The Life Class: Proposal for a New Model of Observation

Introduction:

The Life Class, as it is currently taught in most higher education art programs no longer meets the requirements of today’s art students. Also, it doesn’t reflect the context of artistic education today, the new drawing practices or even the resources now generally available to the art student. Because of this, it cannot reverse a perceptible decline in the teaching of drawing in art education in general, and much less realize drawing’s full potential. There are various reasons for this, as I will try to explain here.

In the past, the Life Class was the cusp of a hierarchical process of learning that, literally, began on the ground floor, copying plaster models of Greek ideals and continued by working your way upstairs, copying the teacher’s drawings, old master drawings until you got the top floor, to the Life Class, where all would be revealed. To some extent, this rite of passage dimension of the life class still applies in those increasingly rare programs where drawing is still being taught mainly due to the persistent of certain attitudes in connection with nudity and moral standards, age restrictions, etc. But students today bring with them new information and this information implies both new resources and new goals. In this sense, the stairs of Academia no longer necessarily lead to any kind of work or way of seeing and representing things and the new students are finding their own ways, short cuts and provisional goals and aims, guided and assisted by their tutors and teachers in self-directed collaborative research processes.

I propose that any model of life class for today and for the future must take into account this new reality and introduce radical changes into four basic aspects: Location (site), Role of Teacher, Role of Model and Role of Students in order to create a more dynamic environment. The new model of Life Class should be responsive to today’s fluid, changing reality and also replicate a personal experience of that reality rather than be limited to the collective visual observation and imitation of a physical entity in a restricted context as is the case today, where the program reflects the ideology and (past) needs of the educational institution but not necessarily those of the individual student. In order to change this, as I said, the strong emphasis on place with its associated ideas of hierarchy and access that has dominated the life class so far should be reassessed and such ideas de-emphasized, progressing towards a more flexible view of it as a form of fluid space in permanent transition, facilitating a revision of the roles of the three main actors: the teacher, the model and the student, reassessing the nature of the site where this encounter takes place, from viewing it as a physical place to experience it as a moment in time.

In this respect also, language, that is the terminology used to discuss the work and also the terminology used between practitioners in their interactions constitutes another factor that defines the boundaries of drawing as a discipline and of the life class as a particular, purpose built environment for the (proper) observation of the human body. Because of its potential importance however, drawing-specific terminology should probably be examined separately, as a tool for the creation of linguistic and metaphorical spaces, a new life room where this dynamic experience of the life class might develop and (over)flow into new fields and disciplines.

Existing web resources allow today’s student to gain the experience of the pose (albeit a mediated one) for example, through websites and drawing software, challenging the role of the life class as sole and exclusive source for the observation and representation of the human body. Supported by countless “how to” books and sources, these and other similar web resources challenge not only the accepted timeframe of the class, the duration and opportunity of it, but also, unfortunately in my opinion, the mystery, the sense of gathering around in a joint journey of discovery and knowledge under the guidance and leadership of the teacher.

In a way, it destroys the sense of class community and the quasi-religious role of the teacher at that level. On the up side, however, it affords the opportunity and the means to extend the experience way beyond a pedagogical timeframe. This flexibility allows for the introduction of new possible elements and variables into the experience of the life class allowing, also, for the student’s insertion into his or her social context through part-time employment or personal research in connection with their academic project, adding yet another layer or dimension of information to the work.

Particularly interesting I find, would be to examine the role of the model as active collaborator with his or her own agenda, rather than a passive, malleable biological (and sexual) object under the direction of the teacher; a teacher who, in turn, is guided by the exploration of formal poses drawn from classical Greek and Roman antiquity and their more recent expression through the teaching programs of the Academy.

In this sense, a model-performer would introduce a new direction into the group’s exploration of the human form through drawing, new roles, new forms. Also, it could possibly lead to a new exploration of performance that would feed back to the context of the life class. Visual and choreographic grammars such as the Laban Notation System would provide the linguistic means to write down and discuss and even propose the pose in different terms, examining it s potentialities and limitations. Laban’s notion of Kinesphere, would allow for a dynamic and focused observation of the negative space surrounding the human figure in a new understanding of the pose and its development over time, also allowing for the choreographing of instances of expression through the human body that are not necessarily linked to Greek and Roman ideals (although Vitruvius is an inescapable reference).

Instead, the new options afforded by the possibility of naming and describing in specific terms a dynamic space in flux give rise to new perceptions of the historical dimension of the pose (the recent history of the pose) and also of the experience of the life class as the meeting and interaction of personal spaces in an academic context and for a specific purpose, whilst at the same time learning how to translate the three-dimensional living human form into a two-dimensional visual narrative as part of a broader narrative and expressive reality.

A pedagogical structure that depends on one teacher being the sole source of information for a class with many students who passively absorb this information will inevitably limit the experience of the exploration of the human body the life class should provide as well as limiting the flow of information towards the students. It is necessary, therefore, to examine closely all aspects of this model of drawing tutoring in the fine arts in order to identify those areas in which research might lead to new forms, new models of observation, new exercises and activities that can push the life class beyond the constraints of its current form and boundaries.