Spirited Bodies at Figure This! 2019

Figure This!

Exhibition preview

Model-led life drawing workshop

Essay

Where I’m from

I was fortunate to have a very safe, secure working class upbringing near Tilbury in south Essex. Money was never in abundance but always well managed. We lived in an area defined by its industry and docks, mitigated by surrounding swathes of open countryside.

My father worked the land before becoming a labourer at an oil and chemical terminal on the River Thames. My mother was – in the terminology of the era – a housewife; cooking, cleaning and making clothes for me and my younger brother. When my father was made redundant about four years before his pension was due, my mother immediately took work on a supermarket checkout while he saw out his career doing back-breaking shifts in a dockside warehouse.

In both cases, they endured grindingly hard, under-appreciated employment of a kind I’ve been spared in my own working life, but their example has shown me a strong work ethic that I’ve tried to carry forward into my life modelling. By that, I don’t mean unquestioning adherence to instructions or unimaginative repetition, but understanding the value and contribution of every piece of work in any setting, doing it to the best of one’s ability, respecting those who pay for it and being due full respect in return.

My attitude as life model

I work as a life model because that is what I choose to do for myself, but I give all I can for every individual in the room, as far as my body and mind will allow.

I am neither athletic nor muscle-bound nor beautiful nor sexy by any classical or contemporary standard, but I am a unique human being with a singular physique and an innate will to use it as best as I’m able for artists observing me from every vantage point.

Narcissism

I understand that it’s not good enough for me to revel in self-indulgent satisfaction simply at being the centre of attention, or to expect you should gaze with wonder, awe, admiration and gratitude at the sensational sight of me naked before you. Life modelling is work – hard work, requiring focus and imagination. It exacts a physical and emotional toll. It should be valued on both sides of the easel.

I believe there are very few models that can be considered true narcissists of the type who glory in flaunting their own self-assured magnificence or gorgeousness. I’m not one of those and, whilst I wouldn’t mind having a bit of magnificence or gorgeousness, I am also aware that without a touch of humility it can inspire as much sniggering as admiration.

No, I suspect I belong to a much more common species of life model, one that is hugely self-critical and dislikes many aspects of their body, but who has arrived at a point of thinking: if I am to be seen and judged at all, then let all of me be seen and judged.

This is a surprisingly powerful idea. Once it has taken root, it can quickly flourish into a compulsion that urgently needs an outlet – ideally a legal one.

The logic of nudity

When a person is fully clothed, they may be judged by their tastes and choices – outward manifestations of their personality. Even when they’re in swimwear we are judging, consciously or subconsciously: how well they have conformed to society’s expectations; what they’ve chosen to reveal; what they conceal; the apparent confidence with which they do both.

Naked, however… if we judge the naked body, we’re daring to judge nature itself, in it’s purity and authenticity.

Nakedness is truth – it is the honesty of life.

I remember once in my late teens, sunbathing alone in my parents’ back garden and – in a vivid moment of clarity – realising how insane it was that I’d undressed indoors, but then put on shorts to get a tan. And how when we go swimming we get naked, then put on trunks or a swimsuit or bikini before getting in the water. Afterwards we have to wring out these bits of cloth, deal with their dampness, let them dry, wash them, dry them again… it seems so senseless.

Since that time I’ve been very much at ease with the comfortable common-sense of nakedness. But I’m aware it’s also something I enjoy and for which I actually have an enthusiasm. That’s a circumstance I’m less able to intellectualise, but then why do any of us have particular predilections? In my case, perhaps I was simply marked from birth to live my best days as I was born: naked.

Bodily perfection

It’s important to understand that having the capacity, keenness and professional capability to be naked in an art room or even society at large is not the same as having a body positive self-image. There’s a big difference. But the condition of the body that nature has given me should be a matter of concern for me alone. Nowadays I’m pretty much at ease with it in the art studio, but not all days are good days. I’m grateful to artists who discover and capture the best of me.

