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Models, muses and Infamous sanitary-ware

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Apologies from the start if I o end - this is a talk about young women who have modelled for artists - mostly older men - and I am an older man… My love of life drawing is inevitably bound up with ‘the male gaze’. I was hoping to redress the balance - the women I have chosen were all exceptionally talented, creative, intelligent - and ghting against the crap of a patriarchal system but I have no doubt failed, and perpetuate the problem - talking about the traumatic loves and lives of these women rather than their incredible and indomitable creative spirits and remarkable art. I start my talk in ancient Greece, with a courtesan known as Phryne, possibly the worlds rst supermodel. her birth name was Mnesarete, which translates as commemorating virtue, Phryne, was a nickname which meant ‘toad’ given to her due to the pale and pallid yellow hue of her skin. Born in the Greek city of Thespiae in 371 BC, she lived and worked in Athens as a model and entertainer, basically a high class prostitute selling her body and wit to wealthy, powerful and in uential men - but also a performer, although we don’t know what forms her performances took - we do know that Phryne herself became very rich - there is a story that she o ered to nance a rebuild the walls of the Greek city of Thebes, destroyed in 335BC by Alexander the Great - as long as they put a plaque on the wall saying “Destroyed by Alexander the Great, rebuild by Phryne the Courtisan”.

Phryne was a hetaira - not your average prostitute (or pornai, as they were known at the time). The hetaira would have had just a few clients, with whom they might have stayed for a long time more a mistress or companion but also performers, orators, artists, entertainers, musicians, taking part in the Greek symposium - highly educated and women of status. Phryne is known to have posed for what is possibly the oldest Greek sculpture of a naked woman, sculpted by Praxiteles - a statue of Aphrodite - the Greek goddess of sexual love, beauty and fertility. Aphrodite of Knidos. The Greek writer Pausanius (In his ‘Description of Greece’ ) suggests that Phryne was both model and lover to Praxiteles.

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Two examples of her quick wit - she was once asked by another lover who was notoriously stingy if she had posed for this sculpture, and she retorted by asking if he had posed for the sculpture

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Models, muses and Infamous sanitary-ware


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Models, muses and Infamous sanitary-ware by Ross Wallis - Issuu