More Naked Ladies

Hey, this time with Pictures!

So, I've been a figure model since I was 17. I started in a bikini for a highschool class, and have since modeled nude for 13 years. In that time I have seen lots and lots of drawings of myself. Hundreds. Maybe even thousands. Neither of these are of me- both were done by Ted and were featured in the gallery a couple of months back. I love both these drawings. In neither can you see the woman's face, or details of her breasts. In both you can see hands, and in at least one of them, feet. Ted can draw, that much is certain. He has studied figure drawing off and on for more than 10 years, and when he looks at a naked girl (or man, actually, though I seem to have not transferred those images onto my hard drive), low, he seems to see a lot of interesting details to draw. Ted works very hard to attempt to master this very complicated way of seeing. This will be relevant later on, I promise.

In Carol Duncan's (yup, it was a double Duncan day)"Virility and Domination in Early 20th Century Vanguard Painting" essay one of her many assertions indicated that the Fauves (amoung others) were obviously lascivious bastards because they painted reclining women with no heads, hands, or feet. Now, I looked at the xeroxes of the works used to support this claim, by such luminaries as Picasso, Matisse, Munch and others, and here's what I can say about them- they weren't very good drawers, or atleast these weren't very good drawings. And by that I mean that they didn't take a lot of time to see very much to draw, especially of the naked girl. They seem intimidated by feet and hands- if they can put them behind a back, or out of the frame, they do. I've watched hundreds of students use this same technique. The artists seem more interested in the symbol of woman than in the actual woman to hand- if they can place her somewhere, great! Put her on a sofa, bed, in front of a self-portrait, whatever! Just don't have her (as Ted's drawings of the subject seem to do) actually bearing weight in space. Don't give her mass! The exception to this being Matisse's Carmelina, which was by far the most interesting of the paintings.

At the same time that these avant-garde artists were making these floaty lady paintings, photography (not discussed in the article) was making it's first inroads into the art world, and surgery was becoming standardized. It wasn't imperative anymore to be depicting the body accurately- there was another medium and method doing that ever so much more effectively than a bad drawing could. Also, there were amazing commercial figure drawers of that era, most notably Alphonse Mucha. In other words, it was no longer imperative to be good at seeing- instead, I think, we see the switch to "art" being for shock value and profit.

And what was shocking at the time? Art of the mentally deranged, or imported primative works. These are wonderful and compelling aesthetic systems heavily influencing the art world, especially Picasso. I see no evidence, or discussion, of what gender the masks from Demoiselles De Avignon were originally intended for, but quite possibly that was what the painting was supposed to be about- the masks, not the boobies. I dunno, I could be wrong. The boobies are pretty interesting, too.

What is for certain is that these men were making work not to be collected by the upper classes, or the monarchy, or to better display wealth in a church setting as their predecessors had. These were not works to be slaved over in the process of discovering the anatomy or to better depict Jesus and Mary, a tradition of representation that had been perfected by fresco painters 200-400 years before. These were quick, dirty paintings to sell to the middle classes (in this I agree with Ms Duncan). These were to swap with each other, to trade for rent, doodles and not masterpieces, by in large. These are not "studies" these are "paintings" by men who can't draw very well for people who can't afford, or appreciate, the best.

But I resent the claim that the models were somehow degraded by these depictions. Many models, whether or not they are also prostitutes, have been drawn badly. You don't always get to choose how you are drawn. What's for certain is that very rarely is a woman seen cut off as if she is involved in a sexual act at the time of the painting. I know from experience why there are so many reclining women being depicted, as opposed to standing or even seated poses. It's exhausting! I look at a lot of paintings from this era and see tired models, not dominated models. I'm not saying artists of the era weren't just jerks wanting to paint naked ladies- they very well may have been. But I think we should give them the benefit of the doubt. They probably hired these women for an hour, half of which was spent reclining, much as it would be now.

I'm all for a school of criticism for artists by artists. I look at Ted's work, much as I look at Mucha's or Degas', and see people who may have been bastards, but are also interested in the sensuous details of feminine-ness, and are willing to work hard to capture that in a limited time. When Degas drew a prostitutes, as he often did, he drew her very well, very nicely, and it is obvious that she is in motion. These men love women. They love drawing. They have studied long enough to love the details, not just of the carpet, but also of the girl. This, to me, is the most masculine, FUBU sort of drawing- communicating the intimate details of particular models as they have been presented to the viewer. There is just as much ego in a Mucha as a Matisse, one artist puts more merit in intimacy and the other in symbolism. Neither is dominant. They are just ways of seeing some one they are paying to lie on their sofa.