What does my work mean?

I was recently asked some questions by someone doing their dissertation about body image in relation to modelling. I thought my answers might be of interest to some! For clarity, this is written by Topaz Pauls, not Hayley Whittingham, though the painting below is indeed by Hayley.

---

Your Body Is Still A Battleground (2019), by Hayley Whittingham

How did you get into life drawing?

I was lucky enough to be offered life drawing in sixth form. I found it a great way to boost my portfolio; I produced a huge amount of work. This followed on from a GCSE self portrait project where I photographed and then painted myself. At A-Level I created work based around the body, using photographs my friend took of me to paint from. That was my first experience of modelling nude for art – albeit my own. When I moved to Edinburgh for my linguistics degree I took up modelling as a supposedly radical reinvention of myself, taking power over my image by showing it willingly, which til that point I had given others the power over (bullying, feeling self conscious). I realised my body had expressive abilities that were valued and appreciated by others – that went far beyond its mere appearance. And my journey began there.

What was your first life drawing experience like?

I remember the boy next to me being very nervous- I somehow was not. (His nerves disappeared within about 5 minutes.) The model we had was cool as a cucumber which helped. I was both fascinated by her body and admiring of her shamelessness.

How does it feel to be naked in front of people you don’t know?

I only occasionally remember that I am naked, and I am surprised at myself for about a minute. Then I remember that if one can get used to being naked in front of strangers, one can get used to anything.

Does it affect your feelings towards your body?

Yes. I’ve done this for over 10 years if you count my A-Level modelling, and for 8 years as a professional life model. In that time I have gradually realised I don’t care what other people think about my body. I care what I think; that’s different. I know when I am ‘the best version of myself’ and when I’m not. Only I judge that. I was severely bullied in school and still don’t think of myself as ‘beautiful’ even if people tell me I am. Nowadays almost look at myself as if from an artist’s perspective – observing but not judging. There’s no point wishing my body were different. It serves me well and I am grateful it enables me to do the work I do.

Does it empower you?

In terms of what I said above, yes. If my nudity is about choice, then yes. Choosing to be looked at, to show what is supposedly myself at my most vulnerable. However, I feel very detached from any images of myself, mostly because if I felt attached I would judge myself through them – and they are so warped – I am depicted as a zombie, old lady, masculine, thin, fat.... - that I cannot use them to judge myself as they are so unreliable. Every image created is different because every pair of eyes that sees me is different. Every artist has their own lens, and even an individual’s way of seeing changes over time.

That detachment means that perhaps I value my nudity less. I say yes to projects that don’t always appeal to me artistically. Supposedly I am an exceptional model with unique abilities and energies to impart. If I believed what people said about me I would be a huge narcissist. Therefore I don’t charge as much as I could, I am not very selective about who I work with. Is that empowering? It’s a balance I am only just beginning to explore.

Do you think young people would benefit from life drawing? In terms of body confidence/ desexualisation of the body?

OMG YES. It allows you to see bodies of all shapes, sizes, genders, ethnicities, and view them and accept them as they are and not judge beyond that. The act of observing and drawing is an acknowledgement of the forms you see in front of you (notwithstanding your unavoidable personal interpretation of them!). An implicit part of life drawing is that there’s a relationship of trust and gratefulness between the artists and models. They as models are trusting and feel safe enough to show themselves as they are. Reduced to one’s naked form it’s impossible to pretend that you’re something you’re not. Without clothes, without (most) embellishments (like jewellery), all you have is your body and its capability to express who you are at that moment and who you have been up to that point in time. How you move in the world reflects how your experiences have created a certain way of inhabiting your body. And have perhaps left physical marks on that body. As artists we are grateful to be shown this bare authenticity, to be invited to interpret it artistically. There are no words, no explanations given – it’s shown visually and energetically. All this goes far beyond sexualisation – that's only one aspect of possible physical and energetic expression. That’s not to say you can’t acknowledge (to yourself!) that you find the body in front of you sexy. But you also know that sexiness isn’t the point of them being in front of you. And you very quickly move on to appreciating far less superficial things than rating the attractiveness of someone you don’t know.

Do you think life drawing helps people appreciate the body in a different way?

As countless models and artists will testify – the thing that one person likes less about themselves is often the thing that makes them unique. To draw those things is to acknowledge those things. For a model to see them drawn can be cathartic. Someone else has seen ‘those things’ (whatever they may be), and drawn them, acknowledged them, spent time with them, appreciated that they afforded an opportunity to observe something new in the world. And the world hasn’t ended. And those ‘things’ are still there. If we were all the same image of idealised perfection, people would be a lot less interesting – there would be less to observe – to acknowledge, to grapple with, to accept, to appreciate.

What do you think about censored imagery on channels like Instagram?

