Don Bachardy: Nudes

In early 2002, the renowned Santa Monica–based portraitist Don Bachardy (born 1934) was commissioned to draw a different nude from life every day.

For the next two years, Bachardy created thousands of images and a body of work that reflects a lifetime of observing, depicting and processing the human male form, to which his numerous previous publications are testimony.

Images range from confrontational to passive, sensual to blasé, and engage the viewer on multiple levels. A provocative text from Edmund White, “Ten Ways of Looking at Bachardy’s Male Nudes,” elaborates on the various ways to see and understand the work.