Addison Gallery Of American Art

Figure/Space: Selected Works from the Addison

"It is a figure piece pure and simple, and a figure piece well carried out is not a common affair."

–Winslow Homer, in a letter to Thomas Clarke, October 1892

Bodies talk. The slump of exhaustion, the spring of excitement, the lean of anxious anticipation —we instinctively interpret intentions, emotions, and physical sensations in any form of movement, gesture, or pose. Throughout history, artists have explored and exploited our understanding of body language, focusing attention on the human figure as a subject both universally familiar and essentially engaging.

As Winslow Homer asserts, to capture a compelling representation of the figure is not only challenging, but uncommonly rare. Through the human form, what more can be expressed, inferred, and understood to meet that challenge?

Hans Hoffman (1880-1966), Figure Drawing, c. 1932-35, ink on wove paper, © Addison Gallery of American Art

Context matters. Oppressive heat, a gale of wind, the threat of attack or pressure of a deadline, the contagious beat of dance hall music—our bodies cannot help but react to such external forces and situations through a responsive gesture (that slump, spring, or lean). In fact, attention to this dialogue between a body and the influential space it occupies can reveal the more layered, ironic, or subtle qualities of an already evocative human figure, beyond its form alone.

For example, photographer André Kertész recognizedthe figure/space dialogue when he recorded his friend’s contorted body and the torqued plaster torso that she jokingly parodied in her friend’s sculpture studio. In the resulting image, Satiric Dancer, Kertész not only defines a "satiric" character by framing her form in response to the elements of the studio she occupies, but he also provokes us to question, with humor and irony, the wider relevance of an "artful" representation of the human body.

Figure/Space asks viewers to consider each "figure piece" with open-minded attention to both what space can say about figure, and what artists’ attentiveness to space can reveal about their intentions. How is an image of a figure striking a blow different when set in an ambiguous undefined space versus a backdrop of gridlines versus the setting of a boxing ring surrounded by an excited crowd? Motivated by a range of inspirations—from a romantic appreciation of the animated body’s beauty, to an adherence to measured analysis, to a compulsion to illustrate the tension of an explosive narrative—artists are able to imbue a single figurative gesture with limitless expressive possibility.

Through juxtapositions of various media, styles, and movements, Figure/Space attests to the depth and scope of artists’ fascination with this dynamic interchange, and the broader psychological, philosophical, spiritual, and universal resonance it inspires.This exhibition is supported by the Winton Family Exhibition Fund.