Platforms like Instagram are very hypocritical. Whilst allowing photoshopped, societally conventionally beautiful supermodels in hypersexualised miniscule coverups, it censors the bodies of the ‘everyday person’ and of their art. Doing so narrows down the range of bodies and expressions that can show themselves to the world. And as mentioned above, to show yourself is a choice, is an act of taking power, to be seen, acknowledged, and be accepted for what you are, and by doing so accept yourself all the more.

What’s the main reaction to your job role?

Sometimes I dread getting out of bed. But not because I don’t want to do the job I do – only because it’s tiring and I’d rather sleep more! I find my work highly meaningful. I enable art to be created, whether as a model or events organiser. Creativity is an incredible way to get to know ourselves, push ourselves, find new boundaries, surprise ourselves, make ourselves proud. Self expression could not be a more purely personal journey. Knowing ourselves better can only lead to happier societies as we discover our very own inner worlds. The only way to discover strengths and abilities we never knew we had, and to begin appreciating them, is through creativity. Then we can discover what we truly want for ourselves – a greater awareness of what our uniqueness can offer the world, and the autonomy and faith in ourselves to pursue that givingness.

How do you think art differs from other aspects of life in terms of the way we view the body?

Art is ESSENTIAL and yet it is not. It feeds the soul but not the body. To feed the body we need to work. To have the energy to work we need to feed the body. This is a purely physical process. What about motivation to work? This involves the soul. To have the motivation to work to feed our bodies, our work needs to feed our souls. Whatever body we have, it has the ability to enable us to be creative in the world in some way. And this is art - in whatever form it may take, using our personal capacity for interpretation to make intentional changes in the world around us – whether that’s cooking dinner or painting in oils. And this creativity is what feeds the soul. And this gives us the motivation, the energy to work, to feed the body, to maintain the circle during our lifetimes.

I feel that we have mostly forgotten that our bodies are vessels of creative potential. Art reminds us of this.

How do you feel when you are drawing/painting?

Only very occasionally do I feel like I have created something beyond myself. It is mostly a slog where I am dissatisfied with the outcomes I have created and therefore dissatisfied with my own self. Yet, I continue, I do it anyway, even if it all ends up under my bed, unseen by the world. I discover aspects of myself I would not have known otherwise. Through my art I discover what kind of lens I’ve got in at the moment. It’s a dialogue between what I am choosing to see and what is presenting itself to me to be seen. I feel I have the duty to hone my technical abilities to represent what sits in between those two things – what presents itself, and what I choose to see. In a way, the art that emerges is a physical manifestation of that lens, and through seeing it physically, I can explore what’s helpful or not to accept as permanent, and what’s helpful to explore changing.

Rotate/sequence

Drawing a rotated pose can assist in understanding the figure in three-dimensional space, as we learn what is happening from every angle. This will not only improve the drawing itself, but can be applied to sculpture or animation using the drawings as a starting point. The following are three examples of how artists have rotated a single pose to achieve different artistic goals.

Raphael uses a similar pose from three different viewpoints in his version of ‘The Three Graces’ from classical mythology. Whilst the two outer figures are in mirroring poses, the central figure is a rotation of the one on the left. Through their placement, the figures form a loop, each linked by a hand on another’s shoulder. This forms a pleasingly rhythmical composition, and conveys their sisterly affection. The irregularity caused by the rotation and mirroring of the pose may be intended to reflect the imperfect cyclical patterns of nature’s movements. It is believed to be the first study that the 17 year old Raphael made of the female nude from both the front and back, and the repetition of a single pose from different viewpoints would have simplified the task. The orbs they hold could be rosy apples – identifying them as the handmaidens of venus. Subtle variations differentiate them as the feminine virtues of chastity, beauty and love. The goddess on the left wears a transparent veil around her hips, representing Chastity, whilst the woman on the right may be beauty, with her red beaded necklace.  The three Graces is an example of how a single rotated pose can be repeated and overlapped within a scene to create a harmonious composition with depth.

Raphael, The Three Graces, 1505

Philippe de Champaigne made a triple portrait of the Cardinal de Richelieu in 1642, rotating his sitter 90 degrees each time. It makes for an interesting image, where in the two facing profiles he appears to be conversing with himself. The real purpose of the painting was as a study for a bust – it was sent from Paris to Rome where the Italian sculptor Francesco Mochi had been commissioned to make a statue, as he was unable to travel to work from the sitter himself. Three viewpoints are preferable to one when it comes to capturing a sitter’s three-dimensional presence, however this technique still had its limits. Above the head on the right, a French inscription reads ‘of these two profiles, this is the better’, and above the central head ‘this is the closest likeness.’ It is likely that the painting was also used by Bernini for his 1641 Bust of Cardinal Richelieu, now in the Louvre Museum. Bernini adopted a similar method for his 1636 Bust of King Charles I, using a triple portrait by Anthony Van Dyck. Today we would probably use photography to fulfil such purposes, however sketches of a rotated pose can still be the source for a sculpture, liberating us from the tight constraints of a photo.

