Model (art)
In the classroom setting, where the purpose is to learn how to draw or paint the human form in all the different shapes, ages and ethnicities, anyone who can hold a pose may be a model.
[1]: 9 With the increasing presence of sexual imagery in popular culture, effort is required to maintain the desexualized context of nude modeling in studio classes.
Most models learn on the job, but many have experience in the performing arts, athletics, or yoga that provide a basis for posing, such as strength, flexibility, and a well-developed sense of body position.
[2]: 127–131 A common experience for young first-time participants in a figure class, both models and students, is overcoming anxiety for the initial session due to preconceptions regarding public nudity.
[51][52][53] In some institutions, guidelines for the conduct of all participants in a nude model session may be specified in a handbook, and are observed to maintain decorum and emphasize the serious intent of figure studies.
Generally the attendees are experienced artists who want to continue the practice of life drawing, and find an informal group easier and more economical, paying a fee for each session or a series.
However, in a private studio environment, with an artist on a deadline or with commission guidelines, stricter work standards may apply regarding punctuality and holding longer, more demanding poses, but also higher rates of pay.
[70] Clothing is required in public venues, such as Dr Sketchy's Anti-Art School,[71] but occurs in more traditional settings as well, such as the fund-raising marathons sponsored by the Bay Area Models Guild.
[72] Modern portraits are done from photographs at least in part, although artists prefer to have at least some hours of live sitting at the beginning to better capture the personality, and at the end for final touches.
[77] Jock Sturges photographed entire families of naturists,[78] which led to an FBI investigation when a photo-lab employee reported the images; however, no charges were made.
[80] Occasionally the distinction of participating in Fine Art may make a young amateur model willing to pose for a well-known photographer, examples being Vanessa Williams and Madonna.
[82] Although remote sessions suffer from some difficulties, such as the flattening and distortion of the camera and the lack of direct communications, there has been an expansion of the community willing and able to participate, both as models and artists.
[83][84] Models at the Government College of Art & Craft in India for whom posing for classes is their only income do not have the online option, but have been supported by donations from artists.
[90] None of the Protestant Evangelical colleges in the United States were found to include nude models in their arts and graphic design programs, citing it as an immodest practice; yet similar institutions in Australia held life drawing classes.
[91] At Louisiana State University (LSU), there are rare objections to nudity by religious or conservative students, but the faculty assert that drawing the body is necessary training for art in general and to understand the structure underneath clothing.
[94] Gordon College not only maintains the need for nude figure studies as part of a complete classical art education, but sees the use of models clad in swimwear or other revealing garments as placing the activity in the context of advertisement and sexual exploitation.
[95] James Elkins voices an alternative to classical "dispassionate" figure study by stating that the nude is never devoid of erotic meaning, and it is a fiction to pretend otherwise.
[96] Even the advocate of classical aesthetics Kenneth Clark recognized that "biological urges" were never absent even in the most chaste nude, nor should they be unless all life is drained from the work.
[4]: 6–7 As the 20th century progressed, models gained more recognition and status, including forming the first organizations with some of the functions of labor unions thus becoming a professional occupation.
The story told of Zeuxis by Valerius Maximus, who had five of the most beautiful virgins of the city of Crotone offered him as models for his picture of Helen, proves their occasional use.
[103] The nude almost disappeared from Western art during the Middle Ages, largely due to the attitude of the early Christians,[104] although in Kenneth Clark's famous distinction "naked" figures were still required for some subjects, especially the Last Judgment.
This changed with the Renaissance and the rediscovery of classical antiquity, when painters initially used their male apprentices (garzoni) as models, for figures of both genders, as is often clear from their drawings.
Leon Battista Alberti recommends drawing from the nude in his De pictura of 1435; as remained usual until the end of the century, he seems only to mean using male models.
[108]: 3–4, 137 [109] The most notorious of these is the portrayal as the Virgo lactans (or just post-lactans) of Agnès Sorel (died 1450), the mistress of Charles VII of France, in a panel by Jean Fouquet.
[108]: 3–4 [110] Raphael's relationship was probably somewhat untypical, although the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini records his use, in both Rome and Paris, of servant girls as model, mistress and maid.
[105]: 60 Art modeling as an occupation appeared in the late Renaissance when the establishment of schools for the study of the human figure created a regular demand, and since that time the remuneration offered ensured a continual supply.
[116] The second Bal des Quat'z'Arts held in 1893 was a costume ball featuring nude models among the crowd, blurring the distinction between the idealized images in works of art and the real people who posed for them.
[117][118] When Victorian attitudes took hold in England, studies with a live model became more restrictive than they had been in the prior century, limited to advanced classes of students that had already proved their worthiness by copying old master paintings and drawing from plaster casts.
[119]: 84 In 1886, Thomas Eakins was famously dismissed from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art for removing the loincloth from a male model in a mixed classroom.
Peter Steinhart says that in trendy galleries, the nude has become passé,[17]: 21 while according to Wendy Steiner there has been a revival in the importance of the figure as a source of beauty in contemporary art.
