Standing Female Nude

Product Information

In Carol Ann Duffy’s poem “Standing Female Nude,” the model’s relationship with the viewer is complex and multifaceted. On one hand, the model is objectified and reduced to a mere physical form for the viewer’s gaze. She is stripped of her agency and autonomy, forced to contort her body and hold still for hours on end. However, on the other hand, the model also holds a certain power over the viewer. She is the one who allows herself to be seen, who offers up her body for scrutiny and admiration. In this way, the model becomes a symbol of both vulnerability and strength, a reminder of the complicated dynamics at play in the act of looking. The Model’s Agency and Objectification

Art Institute of Chicago. "Picasso: 75th Anniversary Exhibition," October 29–December 8, 1957, unnumbered cat. Her adult poetry collections are Standing Female Nude (1985), winner of a Scottish Arts Council Award; Selling Manhattan (1987), which won a Somerset Maugham Award; The Other Country (1990); Mean Time (1993), which won the Whitbread Poetry Award and the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year); The World's Wife (1999); Feminine Gospels (2002), a celebration of the female condition; Rapture (2005), winner of the 2005 T. S. Eliot Prize; The Bees (2011), winner of the 2011 Costa Poetry Award and shortlisted for the 2011 T. S. Eliot Prize; The Christmas Truce (2011), Wenceslas: A Christmas Poem (2012), illustrated by Stuart Kolakovic; Dorothy Wordsworth's Christmas Birthday (2014) and Sincerity (2018). Her children's poems are collected in New & Collected Poems for Children (2009). In 2012, to mark the Diamond Jubilee, she compiled Jubilee Lines, 60 poems from 60 poets each covering one year of the Queen's reign. In the same year, she was awarded the PEN/Pinter Prize. Second Williams College Alumni Loan Exhibition: In Celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Williams College Museum of Art and Professor S. Lane Faison, Jr. Exh. cat., Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York. Williamstown, Mass., 1976, p. 23, no. 66, ill. p. 64. Emily Braun in Cubism: The Leonard A. Lauder Collection. Ed. Emily Braun and Rebecca Rabinow. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2014, p. 150, no. 62, ill. p. 151 (color).

Anne Baldassari in Picasso et les maîtres. Exh. cat., Grand Palais and Musée du Louvre. Paris, 2008, p. 30, ill. Susan Greenberg Fisher et al. Picasso and the Allure of Language. Exh. cat., Yale University Art Gallery. New Haven, 2009, p. 16, fig. 1. Joseph Low (Pepe) Karmel. "Picasso's Laboratory: The Role of his Drawings in the Development of Cubism, 1910–14." PhD diss., Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, 1993, pp. 54–55, 62, fig. 38, ill., as "Standing Nude". New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "French Drawings from American Collections: Clouet to Matisse," February 3–March 15, 1959, no. 216.

John Richardson with the collaboration of Marilyn McCully. A Life of Picasso. Vol. 2, 1907–1917. New York, 1996, pp. 144, 300, 312, ill. Carol Ann Duffy, one of the most significant names in contemporary British poetry, has achieved that rare feat of both critical and commercial success. Her work is read and enjoyed equally by critics, academics and lay readers, and it features regularly on both university syllabuses and school syllabuses. Some critics have accused Duffy of being too populist, but on the whole her work is highly acclaimed for being both literary and accessible, and she is regarded as one of Britain’s most well-loved and successful contemporary poets. Marilyn Satin Kushner and Kimberly Orcutt, ed. The Armory Show at 100: Modernism and Revolution. Exh. cat., New-York Historical Society. New York and London, 2013, pp. 454, 467. An Exhibition of Works of Art Lent by the Alumni of Williams College. Exh. cat., Lawrence Hall, Williams College. Williamstown, Mass., 1962, p. 37, no. 97.

Sign Up to the Newsletter

Mulready's enthusiasm for life drawing continued unabated until his death in 1864. An entry in Richard Redgrave's diary records: ' I believe Mulready is seventy-three, and yet there he is, hard at work at the 'Life', like any young student. He is not only attending as Visitor, and drawing at the Royal Academy, but he is one of a party who meet three times a week at Ansdell's for studying from the life'. This group includes studies made both at the RA and at Ansdell's (also known as the 'Kensington Life Academy'). The poem comprises four stanzas, each of seven unrhymed lines. Duffy uses a technique that involves regularly running clauses and sentences between lines and even across stanzas, which creates a form of poetic prose that is relaxed and non-formal, thus allowing the reader to concentrate on the words and phrases themselves. She only uses words that are likely to be familiar to her audience, and on occasion these are slang or with sexual overtones. She has a directness of style that readers of poems by Philip Larkin would recognise. All these elements are present in the poem under review.

And do try to be still,” (line 3) giving the impression of impatience, as if the artist were expecting the same indefatigable stillness from this women as from a vase. Even though the woman has been standing for “six hours” (line 1), the artist acts inhumanly and does not expect the model to have needs or thoughts; he treats her as if she is an inanimate object. “You’re getting thin, Madame, this is not good,” (line 9) again demonstrating that the artist expects her to be unchanging; he is indifferent of her struggle to feed herself. The poem begins with the speaker stating that she is working in one of the only ways she can, as a model. She is in the middle of a long session, of posing for an artist that the world thinks is a genius. She considers the future when her painting is going to be hanging in a gallery or museum. The speaker knows that then, those who normally shun her, the social elite, are going to “coo” over her image.” She feels disdainful towards them and the higher principles they claim to appreciate.Isabelle Monod-Fontaine et al. Donation Louise et Michel Leiris: Collection Kahnweiler-Leiris. Exh. cat., Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou. Paris, 1984, p. 105, ill.

Percy North. Max Weber: The Cubist Decade, 1910–1920. Exh. cat., High Museum of Art. Atlanta, 1991, pp. 23–24, fig. 3 (upside down). She is committed to “six hours” work “for a few francs” (line 1). Also, when the speaker states on line 21, “both [the artist and the woman] poor, we make our living how we can. ” The woman sells her body for money because the woman’s only concern is “with the next meal”(line 9) signifying her desperate need of money for survival. While the artist, thought to be Georges Braque, is concerned “with volume [and] space,” (line 8) suggesting how his only concern is the painting. She is on display for everyone; from the artist who is as poor as she is and the patrons of the art world to the Queen of England. The Queen, within the speaker’s mind, “murmurs” terms of endearment at the speaker’s shape. She sees this as ridiculous, the fact that her position within an artist’s studio can re-value her to such a degree. New York. Museum of Modern Art. "Picasso and Braque: Pioneering Cubism," September 24, 1989–January 16, 1990, unnumbered cat. (p. 172; as "Standing Nude," [Paris, autumn 1910]). The poem is divided into six stanzas, each with varying lengths. This creates a sense of fragmentation and disconnection, reflecting the disjointed nature of the model’s experience as she is objectified and scrutinized by the artist.

Object details

Art Institute of Chicago. "International Exhibition of Modern Art (The Armory Show)," March 24–April 16, 1913, no. 287. Roberta J. M. Olson in The Armory Show at 100: Modernism and Revolution. Ed. Marilyn Satin Kushner and Kimberly Orcutt. Exh. cat., New-York Historical Society Museum & Library. New York and London, 2013, p. 308, fig. 144 (color). Gail Levin. "Konrad Cramer: Link from the German to the American Avant-Garde." Arts Magazine 56 (February 1982), p. 147, fig. 7 (upside down), calls it "Nude".