Michael

Your Rivette posting got me remembering a hilarious article written by Phillip Pearlstein in "Art in America." Pearlstein had seen "La Belle Noiseuse" and found it rather sadly wanting as a description of the relationship between artists and models. He pointed out that, in his own large experience with models, artists who grabbed, pushed, or shoved around their models (as apparently happens in the film) would, at a minimum, get their faces slapped and/or have the model quit on the spot.

Anything to Add?

I think he also opined that Ms. Beart was too good looking to be a useful model; she, in taking up a pose, was completely aestheticised and thus left nothing particularly valuable for a painter to say (I believe Pearlstein felt the artist's final painting which is shown in the flick was less compelling than the footage of the model.)

I don't know how to lay hands on this very witty article, but it was published in "Art in America" January 1992, and was titled "Modeling the Soul." ( This information had long since passed out of my leaky memory, and comes courtesy of an Emanuelle Beart fan page, here.)

Cheers,

Friedrich