Art in Ed

Reclining women

What does it feel like to be a woman photographed or painted?

I have a lovely book of reclining nudes by famous artists from across 200 years or so. Last year I decided to sculpt Lhote's Bacchante. I moved into the pose and a strange thing happened. I connected in a completely different way to what I might have experienced if I was just looking at a painting.

I wondered then what responses other women might have to moving into a pose depicted in a famous painting. I am a member of "The Arts Group" - a local group consisting of women interested in the arts and literature, some of whom are artists and writers. I wondered if they were interested to be guinea pigs. So I gave them a brief at our recent meeting - to choose a "reclining nude" pose, to move into it (clothed), be photographed and then to write about the experience.

The women started hesitantly and then became quite engaged in the project... gathering props, helping the model to find the right position and right feel, being very exacting about the angle of the neck, foot or hands. It became clear to us all that many of these poses were not only just uncomfortable and unnatural, but the painted bodies were not normal women... some with impossibly long and flexible necks, elongated torsos and double jointed wrists.

Oh the image of ourselves as women cannot live up to the artists love of exaggeration as they try to express the essence of form!

Did the women connect at a different level? Some started wondering about the emotions of the women in the paintings... what were they feeling and thinking... some seemed to connect across space and time… some questioned what it was like being a woman. Can a pose enable access to aspects of womanhood that we haven’t experienced before?

For some women the whole experience of being photographed as art was challenging and thought provoking. Because yes, after all we are all women between 45 and 70 years… not usually regarded as models. Not usually the centre of attention as an audience looks at us and moves us “just so.”

Can we now ever look at a nude painting in the same way again? Can we look at ourselves in the same way?

You might like to try it. What does it feel like for you?

posted by Sue Stack @ 10:37 AM