When this model reference first came up, I thought the topic was model in the sense of a guideline or template for action.
But since we're now speaking of the model, as in the object to be imitated in art, different issues arise. Michael's concern about the photograph is unfounded, I believe. While it is true that the photo flattens the objects into a 2-d pattern, the fact is that almost all imagery nowadays comes to us in that way. So who can even perceive in 3-d anymore when it comes to matching the cognitive "picture" to the sensory object? Also, ever since the invention of photography, artists have turned to it for "models" far more than they have to "nature". Scarcely any figure and landscape ptgs of the latter 19C lack reference or influence via photography. Personally, and contradictorily, I don't use photos and didn't encourage my students to use them. Again, I think we already see the world more as photo than as itself. It's the "gaze" thing. Something is lost, yes, but something is gained. One thing lost, I've noticed is how pre-photo art, portraits, say, seem to depict the head as if one is walking around it, that is, the head is stretched laterally so that the distance between the eyes is more pronounced than it is in post-photo portraits. The gaze of the distant eye is in a different direction than the gaze in the nearby eye. We mentally move around the heads, as if we were a slow-motion satillite. Then one begins to notice this trait in more subtle depictions: trees, clouds, fabrics, bodily movement, etc. Everything is somehow stretched a bit, accounting, no doubt, for the binocular human gaze, as yet unaltered by the monocular photo-gaze. I'm not sure we can recover it even if we can "see" it. Instead, we are stretching and manipulating nature digitally in ways we've not yet fully explored. Nevertheless, I'm not sure that all practices can be explained by cultural context, We are more than transparent mediums of culture (or its fragments), I hope, because we so strongly intend to shape culture through our individual actions. Take a red rectangle by Mondrian. It differs from all others no matter how closely it's been copied. I don't know why that is although I've noticed how his paint is brushed up against an edge, like a miniature cresting surf. Malevich didn't do that. His paint moves along the edge, like a quietly flowing stream. There's something about these incidents of touch, together with a host of other tiny markings, that somehow tremble the surfaces and elicit unique emotional awareness. The point is to look closely, very closely, to see the tiny nuance, probably unintended by the artist who simply had a way of doing things, and to feel what is tramped down by the onslaught of culture in its daily, dusty, unruly stampede. WC
