Several things over the last few days have set me thinking about the ways in which the life-drawing class is misperceived and misunderstood. In the next post I will say something about models and their experience, but on this occasion I want to concentrate on the situation of the artist/participant.
I suppose that the most common misperception of life-drawing has to do with the idea that these occasions are ones on which the normal rules of society are broken. Somebody takes off his/her clothes in public, and other people are given license to look. In fact a life-drawing session is very tightly regulated by rules. The model never undresses before the class, but enters the room clad in a robe, that is removed only immediately before a pose is adopted. A model is known to the class by name (there is usually a formal introduction), is never simply an object, and is thanked at the end of the session. Another strict rule is that nobody ever touches the model. Courtesy and restraint are the rules of the situation.
It is notable that cartoon depictions of life-drawing invariably show a female model disrobed in front of male artists. Two things are questionable here. First of all, in the classes I have attended over the past twenty years or more the model is as likely to be male as female. The idea that these are occasions on which to indulge the unbridled male gaze is far from the truth. What is more, the participants in the event are possibly more than likely to be female. (The group I’m involved in at the moment includes only two men in a class of ten.)*
It is worth pausing to think about the historical development of life-drawing as an essential part of artistic training. Until the Great War female students were often excluded from the life-room because the model was normally male, and it was thought to be improper for young ladies to be gazing at the nude male form. The odd thing about this situation, of course, is that they were confined to “drawing from the antique”. It was OK for them to behold the plaster forms of Greek gods, but not the bodies of their contemporaries. Female models were established earlier in France, I gather. The whole business of the nude as the object of study grew in importance as art became more professionalised, and art schools developed in status.
I gather that the discipline of drawing the live model has been declining in art schools, as media such as video have grown in popularity. Despite this, I maintain that the heart of any programme of artistic education should be drawing, and the human form offers unrivalled complexity and opportunities for variation.
*It is something that requires thought and explanation, but as with several other professions (notably the clergy) art has become steadily feminised during the post-war period.