I suspect many of us share a common idea of the perfect male body, or at least would imagine many common attributes. This form of perfection is, for most men, an unrealistic ideal that has been partly predetermined by human evolution, but is also relentlessly reinforced by modern social conditioning.

We’re an intelligent species – we can discern reality from fantasy – yet still we constantly judge ourselves against fantasy ideals and think less of ourselves if we don’t conform. Through art, print, film, television, and now in maximum overdrive through the tyranny of social media, we continue propagating flawless archetypes with which to torment each other, subliminally if not literally. I defy anyone to tell me that’s not the case. And it’s happening in life drawing too.

In London

In present day London – the greatest melting pot of diversity and creativity on the face of Earth – we’re witnessing an unprecedented boom in life drawing, with new groups springing up almost on a weekly basis. But what are we seeing in terms of representation?

Whilst an increase in groups ought to mean more work for a greater diversity of models, in fact it appears that competition for a finite pool of artist ‘customers’ means we’re lapsing back onto the well-worn mantra that “sex sells”.

Don’t just take my word for it.

Check the social media adverts for life drawing sessions in any given week; are those models representative of the whole population?

Check the range of artworks posted on Instagram and in Facebook life drawing groups; are those images an observation of all humanity?

Even when a life drawing event is advertised as being – quotes – “Body Positive” it’s mostly likely to mean they’ve booked a young female model who is – quotes – “fat”. I understand the strong body politics of that choice, but as a perpetual totem for body positivity, it’s as though youthful female fleshiness is the only imaginable variation from the physical ideals of antiquity.

Diversify

There are more people willing to try life modelling than ever before, but I do feel that over recent years, in London especially, life drawing has been ‘sexed up’. It’s now artists alone – as paying ‘customers’ – who can exercise their influence and reverse this trend by demanding more from their groups and classes.

Of course, show us young bodies that are effortlessly lithe and sexy, but also show us old bodies, ancient bodies, lived-in bodies with character; show us the able and the disabled; and let us use our full palette of colours.

Shows us confidence and trepidation, show us ordinary bodies and extraordinary bodies, show us ourselves and the other, and all the others. Show us the easy choices and show us the hard sells.

If an artist says “I found that body difficult to draw” then challenge them again and again – not mercilessly nor relentlessly, but with fair regularity.

The role of art

I’m sentimental enough to believe that the figurative arts should serve a higher purpose than just aping popular culture, and that a goal of the artist should be to develop their talent to observe and creatively interpret all that humanity can offer, be that mainstream or mundane or magnificently mutant.

The art world loves to see itself as cutting-edge, confrontational, uncompromising and pushing boundaries, but I fear in twenty-first century cosmopolitan London, the life drawing scene has drifted closer to Love Island than biennale Venice.

That’s not to say it isn’t the most progressive life drawing city in the world – in all likelihood it really is – it’s just that the ingredients are here to facilitate a wildly diverse study of human bodies and all their astonishing colours, shapes, sizes, ages and abilities, yet the default seems to be stuck on bland beauty; the unimaginative erotic.

I don’t know what it will take to shift this position in reality. Maybe artists are quite happy with the scene as it is, and in fact there is no appetite for change.

I do believe London life drawing has its own cultural elite who for the most part are good honourable people, but who seem so mired in commercial considerations – maybe with one eye also favouring their own personal preferences – that perhaps they don’t realise how their own modest yet not insignificant contribution is helping perpetuate toxic body ideals.

The London life drawing scene offers innumerable opportunities to draw the nude human form but caters disproportionately for traditional hackneyed tastes.

Reclaim life

My appeal to life drawing artists is this:

If you truly wish to develop your observational abilities and your skill at capturing unfamiliar forms, then ask your group organisers for more variety.

That doesn’t mean a variety of clichéd sexiness, and nor does it mean only the extremes of any given variation. It means the ordinary variety we see around us every day; naturalness without sensation or glorification – or to put it another way, ‘life’.

Let life drawing turn its gaze back to ‘life’ as it really is, not how mass media would have us believe it should look.

Drawings