Mortensen designates Figure 1 as a “lay figure.” For the purposes of his modeling book, the live model Mary Jones will be regarded merely as a lay figure—“A more delicately articulated lay figure, no doubt, but needing just as much mechanical adustment” (20-21). You see, “Mary is just as disorganized physically as the manikin here illustrated. We are not for a moment concerned with what Mary thinks or feels, but merely with the mechanical adjustment and plastic relationships of her articulated members” (21).
The difficulty I have with this is that I can’t help but thinking the poor “lay figure” has slipped upon the ice. It appears to me that something is broken, so she might have great difficulty articulating her members.
