Bather III
Artist: Jacques Lipchitz (French, 1891-1973)
Date: 1917
Dimensions:
H: 27 3/4 in. (70.5 cm); Max Base Diam: 10 1/8 in. (27.7 cm)
Medium: Cast bronze.
Classification: Sculpture
Credit Line: Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey
Object number: 1991.87
Label Text:Bather III is a rare example of a sculpture that incorporates the movement and multiple points of view that typify Analytic Cubism (for an example of a painting in this style, see Woman in a Black Hat by Picasso in Gallery 3). Jacques Lipchitz met Pablo Picasso in 1913 and the encounter had a lasting impact on Lipchitz’s art. He was able to translate Cubism’s fragmentation of form into sculpture in the round perhaps more successfully than any artist at the time.
Deconstructed into a series of interlocking and intersecting planes, the figure’s form is still legible. In addition to the head and general shape of the body, the raised three-fingered hand is clearly identifiable. The bather’s right arm is bent, with another hand at the waist. Rounded shapes create a shoulder on the left and a sensuous hip on the right, identifying the figure’s gender. The exposed, protruding navel in the center of her belly reveals that she is appropriately unclothed for bathing and completes the image of a modern take on the traditional voyeuristic subject of the seductive, but unaware, female bather.
Deconstructed into a series of interlocking and intersecting planes, the figure’s form is still legible. In addition to the head and general shape of the body, the raised three-fingered hand is clearly identifiable. The bather’s right arm is bent, with another hand at the waist. Rounded shapes create a shoulder on the left and a sensuous hip on the right, identifying the figure’s gender. The exposed, protruding navel in the center of her belly reveals that she is appropriately unclothed for bathing and completes the image of a modern take on the traditional voyeuristic subject of the seductive, but unaware, female bather.
Not on view
In Collection(s)