A Model’s View
By Gayle Caldwell
“It would be an unfortunate marriage for your son, Mrs. Bagot, although I have a very warm regard for poor Trilby O’Ferrall. She was once a model.”
“A model. Mr. Wynne? What sort of Model?”
“Well a model of every sort, in every possible sense of the word—head, hands, feet, everything!
“A model for the figure?”
“Well, yes!”
“Oh, my God! my God! my God!” cried Mrs. Bagot…
(From "Trilby", written in the mid-1800's by George Du Maurier)
Nude art modeling: it’s been around for at least 1500 years, and while not the world’s oldest profession, many have equated it to that “fate worse than death” prostitution. The work has been considered immoral, ignoble, scandalous, even unpatriotic.
Yet without models, the art world’s treasure-trove would be woefully diminished. No languid odalisques would loll in Ingres’ “The Turkish Bath” Renoir could not have painted his robust voluptuous “Blond Bathers” nor Goya the entrancing “Naked Maja.” Without the incongruent nude among the suited gents, Manet’s “Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe” would just be another day in the park. Michaelangelo worked from the model, as did Rodin, Munch and Turner. The list goes on.
Little is known about them, the flesh-and-blood women who posed for the great masterpieces. Phryne a courtesan in ancient Athens may have been the world’s first professional model when she posed for Praxiteles’ “Aphrodite.” More than a pretty face, the farsighted Phryne began bargaining for a piece of sculpture in lieu of payment. As a result she became a wealthy bachelorette, enjoying the romantic attentions of young men until she died at seventy.
However Phryne is not typical of most art models who historically, have not been a prosperous lot. Not surprisingly, many have come from brothels. Others worked as servants. Renoir’s household help doubled in the studio. (Madame Renoir complained that before hiring a maid, her husband had to be consulted to see how the potential employee’s skin “took the light”.) Of Gabrielle, the model he used most often, Renoir commented, “Heaven blessed her with two outstanding gifts: the ability to pose divinely and to fry potatoes sublimely.”
Throughout the last half of the 19th century, European artists relied heavily on models. They were available 24 hours a day at the Academie Suisse in Paris, where they also expected to scrub floors and run errands. The city vibrated with artistic energy, and a Monday Models Mart was set up. Groups of artists would pool funds then wander between the tables contemplating a pair of eyes, tracing the contour of a thigh, pinching an upper arm— much as might be done when buying livestock. Price was negotiated on the spot with less desirable models agreeing to hold painful poses for hours; a meal and a respite from the cold their only compensation. Others were paid by the hour, plus a bonus if they developed goose bumps, an incentive for artists to buy coal for the stove.
Victorian England viewed nude modeling as particularly unseemly. Models were not permitted to enter a home via the front door, and the servants didn’t want them using theirs, so special models entrances were constructed.
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ABOUT FIGURE DRAWING
For centuries the human figure has been recognized as an object of beauty, and drawings of the body as objects with intrinsic value. Since 1990 the Mendocino Figure Drawing Collective, headquartered at the Mendocino Art Center in Northern California, has been a priceless resource for the study of anatomy and gesture, generating many thousands of drawings. These studies affirm the expressive capacity of the human form, and the beauty, elegance and raw power of drawing.
BACKGROUND TO LIFE DRAWING
Since the remote beginnings of Western art, there’s been a powerful fascination with depictions of the human figure. These representations have served ends as seemingly diverse as myth, religious or political allegory, titillation, and science. But for many centuries there have been two especially durable elements in the rendering of human anatomy: the appreciation of the body as an object of beauty in and of itself, and the appreciation of drawings of the nude as artworks having intrinsic beauty and value independent of the particular body depicted. The advent of photography and advanced 20th century modes of art such as Cubism and Abstract Expressionism have actually augmented interest in the nude figure. Indeed, such modern masters as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Jackson Pollock were all adept at drawing the nude, and understood it as a basic practice for the artist.
Every human body has a principle of growth which formed it, including genetic and environmental factors. In this sense it’s like a tree, a canyon, a cloud. Getting the ‘sense’ of this organic development is one of the main goals in the practice of life drawing. The continuous and inevitable transformations which characterize our world have the surprising result that in all moments of our lives we are gazing on things which will never reappear in precisely identical form. So drawing reminds us of the transience of all phenomena, of the passage of time, of mortality, of loss, metamorphosis, resurgence. Drawing reminds us to pay attention, to appreciate these unique lines, forms, and phenomena while we may.
There’s a pronounced sensuality in drawing -- not necessarily in any particular subject matter, but in the unadulterated pleasure of the eyes, transmitting through the mind and muscles to the sensitive, complicated, pleasurable life of the mark. To be sure, there are poignant reminders of this sensuality in certain subjects: nudes, landscapes, interior or other atmospheres charged with light. Yet somehow one’s attention always returns to drawing itself. In this context, “drawing” does not mean a manufacturing activity, the production of ‘drawings’ which can be framed and sold. It means a practice by which the entire process, from eyeballs to mark, is exercised, strengthened, made straighter and more direct, more supple and responsive. Basically it’s a training to be receptive and alive.