Despite recent safety concerns, the art department will continue to offer nude posing for its painting and drawing courses.
“When people find out about nude modeling on campus, they come for voyeuristic reasons rather than academic reasons,” said Tiffany O’Kane, the office assistant who hires the department’s models.
Most of the concern comes from instances on other campuses, O’Kane said, but she would not specify about the instances or which campuses have dealt with them.
“We’ve had one or two instances recently and we’re trying to mitigate that,” she said.
Alison Denyer, an art professor, said there is a correlation between increased publicity of the posing program and problems with voyeurs. Denyer stressed that the first priority of the department is the safety of the models, students and staff. O’Kane said the majority of the classes are for undraped poses.
“We have a couple of classes that are draped, though that’s the exception, not the rule,” she said.
The majority of the department’s 18 models are students, O’Kane said. The department hires models on and off campus. However, because of the economic downturn and, subsequently, tight budgets, the department is not hiring models.
O’Kane said the department gives all of its models a choice to pose draped or undraped. The average posing assignment typically runs for two three-hour class periods. Models receive $15 per hour of posing. The pay rate is the same for draped and undraped modeling.
“We’ve had a few people who are strictly draped,” O’Kane said. “We’ll take them anyway and we’ll give them those classes first. I haven’t had anyone walk away because of that, but I’m sure it’s happened in the past.”
Mark Edwards, a local business owner, began modeling for the art department at the U last year, though he has been modeling for about 25 years.
Undraped modeling does not bother Edwards.
“In a fine arts setting, generally there’s nothing immodest or pornographic,” he said. “It’s nothing you’d expect teenagers to giggle about in the locker room.”
In college, Edwards pursued a degree in fine arts, but did not have the technical skill to go further.
“I can’t draw and I can’t paint,” he said. “I got into modeling in college. Modeling is my contribution to the fine arts.”
Edwards said that posing in the art department has made him wish he was a student again.
“The staff knows exactly what they are looking for with all the models and with me especially,” he said. “When I was in college, the staff was not as professional. The students are very fortunate to have these instructors.”
i.bravo@chronicle.utah.edu
The Daily Utah Chronicle > News
Nude posing for art class continues despite concerns
Published: Thursday, April 16, 2009
Updated: Thursday, April 16, 2009
34 comments
odd nerdrum, a contemporary painter, originally from norway, but now living in new york, created a painting of e woman peeing, titled (what else?) "pissing woman"
on a free on-line porn site i have seen several video clips of the same subject.
question: is the image of a woman peeing art if it is drawn/painted by an established artist, and is it porn if it appears on a video clip on a free porn site?
and i mean, really, over the years i have been modeling, i have encountered individuals (yes, mostly men) whose stick figures, even, were artistically challenged.
my conclusion?
they came for the t and a.
oh, did you not see the period?
period!!!!!
there is more where that came from, so the next one i will call "more for les"
shame on you!
whatever happened to "free speech" les?
then there is that thing about modern tchnology....it made it possible to add your comments to my blog....i think they say more about you than about me.
and stop looking through my window.
persona;;y i think it is safe to assume les is circumcised....poor fellow
why is it that when guys talk about sex, there is always someone to tell them to grow up?
several studies on human sexuality have concluded that a sexual thought occurs to the male brain every 5 minutes.
that's biology and i my view has little to do with being grown up.
the vitriolic response from steve the model in the arizona daily wildcat, for instance, says more about him than about me.
a similar response can be found in www.about.com/caloriecount/nudemodeling by someone with the nick coffincritter.
I've been looking at your blog and while your argument fascinates me, and your experience no doubt credits what you argue, I wonder about a few things. Of course anyone's particular bias or interest will inform how he/she interprets a situation, thus I read your interpretation with a grain of salt, allowing it to be a truth but not a given. Do you suggest ALL nude modeling as sexually connoted or do you allow there to be varying degrees of explicitness? I also wonder why the images you reference, particularly those of egon schiele, who you claim to admire so much, do not appear in your blog. Not even a link to the images. I think your argument is a fresh, important idea in nude modeling and modern/contemporary art. Trying too hard to make art safe for the majority by insisting 'nude' not 'naked' and 'art' not 'sex' oversimplifies and reduces expression to a vast extent. Sex, ideas of voyeurism, possession, objectivity of subject, even the term subject are all important tensions within any tradition of art, but your argument is rather egocentric. While of course your personal experience and the art surrounding it is very strong evidence indeed, perhaps broadening the scope and content of your blog to include more than passing references to other artists with no accompanying images will help to convince those less willing to consider your perspective of the actual presence of sexuality and sex within 'safe' art. I mean this with all respect, and hope you read it as such. I only offer my suggestions as I am intrigued by your points of view and would like more to be able to consider and read without fear.
I've been looking at your blog and while your argument fascinates me, and your experience no doubt credits what you argue, I wonder about a few things. Of course anyone's particular bias or interest will inform how he/she interprets a situation, thus I read your interpretation with a grain of salt, allowing it to be a truth but not a given. Do you suggest ALL nude modeling as sexually connoted or do you allow there to be varying degrees of explicitness? I also wonder why the images you reference, particularly those of egon schiele, who you claim to admire so much, do not appear in your blog. Not even a link to the images. I think your argument is a fresh, important idea in nude modeling and modern/contemporary art. Trying too hard to make art safe for the majority by insisting 'nude' not 'naked' and 'art' not 'sex' oversimplifies and reduces expression to a vast extent. Sex, ideas of voyeurism, possession, objectivity of subject, even the term subject are all important tensions within any tradition of art, but your argument is rather egocentric. While of course your personal experience and the art surrounding it is very strong evidence indeed, perhaps broadening the scope and content of your blog to include more than passing references to other artists with no accompanying images will help to convince those less willing to consider your perspective of the actual presence of sexuality and sex within 'safe' art. I mean this with all respect, and hope you read it as such. I only offer my suggestions as I am intrigued by your points of view and would like more to be able to consider and read without fear.
my perspective is that following the inention of the camera, drawing the naked human figure is an anomaly.(i believe that the last pornographer not using a camera was that brilliant austrian artist of the early 1900s, egon schiele; check him out as well)
one does not need the naked human to learn the tricks of creating the 3d illusion on a 2d surface; just try to draw
(accurately) that old gnarled oak.
much of i would write here is already in my blog, including some interesting drawings of me done by fine arts students