For most of my adult artistic life, I have practiced life drawing. I started about 25 years ago, with life drawing classes at the Brentwood Art Center in Los Angeles. I credit my great teacher Ken Bracken with instilling in me the most fundamental skill — how to see. How does a body distribute its weight in different positions? What are the proportions of the human body, and of a particular model? How does the unique geometry of a person’s face make her or him recognizable as themselves?
I understand why drawing the human figure has been a mainstay of artistic training since the Renaissance. What is more wondrous and beautiful than the body? We are all embodied creatures. The intangible part of our human selves — mind, consciousness, soul — is manifested in and inseparable from our physical selves.
Now I regularly attend a Friday afternoon life-drawing session here in Bozeman. It’s a group of women drawing women, hosted by my friend Selisa Rausch, a gifted and inspiring artist. The encouragement and pursuit of excellence in this community makes my heart happy. We draw with intensity but, on the breaks, we talk and laugh and eat homemade baked goods.
Conte crayon on newsprint. From a recent Friday life drawing session.
I think about the position of women as artists and women as models when I view art featuring the figure. A couple of weeks ago, I saw a breathtaking show of the French painter Pierre Bonnard’s work at the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC. Some of the most beautiful paintings depict his wife Marthe in the bath. Look at this one, called Nude in the Bath with Small Dog. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Bonnard#/media/File%3APierre_Bonnard%2C_c.1940-1946%2C_Nude_in_Bathtub%2C_oil_on_canvas%2C_122.56_%C3%97_150.50_cm%2C_Carnegie_Museum_of_Art.jpg. Marthe was Bonnard’s muse for over 50 years. I wonder how she felt about being the object of his gaze and the subject of his art for her whole life. I can’t think of a female artist who rgularly featured a male muse in her work, especially a nude male.
Pastel on newsprint. Another image from our Friday women’s life drawing session.
I also recently checked out an exhibit of figure paintings at a local gallery. Some of the pieces displayed something I see with frustrating frequency— women without heads. Are the artists so distracted by breasts that they can see no further? Or, are faces too difficult to master, and so leaving off the head seems like a workable solution? Regardless, the effect is to literally objectify the woman, reducing her personhood to a bodily segment, a collection of curved forms. A headless woman has neither ideas nor volition. What a false concept. I don‘t notice this headless phenomenon in the depiction of the male form. But I‘ll keep my eye out to be sure.
Meanwhile, I take it as a personal challenge to draw the figure, female or male, in its wholeness. Head attached to torso, mind and body one inseparable whole.
Conte crayon on newsprint. From a local community life drawing session Yes, men model, too.