Two Models in a Window with Cast Iron Toys

Philip Pearlstein, Two Models in a Window with Cast Iron Toys, 1987, oil on canvas, 72 x 72 in. (182.9 x 182.9 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the James F. Dicke Family, 2006.9, © 1987, Philip Pearlstein

Artwork Details

Title: Two Models in a Window with Cast Iron Toys
Artist: Philip Pearlstein
Date: 1987
Location: Not on view
Dimensions: 72 x 72 in. (182.9 x 182.9 cm)
Copyright: © 1987, Philip Pearlstein
Credit Line: Gift of the James F. Dicke Family
Mediums Description: oil on canvas
Classifications: Painting
Subjects: Cityscape
Animal — horse
Figure group — female — nude
Architecture Interior — detail — window
Object — toy
Object — furniture — chair
Occupation — art — model
Object Number: 2006.9
Linked Open Data: https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/2006.9

Artwork Description

Philip Pearlstein is among a group of American artists who breathed new life into figuration in the 1960s, taking a traditional genre and making it shockingly modern. An artist who paints exclusively from life, his most well-known pictures have been of the human figure. Pearlstein's nudes are devoid of the conventional allegorical or erotic associations seen in nineteenth-century academic painting. Instead, the focus is on abstract form and the cool exactitude of the artist's observation and rendering of his subjects. Typical of Pearlstein's compositions, the two models here appear cropped within the confines of the canvas. Their bodies are portrayed objectively, equal parts in a carefully constructed formal arrangement.