Tuesday, November 5, 2024

AUDREY MUNSON AS AN ARTIST'S MODEL : SHE SAW IT AS AN AUDIENCE OF ONE : ON SCULPTOR and EVEN A LADY LIBERTY COIN

Arnold Genthe - Photographer, Felix Benedict Herzog - sculptor, Isadore Konti - and so very many more.  Audrey saw her nude posing as for an audience of one.  She was paid about fifty cents an hour. 

Using the Inflation Calculator here: Fifteen cents in 1913 be about fifteen dollars an hour in 2024. (An unlivable wage.)

In this Rochester-made video it's noted that she was the model for over 100 statues exhibited in the 1915 World's Fair and a Lady Liberty coin.  (According to the book, she demurred and said she had been just one of the models for the coin.)


At the time Audrey's nude modeling was considered daring but not pornography.  She embodied the classic Greek and Roman notions of womanhood and femininity. She was never posed or enacted a sexual act. The term "supermodel" came decades later into pop culture, and today's models for photography and on runways rarely also pose as artist's models for sculpture. She is the model for many works of sculpture that endure today.  In 1915 at the World's Fair, sculptures of her were made just for the exhibition.

Audrey Munson was at the height of her fame after she made Hollywood history acting in a 1915 film called Purity.  It was after that film - she made two more - that she attempted to live separately of her mother and enter society, perhaps hoping for a suitable rich husband.

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