Mannikin

Part portrait, part abstract still life, and part exploration of texture and tonal values, Arshile Gorky's Mannikin incorporates recognizable objects-a spindle, draped fabric, and suggestions of a head in profile and a torso-into an arrangement of shapes and patterns in which exaggerated organic curves play off against rigid angles and lines. The monumental figure dominates the space, insistently appearing as a three-dimensional form against the backdrop of a room-like setting, notwithstanding the pure flatness of the patterned areas and the distortions of the face, with its cartoon-like suggestions of a pert upturned nose, stereotypically spiky eyelashes and hair combed into an ordered sequence of rigid lines. German for "little man," Mannikin inevitably evokes a mannequin, a life-sized form that can be dressed and posed to stand-in for an actual human body in a retail window display, a dressmaker's workspace, or an artist's studio. The distortions of Gorky's portrait-like image seem to point up the artificiality of commercialized glamour, a theme that may reflect the culture of popular media and advertising as interpreted in the work of his close friend Stuart Davis, who most likely encouraged his brief foray into printmaking.

Mannikin is one of only a handful of prints Gorky made. Ironically, given both the reproductive nature of the lithographic medium and the mass-produced nature of mannequins, the print represents a rare instance in his work of a unique subject. Gorky typically interpreted his themes and forms in series, both in multiple works and within individual images in which a symbol is reiterated; the single figure in Mannikin, in contrast, seems to have been worked out directly on the lithographic stone surface, independent of other interpretations. A master draftsman, Gorky used the lithographic crayon with the freedom and spontaneity of drawing, exploring the full range of lights and darks; curves and straight lines; textures and patterns; solids and voids. Mannikin demonstrates the influence of cubism, in which objects are fragmented and rearranged in terms of their component planes and angles, while its gestural curves, such as the mannequin's highly sculptural if distorted nose, anticipate Gorky's immersion a decade later in the evocative biomorphic forms and dreamlike mystery of surrealism. In relation to the innovative mature paintings and drawings Gorky produced between 1940 and his premature death in 1948, his work of the 1930s long was regarded as derivative of such artists as Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), whose influence is clear in Mannikin. In recent years, however, scholars have begun to appreciate the works Gorky produced in this transitional decade as artistic achievements with their own integrity and aesthetic power.

Like many other aspects of Gorky's biography and works, his printmaking is obscure and somewhat mysterious. This impression, which the artist evidently gave to Swiss-born artist Hans Burkhardt (1904-94), his student and studio-mate from 1928 to 1937, long was believed to be the only extant impression of his only lithograph. Beginning in the early 1960s, scholars discovered two more lithographs by Gorky as well as some twenty-five other impressions of Mannikin. All but one are reversed from this impression, raising still-unanswered questions as to how, why, and in what order the two versions were made.

Collection Cameo, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, March 1998.

L'Amérique et les Modernes, 1900–1950 (American Moderns, 1900–1950), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venues: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, July 25–October 31, 2000. [exh. cat.]Terra Collection-in-Residence, Tougaloo College Art Collections, Jackson, Mississippi, February 18, 2021–December 30, 2022.

   

Rosenberg, Harold. Arshile Gorky: The Man, the Time, the Idea. New York: Grove Press, 1962. Ill. p. 49 [incorrectly titled as Birth of a Nation].

Art News 62:2 (April 1963): 27. Ill. p. 27 [reproduction labeled, in error, as Gorky's only lithograph in a unique impression].

Miller, Jo. "The Prints of Arshile Gorky." The Brooklyn Museum Annual VI (1964–1965): 57–61. Text pp. 57–58; fig. 1, p. 58.

Adams, Clinton. American Lithographers 1900–1960: The Artists and Their Printers. Albuquerque, New Mexico: The University of New Mexico Press, 1983. Text pp. 76–78; fig. 40, p. 78.

Master Prints of Five Centuries: The Alan and Marianne Schwartz Collection. (exh. cat., The Detroit Institute of Arts). Detroit, Michigan: The Detroit Institute of Arts, 1990. Cat. no. 36, p. 64 (a "majority impression").

Conway, Robert P. "Painter, Mannikin, and Mirror: A Further Investigation of the Prints of Arshile Gorky." Second Impressions: Modern Prints and Printmakers Reconsidered/The Tamarind Papers. Edited by Clinton Adams. Vol. 16. Albuquerque, New Mexico: The University of New Mexico Press, 1996. Text pp. 65–76 Text pp. 66–67, 70, 72–73, (notes 2, 6, 7, 9, 19), p. 74 (on p. 74, cited as "minority group" no. 1). fig. 7-1, p. 67.

Mannikin, Arshile Gorky. Collection Cameo sheet, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, March 1998. Ill. (black & white).

Cartwright, Derrick R. and Paul J. Karlstrom. American Moderns, 1900–1950. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2000. Pl. 14, p. 41 (black & white).

Cartwright, Derrick R. and Paul J. Karlstrom. L'Amérique et les modernes, 1900–1950. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2000. Pl. 14, p. 41 (black & white).