Meet Manuel Neri’s Muses: ‘Assertion of the Figure’ highlights the models behind the sculpture
…bject for the male artist to objectify. Rather, she’s a collaborator. You feel each woman’s presence in the work, side by side with the man who shaped it. Neri and Nakamura (sometimes referred to as Makiko) met in Carrara, Italy. He established a studio there in order to access marble from those famous quarries. She was the model forĀ Makida III, a large, marble head with unseeing, absent or closed eyes. While her lips and nose are cle…