I can't remember who first suggested nude modeling as a part-time job I might be interested in, but I'd guess they probably didn't take their
suggestion very seriously. I did.
I'd noticed the portraits tacked up in the art department before but had always figured that the people posing for them were volunteers with extra time on their hands and a sedentary lifestyle. An official job title like Nude Model,"" though, was both prestigious and exotic. My imagination failed at trying to picture the exciting doors a credential like that would open.
I had no idea what nude modeling might actually qualify a person for, but I had already begun mentally dividing my resume into separate sections for ""Clothed Experience"" and ""Nude Experience."" If nothing else, it seemed like the kind of episode that might be called a learning experience, not in the negative sense of ""the time the cat was in heat was a learning experience,"" but more like what all those people who have traveled abroad were always talking about. Rather than trying to find wisdom by traveling 11,000 miles to a country where people wore different clothing, I would remain perfectly still and wear nothing.
I wasn't exactly sure how long enlightenment would take to find me. Fortunately, ""art modeling,"" as I learned to call it when filling out payroll forms, posed plenty of practical issues to think about in the meantime.
Unlike any previous employment, nude modeling included no orientation session, except for an a warning from several friends in the art department about how the students got annoyed when a model fell asleep or became physically aroused in the middle of a session. I set off on my first day armed only with this knowledge and a hideous paisley dressing gown to wear during breaks.
Some modeling sessions begin with a series of gesture drawings. For these, students rapidly sketch lines and contours while the model continually strikes new poses of their own choosing. The students try to avoid getting caught up in details and the model tries to avoid poses that would be physically awkward or overtly sexual.
This gets more difficult as the session goes on and the poses become longer. Any position becomes an uncomfortable one if held long enough, and opportunities to re-adjust are infrequent. On my first day, I learned that despite these hardships, many people continue to model for their entire lives, sometimes even willing their own bodies to art schools. These people are now the literal skeletons in the closet inside the drawing studio where I work.
Modeling with the skeletons is okay if I can keep in mind that they're only to help provide a sense of anatomical proportion. Still, it's hard knowing a pair of bony eye sockets are fixed on the back of my neck and not feel like an extra in a B-list horror movie.
Props tend to give the modeling session the feel of a life-size dramatic diorama, topic to be chosen by the instructor. A model may find himself posing as a nude custodian, complete with mop and bucket, or reenacting a violent crime scene with the help of another, equally nude model.
""I like skulls,"" my instructor said, cheerfully posing several specimens around me and adjusting the
lights.
If I'd ever had misgivings about crouching, leafless, atop a throne of skulls, I was determined to silence them. I had signed up to try something different, and this was obviously it. Turning back now would've been like flying to India and spending the entire trip at the McDonald's in the airport. I wanted to experience something profound, to be able to turn to a friend in the middle of an argument, my look full of understanding, and clarify the mysteries of the universe:
""I'm sorry, but truth is beauty. And you'd understand that too if you had spent your morning sitting naked on a wooden stump, cradling a human skull in your lap.""
Matt sometimes gets bored standing around nude for hours at a time. E-mail him at hunziker@wisc.edu.
