

• Albrecht Dürer – proportion studies of the human form

• Peter Paul Rubens – dynamic, fleshy figures in Baroque painting

• Antonio Canova – Neoclassical sculptures of mythic bodies

• Egon Schiele – distorted, erotic self-portraits and nudes

• Gustav Klimt – symbolic and sensual human figures

• Auguste Rodin – expressive sculptural anatomy (The Thinker, The Kiss)

20th Century Modernism

• Pablo Picasso – fragmented Cubist bodies (Les Demoiselles d’Avignon)

• Henri Matisse – simplified, decorative nudes

• Marcel Duchamp – Étant donnés; the mechanization of the body (Nude Descending a Staircase)

• Frida Kahlo – body as site of identity and pain (The Broken Column)

• Georgia O’Keeffe – organic, body-referential forms

• Francis Bacon – distorted, existential human figures

• Alberto Giacometti – attenuated sculptural bodies reflecting isolation

Postwar to Contemporary

• Yves Klein – Anthropometries, where human bodies were “living brushes”

• Louise Bourgeois – body, sexuality, and memory in sculpture (Maman)

• Carolee Schneemann – performance using her own body (Interior Scroll)

• Ana Mendieta – Silueta Series, body and landscape

• Cindy Sherman – staged self-portraits exploring identity and the female body

• Kiki Smith – fragmented, visceral representations of the body

• Jenny Saville – monumental, fleshy paintings of the human form

• Damien Hirst – dissected and preserved bodies (The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living)

• Ron Mueck – hyperrealistic sculptures of human figures

• Orlan – body modification and plastic surgery as performance art

• Matthew Barney – mythic, performative use of the body (Cremaster Cycle)

• Yasumasa Morimura – self-portraits embodying famous works and identities

• Marina Abramović – endurance and performance art centered on the body

• Tracey Emin – autobiographical works referencing her own body and experience

• Janine Antoni – used her body as a tool (painting with hair, molding with teeth)

• Robert Mapplethorpe – photographic studies of the body, sexuality, and form

• Bruce Nauman – body as subject and medium in video and sculpture

• Vito Acconci – performance and conceptual use of the artist’s body

• Zanele Muholi – photography exploring Black queer and trans bodies