New Models Unlocked | Model Shock w/ Emmelyn Butterfield-Rosen (NM48)
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Nov 9, 2022 Emmelyn Butterfield-Rosen, art historian and associate director at the Clark Art Institute, explores how late-19th-century art reinvented what it means to be human. She discusses Seurat’s frontal figures, shifts in posture as signs of consciousness, links between media, dance, and mechanistic metaphors, and parallels between historical art practices and today’s mediated bodies.
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Seurat's Frontality Undermines Classical Mind Signs
- Seurat organizes figures by frontality with no torsion or ponderation, disrupting the classical signifiers of a thinking subject.
- The frontal/profile poses remove visual cues (weight shift, twisted torso) that historically signaled reflective consciousness.
Contrapposto As Visual Metaphor For Mind
- Classical contrapposto conveyed agency by showing weight shift and torsion as visual metaphors for mind directing body.
- This tradition was taught via Renaissance models and academic pedagogy, making the pose a norm for representing mindedness.
Hand Gestures Encode Thought Metaphors
- Western body metaphors linked thought to physical acts: prehension (grasping) and ponderation (thought as weight).
- Emmelyn traces how gestures like the fist encoded mental comprehension in art and philosophy.
