I’ve recently taken up life-drawing classes. Fancying myself as a liberal artiste, I wasn’t prepared for the schoolboy humour my new hobby elicited here in the office. “Why pay to look at an old hairy bum?” said one avant-garde Art Director. Raised eyebrows and tittering further served to crush my lofty aspirations. Is my artistic intention really just a posturing pretension – a substitute for tight jeans and quirky glasses? Or perhaps (whisper it) it’s just an excuse to dabble in soft porn?
At 16 I botched together my first poor imitation of a hairy bum. My Sistine Chapel was a girls’ grammar school – the sort that’s been pickled in the fifties and kept sealed by militant spinsters. Presided over by our own Miss Jean Brodie, we gigglingly awaited our first endeavour into this hallowed tradition of the Old Masters. But ten minutes into the first pose, the adolescent blushes evaporated, to be replaced with a reverent silence of concentration. If the process of struggling to capture a complex, living image on paper can silence a gaggle of mouthy teens, then surely there’s something impressive in the exercise.
Ruskin called drawing ‘an instrument of investigation’. It’s as natural to children as role-play and running. But we lose the skill with our dawning self-consciousness and fear of error. Yet looking closely helps us to feel more keenly, and engage with the world. And in a culture of instant gratification, where we increasingly detach ourselves from our bodies – through drugs, surgery, or virtual reality – the exercise of stopping and simply looking is refreshing. It’s life affirming.
So should we applaud Channel Four and its decision to start televising a life-drawing class this summer? The naked body has been a source of endless controversy – a source of wonder and, in equal measure, of disgust. None, surely, would impose an age restriction on art galleries. But moral guardians of the media have deemed that life-drawing – repackaged and serialised for our TV dinner age – is unsuitable for its proposed pre-watershed slot. They’re accused of moral decay, of being obsessed by sex and nudity. But nudity in itself isn’t sexual. Surely context plays a huge part. And, anyway, when sex is everywhere why would anyone turn to a life-drawing class to get their kicks? With their blemishes and hairiness, most life models would be considered repulsive by your Page Three connoisseur.
Then again, I wouldn’t jump to C4′s defence. It seems more likely that they’re cashing in on a trend of popular TV, such as ‘How to Look Good Naked’ and ‘Too Fat, Too Thin’ etc. And there’s a peculiar absurdity in ‘life-drawing’ from a 2D image. This must destroy the wonder of the exercise. There’s magic in representing and engaging with our perception of the world – and not the world as it’s sifted through the light-box in our living rooms.
So I’d recommend picking up a pencil and giving life-drawing a go. And if you can find a hairy bum for free then even better. (I’d suggest Calton Hill).
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What’s your opinion on life-drawing? Is it still for art’s sake? Or just for titillation?
