Written By: Ben Cosgrove
Even in the rarefied world of fine art, clichés often hold true.
For instance, the notion of the painter or sculptor in his or her studio, feverishly working, shaping, carving, drawing, with a model striking a specific pose cliché or no cliché, that very scenario is still one of the realities of making art. The human body, after all, has long been the principal, singular form from which so many artists draw inspiration.
From the very first, LIFE magazine celebrated not only artists and their creations, but their process: drawing, sketching, sculpting, painting and all the other ways that the truly creative among us develop and bring into being their vision of what is, or perhaps what should be. Here, then, a gallery of photographs that pay tribute to the artist at work, and the simple, beautiful, living human form that so often serves as the artist’s most enduringly reliable muse.
Robert Rauschenberg (1925 – 2008)
Wallace Kirkland Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Farnsworth Art School
Andreas Feininger Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Thomas Hart Benton (1889 – 1975)
Alfred Eisenstaedt Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Thomas Hart Benton: Painter, Writer
Alfred Eisenstaedt Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Skowhegan School of Art
Eliot Elisofon Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Jean Negulesco (1900 – 1993)
Jerry Cooke Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Moses Soyer (1899 – 1974)
Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
David Fredenthal (1914 – 1958)
Gjon Mili Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Fabius von Gugel (1910 – 2000)
Jack Birns Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Nude With Cigarette, Ox-Bow, Michigan
Loomis Dean Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Nude Model, Iowa
Alfred Eisenstaedt Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Chaim Gross in His Studio
Eliot Elisofon Time Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Big Sur, 1959
J. R. Eyerman Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Arthritis Patient Paints a Nude Model
Alfred Eisenstaedt Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Nude, Standing, Slouched
Gjon Mili Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Painter Prepares a Nude Billboard
Bill Bridges Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Sculptor Chaim Gross
Eliot Elisofon Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Model Poses for Fletcher Martin
Peter Stackpole Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Giorgio de Chirico, Nude Self-Portrait, 1946
Nat Farbman Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Henri Matisse at Work, 1951
Dmitri Kessel Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock
