The Human Form in Art

By Dover Publications

As individual as a snowflake, the human body is a marvel of form and function. This dramatic compilation of 166 studies—photographs, line drawings, and sculptures—serves as both an exhilarating exhibition and an important reference. Key topics include:
Anatomy
Proportion
Motion
Other advice covers the selection of models, the human form in sculpture, and the role of art in the theater. Artists at every level of experience as well as art lovers will benefit from this classic guide.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Release date: Mar 21, 2013
• ISBN: 9780486147529

Book preview

Bibliographical Note

This Dover edition, first published in 2006, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published by Bridgman Publishers, Pelham, N.Y., in 1926.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The human form in art / edited by Adolphe Armand Braun.—Dover ed. p. cm.

Originally published: Pelham, N.Y. : Bridgman, 1926.

9780486147529

1. Human figure in art. I. Braun, Adolphe Armand, b. 1869.

N7570.B7 2006

704.9’42–dc22

2006046329

Manufactured in the United States of America

Dover Publications, Inc., 31 East 2nd Street, Mineola, N.Y. 11501

FOREWORD

IN making up this volume I have been mainly concerned with the needs of the student who seeks the support of abundant material in a pursuit which is vast in its scope and complexity and full of pitfalls.

With a predilection for figure work done in the life class or studio, I have given prominence to the productions of contemporary art-masters, and made the subject of life-drawing the central idea around which I have grouped examples of photography and sculpture and a number of helpful anatomical diagrams. I have also given attention to minor matters, such as practical information on some unfamiliar media.

To all who have given me their help I extend my hearty thanks ; they will find their names specially mentioned in connection with their various contributions.

It is due to the good material so generously supplied to me that I have been able to give such a wide selection of studies for reference, and I trust that my book will prove a source of inspiration to students of the human form and to all interested in Art.

A. A. BRAUN.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

FOREWORD

THE ART OF DRAWING FROM LIFE

THE ETHICS OF NUDITY

THE GREEK IDEAL

BEAUTY OF THE HUMAN FORM

MODELS FOR ARTISTS

SELECTING THE MODEL

SITTING FOR THE FIGURE

ARTISTS’ MODELS THEN AND NOW

THE HUMAN FORM IN PHOTOGRAPHY

DRAWINGS FROM LIFE

THE HAND

PERSPECTIVE IN FIGURE-WORK AND VARIOUS MEDIA

THE PICTURING OF GIANTS

NOTE ON THE ORIGIN AND PRACTICE OF MEZZOTINT - AND THE RECENT WORK OF R. C. PETER, A.R.E., IN THE MEDIUM

A NEGLECTED MEDIUM

THE HUMAN FORM IN SCULPTURE

THE HUMAN FORM IN SCULPTURE

THE ETERNAL IDOL - ILLUSTRATIONS FROM THE SCULPTURE OF MATEO INURRIA

ART IN THE THEATRE

ART IN THE THEATRE - THE SPIRIT OF THE DANCE

ANATOMICAL DIAGRAMS

LA CADENCE

With a body of such agreeable proportions and rendered flexible by judicious exercise, an intelligent model can rival the beauty of the most exquisite statues created by the sculptor’s chisel.

THE ART OF DRAWING FROM LIFE

By A. A. Braun

DRAWING from life is usually considered by the student as the top rung of the ladder of drawing practice and by the young artist as the first step to his artistic career.

The plaster cast has been definitively set aside and human beings pulsating with the same emotions as the draughtsman offer themselves to his scrutiny and understanding.

If the student has been systematic and reasonable in the elementary stages of his artistic education, if he has not looked askance the dancing faun, the disc thrower, the Laocoön or the Venus of Medici, if he has taken the trouble to study anatomy and to locate bones and muscles in the lifeless figures, if he has studied the lighting of his immobile models and endeavoured to render their tones and values, if he has worried to define the planes of bust and face and limbs of his plaster casts, if he has always measured every part of his drawing and checked it carefully with the original, if he has been successful in animating his drawings with the semblance of life, if he has been able to repeat his drawings accurately from memory, if his enthusiasm has sustained him right through the trying stage of patient and precise work, then life work will come to him as a welcome relief, a recreation and a revelation.

But notwithstanding the assumption that the representation of the human figure is the most difficult to accomplish, is the artist who can draw figures more skilled and more thorough than the artist who can draw flowers charmingly, or animals or shells or interiors, buildings or still life ? It all depends.

The word drawing is used so often and by so many people that its meaning should be clearly understood.

Generally it stands for a mechanical record, by means of a picture, usually on paper, of something that has been seen or imagined.

But to those who trouble to philosophize about the meaning of words, the term drawing, like the term high, low, heaven, pleasure, stands for a relative concept.

To one person’s mind the term high may mean the distance up to the fifth floor of a tenement house, to another the measure between the sea-level and the peaks of Mount Everest, and yet to another the interval that separates us from the midnight star at the zenith.

No two people conceive pleasure as the same kind of emotion.

In the same way drawing can be a vast and many-sided performance or a very shallow affair indeed.

To be seated in front of an object or person and to measure up every detail, transferring the measurements to paper and connecting the resulting points by means of short or long, straight or curved lines is sometimes called drawing : it is drawing in its narrowest interpretation.

For things, be they never so still, are not dimensional only.

They display a variety of tones, in accordance with the amount of light and shade in which they stand or which they emit.

They have beauty, volume, substance, texture ; they are bathed in a certain atmosphere ; they have spirit, majesty, or they may be symbolic, stirring, cold, touching, mean, dramatic.

They have colour, but colour is outside the scope of this book.

We will assume that pure draughtsmanship is only possible in full view of the object to be drawn, and that all other forms of draughtsmanship are derivative.

These views being accepted, the art of drawing can still be so complicated and exacting as to tax all the faculties of the person who practises it.

Objects have permanent features and fleeting aspects.

In looking at things, the draughtsman must discover their inner meaning ; while he represents their outer appearance he must interpret their soul.

The artist who can draw seizes, first of all, their permanent aspect ; measurement is the basis on which he builds their representation.

Since it has become possible, by all sorts of mechanical means, to obtain an exact image of any object, the artist who can draw emulates all devices by the precision of his sight and the accuracy of his rendering.

If he cannot do so, he ignores the first elements of his business. There is no excuse whatever for neglecting the acquired experience or the knowledge to be gained by artificial means.

Artists who speak against the camera are either talking nonsense or boasting.

For the true artist who can really draw, besides rivalling the camera by the reliability of his vision, can do infinitely more than the best instrument can ever be expected to do.

He can differentiate between essentials and unessentials; he can eliminate, emphasize, explain things, make them intelligible.

He accompanies the mechanical performance of his eye and hand by an analytical process of thought, and as his record is being evolved, he stresses certain facts, simplifies certain forms, and generally gives, by his treatment of the subject, the measure of his appreciation.

We have now touched upon the fringe of our subject, and know already that experience and intelligence are fundamental qualities which