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John Coplans, Louise Bourgeois, and Eugène Leroy are three artists who present the figure from the perspective of old age. Employing his sagging, weathered figure, Coplans scrutinizes and probes his corporeality and, in the spirit of an expressionistic painter, celebrates the abstract forms his body can assume. Feet become mountains, creating crevices like those found in the slashed, encrusted paint of Clyfford Still’s canvases. His back becomes a meditation on shapes, textures, and subtle nuances. In addition, Coplans’ focused eye does to the male nude what Guston did to his figures; it satirizes the confining nature of physical existence. Louise Bourgeois’ figures in Couple II, 1996, also elicit our empathy. Bound together as a single unit of contrasting parts, they represent an array of conflicted feelings – Bourgeois’ childhood memory of her father’s adulterous affair, the struggle between security and suffocation in any relationship, and the circular battle between men and women for autonomy and connection. Couple II could also be a reinterpretation of the reclining nude. The message of female passivity is symbolized in the brace that the woman wears, while the figure on top manifests the male domination implicit in many images of nude women. Finally, while Eugène Leroy’s work draws from the model in an age-old tradition, his charcoal passages on paper reveal a similar transience and vulnerability.
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