Teaching Wall / After Lives: Drawing As Trace

January 30–March 23, 2025

This exhibition presents works on paper drawn from BAMPFA’s collection, organized in partnership with Todd Olson, Professor of Early Modern Art in the Department of History of Art at UC Berkeley. It offers historical and cultural perspectives on a keystone of fine arts training: drawing the human figure through direct observation of a live model. This display provides students with direct access to artworks and themes connected to their classes in the History of Art and Art Practice Departments.

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Lorenzo Lippi: Young Man Holding a Staff, c. 1620; red chalk on buff laid paper; 10 x 6 3/4 in.; BAMPFA, Gift of Richard and Mary L. Gray, 2021.7.4
Pierre-Cécile Puvis de Chavannes: Study of Classical Figures (Étude de figures classiques), 1880–98; Graphite and gouache on paper; 7 13/16 x 16 7/8 in.; BAMPFA, gift of Joachim Jean Aberbach, 1968.80
Chiura Obata: Untitled, Multiple Male Figures, c. 1940; pencil on paper; 14 x 18 in.; BAMPFA, gift of the Obata Family, 2020.21.11

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Teaching Wall / After Lives: Drawing As Trace

Campus Collaborations

January 30–March 23, 2025

This exhibition presents works on paper from BAMPFA’s collection, organized in partnership with Todd Olson, Professor of Early Modern Art in the Department of History of Art at UC Berkeley. It offers historical and cultural perspectives on a keystone of fine arts training: drawing the human figure through direct observation of a live model. This display provides students with direct access to artworks and themes connected to their classes in the History of Art and Art Practice Departments.

The foundations of life drawing as an academic practice can be traced to Renaissance Italy, where artists aspired to compose istoria, significant pictorial narratives of heroism and emotional power that featured men as primary subjects. Consequently, artistic training involved the execution of preparatory drawings based on male models in the studio that could later be adapted to diverse storylines. Despite the appearance of masculine authority in finished pictures, life drawings often reflect the duration of labor and stress of posing, and offer relics of studio props, such as supportive pedestals, sticks, crutches, or walls. They also allow us to consider how a model’s subordination and duress could be harnessed for telling abject narratives—such as those unfolding around Christ’s passion or the raging one-eyed Polyphemus spying on the unfaithful nymph Galatea—where drawings are haunted by the power relations between artist and model. Life drawings can also be seen as traces of intimate and mutually dependent relationships within artists’ domestic and teaching spaces, as in the twentieth-century works by Hans Boehler and Chiura Obata.

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This Teaching Wall is part of our BAMPFA's Campus Collaborations, an ongoing series in partnership with faculty and students at UC Berkeley. The BAMPFA Art Curatorial team works closely with UC Berkeley faculty members to present small groups of works from the museum's collection, drawing largely from the Florence Helzel Works on Paper Study Center. We work with one faculty member per semester to develop an exhibition related to course themes, integrating the collection into class curriculum. These presentations may also be organized by graduate research groups and the BAMPFA Student Committee.