Two Nudes

Philip Pearlstein has painted his two nude subjects devoid of intimacy by treating their bodies as dispassionately as he would a still life arrangement. Due to his compositional and cropping decisions, we can discern nothing of the identity of his models. Pearlstein’s painting reveals to the viewer only the artist’s perceptual and painterly skills. His style is entirely empirical, as if he had challenged himself simply to represent objective fact, that which can be measured and proven.