Duffy's "Standing Female Nude" - which painting?

Hey,

I'm currently annotating all of the poems in my Duffy Selected Poems anthology that we haven't covered in lessons for my A Level exam and have got a little stuck at "Standing Female Nude". I was just wondering if it was meant to have been inspired by a specific painting (as "The Virgin Punishing the Infant" was, for example), and if so, which one?

The most common response on Google to the title appears to be the work by Pablo Picasso - which, with it's rather odd representation of the female body certainly seems to fit the speaker's complaint at the end of the poem that "It does not look like me". However, halfway through the poem the speaker says "His name / is Georges" - so could the painting be "Standing Female Nude" by Georges Suerat? However, looking at this link...

http://www.chinaoilpainting.com/htmlopus/painting-54160.html

...it doesn't seem to fit as well as the Picasso one. Or is the use of the name "Georges" just a general detail - i.e. the poem refers to all male art of women as a whole, and the "It does not look like me" refers to what Duffy perceives as the male inability to interpret or represent women as they truly are?

Has anyone got any resources on this poem / had a lesson on it who might be able to cast some light on it for me, please? :smile:

Thanks!

Bump?

got bored reading your thread so thought i would entertain myself by posting this pointless message. That is all.

Reply 3

roadtriptolife

Late reply to the original question but in case anyone still reads this thread the poem is a "Reference to the cubist painting "Large Nude" by Georges Braque, Paris, 1908."

... the painting is cubist so 'It does not look like me.' is also mocking the entire style of art and the fact that the narrator feels it takes no talent.
Hope that helps :smile:

Reply 4

Itareldie

It reminded me of Laura Knight's Self Portrait (1913).