Page 312 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Studies: human

150 Female nude
Wood
18” x 5”

Not working from a live model, AR was free to follow his
imagination in rendering several female nudes in wood, a
medium much more pliant than the stone he preferred for
male heads. He appears to have been influenced both by
“classical” canons for representing nudes and by some (now)
quaint versions of “artistic” erotic poses. As is often the case in
his work, he was most successful when he abandoned all such
received ideas and let the material at hand interact with his
inspiration. The nude in a hammock (no. 19) is of this latter
type, and may be considered the most lifelike yet the least
“anatomical” of the six pieces.

The simplest, perhaps earliest, of this series is no. 128. AR left
half the height of a gnarled tree limb as the base of this
unfinished piece. At its other end, he followed the wood,
turning two thin forking branches into the upraised arms of a
roughly-carved female nude.

No. 33 is AR’s major attempt at a formal treatment of the
subject. He omitted the head, arms below the shoulder, and
legs below the knees of this smoothly polished voluptuous
figure, leaving the viewer little to contemplate but slightly
exaggerated secondary sexual characteristics. The hips are too
narrow, adding a probably unintentional note of youthful
athleticism. The total effect is an uneasy synthesis of intuitive
sensuousness and a studied attempt at producing a classical
nude. AR used the vertically-running grain like the lines on a
contour map, emphasizing the feminine curves: on the breasts,
a series of concentric rings culminates in the nipples. No. 69 is
a smaller version of no. 33, and suffers from the same
problems. The reduced scale and slack posture make it less
physically imposing—and less erotic—than its larger
counterpart. It probably was carved first, almost as a scale

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