You may remember that I wrote a post a while back about making my living as an Art Model. I’ve been modeling now for the past eighteen months, and I actually receive more work than I can handle. It’s strange that all of my previous jobs gave me anxiety, but for some reason being naked on a stage in front of twenty people totally relaxes me. I feel safe up there, in the artist’s appreciation and quiet meditation on the human form.
Last Sunday night I went to my first studio as an artist. I actually felt nervous to be crossing over to the other side. Drawing was an awkward struggle, and I wanted to loosen up my hand. The model was beautiful, and it was torture attempting to draw her perfect lines. She is much shorter and curvier than I am, so it was difficult for me to get her proportions just right. But now, I am hooked.
In high school and early college, I thought that I would be an artist. I was selling paintings and winning contests, and the head of the art department was upset when I decided not to major in art. I thought the fashion business could be a more dependable income, but the industry wasn’t for me. Instead, writing chose me, and since college, I’ve worked to support my craft. But I’ve never stopped doing little art projects here and there.
As an Art Model, I rarely meet people outside of the art world that can really comprehend what I do. The job makes my family slightly uncomfortable, and they don’t want to see the art that comes out of my collaboration with the artist, at least not the figure studies. My dad even just asked me, “Are you still doing that?” This after I told him that I’m booked solid through January.
At a party last summer I told an acquaintance that figure artists are often able to sell their work to wineries since wineries want to be aligned with European tastes. The woman replied, “Oh great, then your friends will see you naked!”
If that bothered me, I wouldn’t be doing this. Most funny, is that she tends to hang out with the sex-positive crowd, and you would think she would be more relaxed.
My liberal friend from my conservative college days responded by saying, “Oh, I see you’re still objectifying yourself.”
It gave me meditation on the word ‘objectify’ – a word that does not take place within, but without, a choice of the viewer, and not the viewed.
Definition of OBJECTIFY
1: to treat as an object or cause to have objective reality
2: to give expression to (as an abstract notion, feeling, or ideal) in a form that can be experienced by others <it is the essence of the fairy tale to objectify differing facets of the child’s emotional experience — John Updike>
I could never objectify myself since it would be impossible to experience my own self as an object. I am within, not without. It is the viewer’s benefit to see the human form as an object. In their study they can come to a greater understanding of our own structure. Not just physically, but spiritually, emotionally, mentally.
People also don’t realize I actually make money as an Art Model. They see it as a funny little hobby. They always assume that because I’m a wife without a traditional job, I’m just gadding about, living off my husband’s income. Besides food and housing, we don’t share our money. Modeling pays my bills.
I love being an Art Model for the feeling of collaboration. I love that I see it from both angles as a model and an artist. I love the unknown – the moments where an artist’s work blows me away or surprises me, or when they see a person that I don’t look like at all.
“’Thereness’ follows nothingness. It is impossible to premeditate. It is to do with the collaboration of the sitter, … but also to do with the disappearance of the sitter the moment the image emerges (Berger, 78).”
In John Berger’s book “The Shape of a Pocket,” he meditates on art and different artists throughout history. But it was his discussion on the mystery of the model that most fascinated me, whether the model is a building, an object, or a person.
“The ‘sitter’ is at first here and now. Then she disappears and (sometimes) comes back there, inseparable from every mark on the painting.
After she has ‘disappeared’ a drawing or two are the only clues about where she may have gone. And of course, sometimes they’re not enough, and she never comes back (Berger, 80-81).”
An artist I work for said that she felt invisible when she stopped modeling. I think I began modeling for the same exact reason. I can’t say that now I feel seen, because much of what there is to see is within. Sometimes people see that, sometimes they don’t. But I see my body differently than I did before. There is no shame in it, no discomfort. I see it as an instrument. I train it to be strong in the pose. I sink into the physical pain for long periods of time, and travel through my thoughts. Then eventually I come back again, and slip into my robe.
Works of art stay within my mind for years. If I love them, I never forget them. Sometimes I even think about how I can recreate them. I dream about the works. They become a part of my subconciousness. They can even change my life. These images go way beyond what anyone in the media can toss up on us.
“… the media surround people with faces. The faces harangue ceaselessly by provoking envy, new appetites, ambition or, occasionally, pity combined with a sense of impotence (Berger, 58).”
Art doesn’t speak as much as it feels, unless, of course, it’s propaganda.
Watching those who are adept with the charcoal, capturing every single muscle as though they have been trained by Leonardo Da Vinci, gives me strength to go on feeling clumsy and awkward until there is some kind of breakthrough.
“Real drawing is a constant question, is a clumsiness, which is a form of hospitality towards what is being drawn. And, such hospitality once offered, the collaboration may sometimes begin (Berger, 75).”
It is a pleasure to be clumsy as an artist, and graceful as a model. The two balance each other out.
My problem with past jobs was the same exact problem with the media. I always felt harangued, pitied, made to feel envious, impotent. But as an Art Model, I can just be. No one is asking more of me than my perfect stillness. While the timer is ticking, I solve all of my problems, envision plans, come up with titles and new writing ideas, and sometimes let my emotions fall into a song playing on the stereo. While somewhere off in the distance, artists struggle along over the lines of my body and the colors of my form.
Lauren J. Barnhart 