In the nude

Room 318 in the Fine Arts building smells of paint, but the aroma itself isn’t so toxic, as a hint of lemon fragrance invitingly inhabits the room. A female subject sits cross-legged on a sky-blue sheet with direct light beaming on her, adjacent to a cerulean-painted wall of bright fruit bowl portraits arranged in two rows of six.

The subject rests calmly under the careful gaze of graduate student-artists Ben Pines and Devin Mawdsley as they sit at easels. Pines is wearing blue gloves, so as to not smudge the black-and-white facial portrait he is crafting, and Mawdsley intensely sketches, editing and erasing multiple faces of the subject.

She is nude.

The model rises from her position and drapes herself in a robe. It’s time for a five- to 10-minute break on her two-and-a-half-hour shift of various poses that may include bending, laying, standing, sitting and of course, facial expressions.

Pines sets his paintbrush to rest on the easel as he waits for the model to return in a new position. He understands her exhaustion.

“She’s a very conscientious model,” he said of her intense focus.

Pines is an associate instructor of a fundamental drawing studio art course. He said that most enrolled students in these classes have a model come in “a couple times at the end of the semester.”

Pines said he believes painting nude subjects is a way “in the tradition to explore more deeply what it means to be human,” though for the most part, he said he does facial portraits of nude subjects more often.

“I don’t do portraits because it’s safe, because people don’t find classical portraits indecent,” Pines said. “But classical nudes are considered indecent, and I wish it weren’t that way. We tend to think ourselves as inheritors of tradition dating back to Greek bodies, but in America, nude art is still widely seen as something suspect.”

THE FINE ART OF THE NUDE

The Henry Radford Hope School of Fine Arts at IU allows “just about anyone older than 18 who is comfortable holding a pose nude for 30 minutes at a time” for introductory and advanced studio art courses in sculpting, painting and drawing, said Stephanie Klausing, graduate services coordinator in the Fine Arts school.

Klausing also helps coordinate nude models, who she said range from college-age to adult Bloomington residents and are paid $10 hourly for the position. The models also have the option of posing partially nude, and are sometimes directed by instructors.
As an undergraduate student, Klausing had to paint nudes in several studio art classes she took. For her, there was nothing sexual or erotic about the people she portrayed. It was a purely academic experience.

“It’s not uncomfortable for me, especially when you consider the history of the nude in art forms,” she said. “You just know what is expected of you as a professional.”
Like Pines, Klausing said she was able to see so many body types when drawing them, and it enriched her learning experience.

“You see the bodies that seem to have gone ‘out of fashion,’” she said. “In the Rubenesque period, women were more voluptuous, and as an artist you just learn to appreciate the human form in its physicality and relate that perspective to your audience.”

A KINSEY AFFAIR

Catherine Johnson-Roehr is a curator at the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction and worked to put together its latest exhibit, “The Shape of Us.”

Johnson-Roehr seized the opportunity to look for diverse bodies used for artistic purposes worldwide. The exhibit includes among its many portraits and artifacts a “penis wall,” a corset and fetishist high heels in a glass case, a shirtless, transgender female-to-male covered in tattoos and photographs taken of women’s nude bodies as per Kinsey’s request to use in his studies.

To be fair, she said the exhibit includes art portraying “conventionally beautiful” bodies as well, adding that she thought Alfred Kinsey would “approve of the diversity represented in his collection, if he was alive today.”

“I mean, there are pictures of larger women who are really comfortable with their size,”  Johnson-Roehr said of the exhibit. “People like a lot of things, and everyone thinks size and the shape of who we are as the same thing, when there are Web sites that prove not everyone is looking for hairless men and skinny women with large chests.”

For Johnson-Roehr, the choice of art used in the exhibit display the importance of positive body perceptions that date back to Kinsey’s principalities as a pioneering sex researcher.

“A common question a lot of people have when looking at others’ bodies is, ‘Is this normal?’” she said. “Kinsey really challenged that and broke the mold, because in his research he found endless variety. What’s normal for me isn’t normal for you, and there it is.”

 A DAY IN THE LIFE: LOUIS PAGANO

Louis Pagano is a graduate student in counseling psychology by day and a nude model by night.

It may seem contradictory to some, but for Pagano, it’s natural.

“I’ve always wanted to do it,” he said.

After a typical day of classes and his practicum internship, he catches the 9 Bus to Jordan and 7th, shoves the doors open and bolts toward the Fine Arts building, peeling off his clothes as he runs.

He takes off his Versace glasses, then it’s showtime.

“Luckily, I’m vision-impaired, because if I saw everyone looking at me, I might be worried,” Pagano said.

Pagano is a busy graduate student and often sees the $10-an-hour gig as a Zen opportunity to “reflect and relax,” but of course, he said he doesn’t venture into full REM sleep mode.

Nude modeling is not an act of self-consciousness for Pagano – who comes from a background of “showing off in theater” and, as he joked, “streaking in his undergrad days” – but an act of self-confidence.

“If I can do this, of course I can talk to that girl I think is cute,” he said. “And when people say I’m gutsy for doing this, I say, ‘Yeah, I guess I am.’”

A DAY IN THE LIFE: MADDY HAYDEN

Junior Maddy Hayden has always been a modest girl. She goes to class, reads novels such as “A Wrinkle in Time” and plays with her four-month-old guinea pig, Grubby, in her down time.

“I would never change in front of people at the gym,” she said.

Now, Hayden bares all for the sake of art and an “interesting experience.”

“I liked the idea of seeing myself in art in general,” she said. “It’s important to study how the human body is used in different facets. It feels good to be naked and have people create art off what they see.”

Besides, Hayden said, female bodies are a lot prettier to look at, in terms of art anyway.

All of this self-assurance isn’t to say that she didn’t struggle with first expectations. Hayden said she saw the opportunity as another way to “show yourself for who you are” in the same way she has done for theater productions she’s been involved in.

“I had no idea what to think going into it,” she said about her first nude session. “But at least I don’t have to worry about being upstaged.”

Hayden said she naturally wondered what people thought of her, adding “these people are around my age and maturity level. They’ve gotta be thinking something.”

But all those first-time jitters went away, and now, Hayden can finally change clothes around people in the gym.

She said a nude portrait of her was even briefly featured in the IU Art Museum.

“You have to have a bit of a sense of humor,” she said. “Although I must admit, it is a little funny seeing someone from a class in public who has also seen me naked.”