One Model's Story
I started modeling some 27 years ago whilst going to Saturday morning life drawing classes at the Wilson's Rd annex of Camberwell School of Art.
I was just 17 then and I was paid £15 for the 3-hour session plus some extra for the train fare home. The foundation department hired me from then on. Quite a few times, I'd turn up to a life drawing group expecting to draw and ended up as the subject.
I met a French model that was living in a squat in Camberwell Grove and we would often spend some time cooling off in an old bath in the back garden. Sometimes we’d pose together in life classes, either sleeping, sitting or in some sort of embrace. This was unusual at the time and we became quite popular, particularly with matching Mohicans.
In 25 years I have done some very strange poses at various establishments, including being Eros, the flying boy statue in Piccadilly Circus, at the Wimbledon School of Theatre Arts, where I spent a month in a harness suspended from the ceiling.
Modeling brings up so many surprises and funny situations. I suppose it’s partly due to the fact that it’s quite unusual for people to be entirely naked in front of clothed people. Sometimes the tutor has a very definite idea about a pose or setting. At other times it’s up to me to set the pose. Modeling is like teaching. You have to think about the pose; it’s length, what the space is like and the effects upon the pose. Modeling is a job. You turn up, take your clothes off and you’re the subject of everyone’s gaze. I’m the model who goes into a pose and out of it when the time is up. I’m in the room, but I’m not an object of desire. It's a normal job, but then what’s normal about a job these days? I like to go to a job that I don’t have to worry about what to do or even what to wear.
I’ve had the occasional uncontrollable fits of laughter whilst modeling. On one occasion I was in a complicated group setting with several naked and semi naked models sprawled over a setting made to look like Geracaults ‘Raft of the Medusa’ I was laying on my back next to this lad with his muscular inner thigh right next to my face. He had a very big Prince Albert, (I think Queen Victoria’s husband had one). Anyway, I had this hot flush sensation and had to cover myself for a few moments, but two of the students said they preferred my hands where they were behind my back and painted me as I was. The weeklong pose was very complicated and the students didn't complain. It didn’t put me off doing group settings again but it did make me think of how to avoid similar circumstances from happening again. Sometimes I playback music or work out a new cycle route across London, anything to massage the mind.’
Today’s life class is a thriving part of art education and the art world is changing back towards figuration and traditional notions of the nude.
Take away the functional facts – some people are learning about looking and anatomy whilst someone else is earning a little money, and it becomes an ambiguous transaction. Who is in charge? Everyone is fixed. The model stands or sits, sometimes high up, always the centre of attention, positioned and surrounded. Perhaps the students at their easels are like a congregation.
I still model from time to time, mainly for private groups and friends. These days I find that so many so called 'organizers' of life drawing groups, particularly individual artists want models to send jpgs of hopeful models and don't respond, using the jpg images instead of hiring models. It’s been a fun quarter century posing for artists, students and tutors. I have seen so much change and development, much of it for the better. Figurative art and the study of the human form has survived through many ‘isms’ and returned from the stormy passage of unpopularity when minimalism and post-modernism was all in vogue. Now figuration is back and more popular as ever and life classes and classes remain the core of many adult education and local art groups.
Martin Ireland
I was just 17 then and I was paid £15 for the 3-hour session plus some extra for the train fare home. The foundation department hired me from then on. Quite a few times, I'd turn up to a life drawing group expecting to draw and ended up as the subject.
I met a French model that was living in a squat in Camberwell Grove and we would often spend some time cooling off in an old bath in the back garden. Sometimes we’d pose together in life classes, either sleeping, sitting or in some sort of embrace. This was unusual at the time and we became quite popular, particularly with matching Mohicans.
In 25 years I have done some very strange poses at various establishments, including being Eros, the flying boy statue in Piccadilly Circus, at the Wimbledon School of Theatre Arts, where I spent a month in a harness suspended from the ceiling.
Modeling brings up so many surprises and funny situations. I suppose it’s partly due to the fact that it’s quite unusual for people to be entirely naked in front of clothed people. Sometimes the tutor has a very definite idea about a pose or setting. At other times it’s up to me to set the pose. Modeling is like teaching. You have to think about the pose; it’s length, what the space is like and the effects upon the pose. Modeling is a job. You turn up, take your clothes off and you’re the subject of everyone’s gaze. I’m the model who goes into a pose and out of it when the time is up. I’m in the room, but I’m not an object of desire. It's a normal job, but then what’s normal about a job these days? I like to go to a job that I don’t have to worry about what to do or even what to wear.
I’ve had the occasional uncontrollable fits of laughter whilst modeling. On one occasion I was in a complicated group setting with several naked and semi naked models sprawled over a setting made to look like Geracaults ‘Raft of the Medusa’ I was laying on my back next to this lad with his muscular inner thigh right next to my face. He had a very big Prince Albert, (I think Queen Victoria’s husband had one). Anyway, I had this hot flush sensation and had to cover myself for a few moments, but two of the students said they preferred my hands where they were behind my back and painted me as I was. The weeklong pose was very complicated and the students didn't complain. It didn’t put me off doing group settings again but it did make me think of how to avoid similar circumstances from happening again. Sometimes I playback music or work out a new cycle route across London, anything to massage the mind.’
Today’s life class is a thriving part of art education and the art world is changing back towards figuration and traditional notions of the nude.
Take away the functional facts – some people are learning about looking and anatomy whilst someone else is earning a little money, and it becomes an ambiguous transaction. Who is in charge? Everyone is fixed. The model stands or sits, sometimes high up, always the centre of attention, positioned and surrounded. Perhaps the students at their easels are like a congregation.
I still model from time to time, mainly for private groups and friends. These days I find that so many so called 'organizers' of life drawing groups, particularly individual artists want models to send jpgs of hopeful models and don't respond, using the jpg images instead of hiring models. It’s been a fun quarter century posing for artists, students and tutors. I have seen so much change and development, much of it for the better. Figurative art and the study of the human form has survived through many ‘isms’ and returned from the stormy passage of unpopularity when minimalism and post-modernism was all in vogue. Now figuration is back and more popular as ever and life classes and classes remain the core of many adult education and local art groups.
Martin Ireland
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