Existing comment:
Isabel Bishop, 1902-1988
Isabel Bishop generally chose her subject matter from the street life of New York City that flowed beneath her studio window. She recalled enjoying "the incredible richness of this coming and going of these multitudes of people." But as a young woman in the late 1920s, she found herself a convenient subject, noting that self-portraiture may serve just "to provide oneself a model, especially handy for a young artist as a means for studying picture problems." In this etching, Bishop's concerns are formal: structure, form, gesture, and the play of light on a tilted, slightly turned face. The detached unread- able expression and elegant geometry of the head disguise her personality. Even the hand, resting too lightly to support the head, seems merely a pose she wished to explore. Concealing internal emotions, Bishop used her mirrored reflection to solve pictorial challenges. The resulting print reveals what one critic called "her combination of precision and delicacy."
1929 |