In My Studio, 1928

Lotte Laserstein

Narrator: Well into the twentieth century, painting nudes was male territory. For women artists, the motif was seen as inappropriate. Laserstein, however, is not coy about placing a meticulously detailed female body center stage in this self portrait with model. She herself takes a back seat, obscured by the back lighting effect, behind her slumbering friend. By positioning her model at the front, the painter once again demonstrates the vital role that Traute Rose played in her creative process.

Pale winter light falls into the studio through the wide panoramic window. Here above the roofs of the city, the painter and her model occupy a world of their own. Calm concentration and sensuality pervade the workaday scene.

But what is the artist actually painting? Is it really the nude model spread out before her, whom she must surely be seeing from the rear. If we look at the canvas on the easel, which Laserstein has significantly placed in the middle of her composition, it clearly cannot be the elongated wooden panel that we are looking at now. So this seemingly realistic glimpse into the studio is not an authentic reflection after all, but a sophisticated pictorial invention. As we contemplate the “reality” in the painted scene, we realize that the work has its own reality . We might wonder whether the artist ever painted a nude at all, but the narrative in this picture offers no answer. Only the painting hanging in front of us provides irrefutable evidence that she did. With “In My Studio” Laserstein is not only demonstrating her supreme command of this genre, but also succeeds in rendering a naked female body with confidence, utterly without voyeurism, and as if it were the most natural of themes.