NEW YORK’S MUSEUM of Modern Art houses a bronze sculpture entitled Man in the Open Air, created in 1915 by the recently arrived Pole Elie Nadelman Tapering. In sinuous curves, from exaggeratedly broad shoulders to tiny pointed feet, the streamlined-before-streamlining figure of a ‘modern man’ leans nonchalantly against an equally stylised tree, striking the pose of a dandy or flâneur. The polished surface bears no indication of clothing other than a string bow tie and a bowler hat.
As Nadelman was creating his sculpture, on the opposite coast of
