CAROL ANN DUFFY STANdin CAROL ANN duffy Born

CAROL ANN DUFFY STANdin

CAROL ANN duffy • Born: • 23 December 1955 • Birthplace: Glasgow, Scotland • Best known as: • The first female poet laureate in British history • See Weebly for more info…

Hilda Carline Woman in a Red Hat (1922),

Standing Female Nude, Dora Carrington (1893 -1932)

Cubism and Georges Braque

CUBISM • Cubism was a highly influential visual arts style of the 20 th century that was created principally by the painter Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque in Paris between 1907 and 1914. • The Cubist style emphasized the flat, two-dimensional surface of the picture plane, rejecting the traditional techniques of perspective, foreshortening, modeling, and chiaroscuro and refuting time-honoured theories of art as the imitation of nature. • Cubist painters were not bound to copying form, texture, colour, and space; instead, they presented a new reality in paintings that depicted radically fragmented objects, whose several sides were seen simultaneously. • Typical cubist paintings frequently show letters, musical instruments, bottles, pitchers, glasses, newspapers, still lifes, and the human face and figure.

Georges Braque: Born on May 13 th, 1882, Georges Braque received his training at the local art school in Le Havre. From 1902 to 1904 Braque went to Paris to study at the Academie Humbert and then at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts (School of Fine Arts) in the studio of Leon Bonnat. Braque's early works, those of 1903 -05, were executed in the mood of early impressionism.

Robert Browning • “ • That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall, • Looking as if she were alive. I call • That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf’s hands • Worked busily a day, and there she stands…

Standing Female Nude" (1985) Carol Ann Duffy Six hours like this for a few francs. Belly nipple arse in the window light, he drains the color from me. Further to the right, Madame. And do try to be still. I shall be represented analytically and hung in great museums. The bourgeoisie will coo at such an image of a river-whore. They call it Art. Maybe. He is concerned with volume, space. I with the next meal. You're getting thin, Madame, this is not good. My breasts hang slightly low, the studio is cold. In the tea-leaves I can see the Queen of England gazing on my shape. Magnificent, she murmurs, moving on. It makes me laugh. His name is Georges. They tell me he's a genius. There are times he does not concentrate and stiffens for my warmth. He possesses me on canvas as he dips the brush • repeatedly into the paint. Little man, you've not the money for the arts I sell. Both poor, we make our living how we can. I ask him Why do you do this? Because I have to. There's no choice. Don't talk. My smile confuses him. These artists take themselves too seriously. At night I fill myself with wine and dance around the bars. When it's finished he shows me proudly, lights a cigarette. I say Twelve francs and get my shawl. It does not look like me.

Standing Female Nude • Standing Female Nude was the title poem of Duffy's first collection, and can be taken as a symbolic reference to her status as a poet at the time, in that she was laying her soul bare by standing up for feminism in a maledominated world.

• The poem comprises four stanzas, each of seven unrhymed lines. • Duffy uses a technique that involves regularly running clauses and sentences between lines and even across stanzas, which creates a form of poetic prose that is relaxed and non-formal, thus allowing the reader to concentrate on the words and phrases themselves. • Duffy only uses words that are likely to be familiar to her audience, and on occasion these are slang or with sexual overtones

Directness of style • .

Monologue • spoken" by an artist's model in a Paris studio. • Her concern is to "make a few francs" while his is to create a work of art and a reputation for himself as a great artist. • She admits to being "a river whore" who sells her body in more ways than one, but the two are using each other to an equivalent extent.

• FIRST STANZA the model crudely sets out her stall as she displays "Belly nipple arse in the window light, " but also reflects on the outcome of the encounter: "I shall be represented analytically and hung / in great museums. The bourgeoisie will coo / at such an image of a river whore. They call it Art. ” • She is amused as the pretentiousness of the exercise that transforms a whore (which is her perspective) into great art (which is the viewpoint of people other than herself).

• There is a telling comment in "he drains the colour from me", in that the physical ordeal of standing still for six hours somehow transforms the colour of her skin into an image on the canvas. • The pain is hers, but the art is someone else's.

Second stanza • The second stanza states the contrast in attitudes in the clearest possible terms. On the question of "Art" she says "Maybe", but then: "He is concerned with volume, space / I with the next meal. " However, he sees her thinness as "not good" not out of concern for her welfare but because it will affect her shape as a model. • She continues to daydream about her future as a work of art: "I can see the Queen of England gazing on my shape. Magnificent, she murmurs, / moving on. ” • However, she sees the irony in this situation, so that "it makes me laugh".

Crossing the gap between the third and fourth stanzas • i "His name / is Georges. They tell me he's a genius". This seems to indicate that the artist in question is Georges Braque (1882 -1963) and the painting that Duffy has in mind is probably his "Large Nude" of 1908, which certainly emphasises the "belly nipple arse" of the poem's second line. This also adds something to "he drains the colour from me", mentioned above, in that this painting is notable for its subdued tones. • If this is the painting in question, then the "Queen of England" mentioned in the second stanza must either mean the wife of the British king or be a future "in the tea leaves" prediction of a time when Britain would next be ruled by a queen.

• THIRD STANZA interesting for the description of the power play between the two characters. The model is aware of the sexual power she possesses, in that the artist "stiffens for my warmth", but this is followed by: "He possesses me on canvas", although this possession is also expressed with sexual symbolism in "as he dips the brush / repeatedly into the paint". The tables are turned again in the model's mind as she retorts: "Little man, / you've not the money for the arts I sell", but compromise is reached in the stanza's final line: "Both poor, we make our living how we can".

FOURTH STANZA the model attempts conversation with the artist but is rebuffed: • "I ask him, Why do you do this? Because / I have to. There's no choice. Don't talk. ” • She contrasts their lives, mocking him for taking his art too seriously while she is able to "fill myself with wine and dance around the bars". • When the painting is finished he shows it to her "proudly", but her reaction is to ask for her money, get dressed and leave, finishing with the dismissive comment: "It does not look like me". •

• Because this is the model's monologue, it is not surprising that it justifies her side of the interaction with the artist. • She believes that her life is better than his, even to the extent of regarding the future of the painting as an image of her rather than as a creation of the artist. • The irony should not be lost on the reader, who will probably know the name of Georges Braque and might even be familiar with the painting in question, but have no knowledge of who the model might be.

• The model's final comment might be read as a realisation that she is mistaken, and posterity will not be able to appreciate her as a person because she is unrecognisable for who she is in Braque's Cubist style. • This will not bother the model because she has been paid for her work and is more concerned about living day to day than immortality on canvas.

• "Standing Female Nude" is fascinating for its presentation of a contact between two people in which there is no real interaction. • This is a business deal, with money changing hands for a service provided by one party for the other. This is portrayed as a form of prostitution, with the model likening her nighttime work to that of her six hours of posing

• Duffy has captured the strange relationship between artist and model that involves a fully clothed man staring for hours at a naked woman for non sexual purposes, although the model fantasises that there might be a hint of feeling on the artist's part to do with her being a woman as well as a shape. • When all is said and done the model has her money, the artist has his masterpiece, and both people end the encounter satisfied and ready to move on, as though the meeting had never taken place.