Earlier today, Pinterest offered me this arresting painting by American artist John Koch:
(#1) Koch’s After the Sitting: the artist and his male model
Koch (1909 – 1978) was famous as a painter of New York society, but also produced studies of the male body, including male nudes (also female nudes, but that’s not my focus here), and many of working-class men. This made him an American 20th-century counterpart to the French 19th-century painter Gustave Caillebotte (1848 – 1894), another society painter who did startling male nudes and depictions of working-class men. And to some degree comparable to the American society painter John Singer Sargent (1856 – 1925), who also produced many male nudes and sketches of working-class men.
Earlier on this blog. Not my first encounter with Koch’s work. My 4/21/23 posting “Stick figure drawing” has a section on nude male modeling, with Koch’s The Sculptor and information about Koch:
(#2) Koch’s The Sculptor (and his model)
High society and male nudes. From the Advocate magazine, “Artist Spotlight: John Koch: Koch’s society paintings grow more charming as time passes, but his paintings of handsome nudes reveal a more intriguing point of view” by Christopher Harrity on 7/21/13:
John Koch was dismissed by the more progressive art scene as a society painter. He was little known outside his circle of wealthy, connected patrons. But time has a way of revealing something pleasurable that may have been ignored at the time.
Koch (1909-1978) captured scenes of a New York society that is mostly gone now. The value of seeing his work isn’t just the paintings on their own, it has to do with the delight in viewing a world more formal and refined.
And then there are his paintings of nudes — sometimes languorous and erotic, where the artist’s eye is the fourth unseen wall. Others are staged self portraits of Koch as the artist with models appearing more naked than they would have for the presence of his fully dressed and distracted figure along side them.
Koch’s style would have been referred to as realistic, but his realism was tinged with the blurry fantasy of Park Avenue Bohemia. This is society as it would like to see itself. Contemplative and arty with fine Chinese antiques and sumptuous drapes. Now that the heat of Abstract Impressionism is off, the work has an elegant bittersweet feel.
But beyond the well-heeled devotees who were certain they were upholding “tradition” there are the sensuous nudes. They dare us to believe that the story ended with a shared cigarette in a dusty studio, the smell of oil paint and the setting sun catching the model and artist in an intimate moment.
… The Sculptor, 1964. Perhaps the most revelatory of Koch’s self-portraits. It almost dares you to make a conclusion. From the stance of the model, to the gesture of the cigarette, intimacy steams from the canvas.
Then there are informal paintings of men:
(#3) End of the Day: the artist contemplates his work
(#4) The Window Washers: men at work
(#5) Farmers Nooning: men resting from work
(#6) Man Putting on His Shirt: the male body in the routines of daily life
Gustave Caillebotte. From my 8/13/15 posting “Ice cream, roadside fiberglass, Caillebotte, and more”:
He painted scenes of upper-class Parisian life — for instance, Paris Street, Rainy Day, 1877, … and portraits of his family and friends — but also of working-class life ( … drying laundry and … men scraping floors, and also gardeners at work).
Illustrations in that posting.
And then he painted male nudes (some quite radical for the time). Most notably these two paintings from 1884:
(#7) Man at his Bath
(#8) Man Drying His Leg
Men engaged in the routines of daily life — quite far from the heroic male nudes of earlier painting.
John Singer Sargent. The great painter of American grand society (and families) in the period 100 to 150 years ago, especially in Boston. Meanwhile, a sketcher and painter of working-class men (in repose and at work), in Europe as well as America, and of a trove of male nudes. Overall, an extraordinary portraitist, also devoted (in several senses) to the male body.
He’s a recurrent subject on this blog. Picking just one of my postings, more or less at random: my 1/23/22 posting “Sexy Italians”.
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