In honor of National Breast Cancer Awareness month, we propose this pair of nudes from our Face Lift exhibition: on the left, Iaida, by Isabel Cohen Doud and on the right, Nude Woman and Vase of Flowers: Miss Thompson, by Clarence H. White. Although captured in different media and settings, both portraits express the beauty of the female figure. Caption This! (and keep it clean!)
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Curatorial Perspective
The female figure has remained a constant feature in modern and contemporary art. Here, early twentieth century artists, Clarence H. White, and Isabel Cohen Doud, explore the female nude in their chosen mediums.
Clarence H. White burst on the national scene in the late 1890s, in the first wave of modernist art photography. After opening his own school of photography in New York in 1914, he became one of the most influential photography teachers of the twentieth century. His students included Margaret Bourke-White, Dorothea Lange, Paul Outerbridge, and Karl Stuss. White’s simple subjects, captured in old fashioned, decorative interiors, were transformed into photographic art using only natural light.
Isabel Cohen Doud, daughter of prominent attorney Asher Cohen, grew up in Charleston and attended the College of Charleston. She studied drawing and painting under the tutelage of several French teachers and focused primarily on figure studies and outdoor venues. Doud attended the Art Students League of New York and later moved to Rome to study portrait and figure work. While in Rome, she married fellow painter, Gorda Doud. The couple traveled and painted extensively in Rome, Canada, and New York.
See previous Face Lift: Caption This! contest entries.
Published October 21, 2010