Phillipe de Champagne, Triple Portrait of Cardinal de Richelieu, 1642.

One option that was not available in Raphael’s time was animation. Using sketches from every stage of a 360 rotation it is possible to create a turning animation of the figure with the illusion of three dimensions. This is demonstrated by Deryck Henley - one of Reconfigure’s most loyal sketchers, with a drawing of Anna, animated in a workshop with Drawing Life Glasgow. An alternative would be a flip-book, or layering the drawings to capture the rotating movement in a single image.

Shadow/silhouette

The figure is sometimes represented as a shadow or silhouette for its formal qualities and symbolic associations. The silhouette provides a simplified, flat form which can be invested with expression by removing unnecessary detail, and creates a sense of mystery by restricting what is revealed.

During the nineteenth century the cutting of silhouettes for portraits was a common simple method for capturing a likeness in profile. It was believed to be too limited a technique for full figure illustrations until Arthur Rackham proved otherwise. He developed black and white silhouette illustrations for Cinderella in 1919 and Sleeping beauty in 1920. The new technique made the books financially successful because they were cheaper than their colour-plate equivalents. Rackham’s clever use of negative space enabled a high degree of expression in his figures that told a story on a two-dimensional plane. The silhouette format and its elegant contours combine haunting humour with dream-like romance, a visual manifestation of the fairy tale genre. Intrigue draws the viewer in as the silhouettes leave much to the imagination.

Arthur Rackham, Illustration for Sleeping Beauty, 1920.

In a drawing Andy Warhol depicts both the three dimensional figure and the outline of its shadow. ‘The Shadow’ was one of several popular, American fictional characters that Warhol drew inspiration from for a series of prints called ‘Myths’ in 1981. This self-portrait drawing is based on a photograph of Warhol embodying the character, using strong lighting to cast a shadow of his profile on the wall behind him. He translated the photographic image into a simple, stylised line drawing. Once again the shadow creates mystery, as if symbolic of a hidden facet of his personality. By stripping the image down to line as opposed to a filled-in silhouette, Warhol plays with the confusion of positive and negative form, returning to the quintessential problem of art: perception.

Andy Warhol, The Shadow, 1981.

Anthony Gormley takes the mystery of the silhouette and turns it into an interactive experience in which the viewer also becomes the subject. ‘Blind Light’ is a brightly lit, glass walled room filled with mist. As figures enter the space they dissolve into the atmosphere. From the outside, anonymous shadowy figures are seen to emerge out of nowhere, coming into resolution only when they touch the walls. In this way, the walls act as the picture plane, with the figure becoming abstracted to the limits of readability as it moves away. This is the exaggerated effect of atmospheric perspective in action. It is another work which plays with perception, removing the viewer’s sense of location and knowledge of their surroundings as they themselves are reduced to a silhouette.

Anthony Gormley, Blind Light, 2007.

Madonna

The Madonna and child, Holy trinity, Annunciation and Nativity are all scenes you might find on the walls of a church. But the iconography of religious artwork has become so ingrained that we see it being borrowed in works that are not intended for an explicitly religious purpose. Many non-religious artists refer back to the bible stories they were taught as a child in school as a source for creative imagination.

‘Take your son, Sir’ (1851-6) is a painting by Ford Maddox Brown. It shows his second wife with their new born son. The seated symmetrical pose recalls traditional Madonna and child paintings. The circular mirror behind her head stands in for the traditional gold halo, whilst the starry wallpaper suggests the heavens. Despite this, the use of the artist’s own family as models and the domestic setting indicate that this is not simply a rendering of Mary and her infant Jesus, but a scene from contemporary life. The viewer is implicated as father, reflected in the mirror behind. The mother’s strained expression suggests that this is not a conventional celebration of marriage and motherhood. This may be explained by the death of their son at ten months, which is likely why the painting remains unfinished. Some interpret it as a more confrontational image, in which an abandoned mistress presents her baby to its father. This would have been a popular subject in Victorian pre-Raphaelite painting which valued a moral message. The painting displays a deliberate paradox between new life and death.

Ford Maddox Brown, Take your son, Sir, 1851-6.

‘Madonna’ is the title given to several paintings by Edvard Munch, depicting a half-length female nude figure with flowing black hair. Based on the title and red halo it was possibly intended to represent the Virgin Mary. She embodies some of the conventional aspects of the Annunciation scene, in her quiet and calm confidence, her closed eyes expressing modesty and her body twisting away from the light. However these references are disputed as Munch was not known to be a Christian. He may be drawing upon an affinity to Mary to emphasise the beauty and perfection he saw in his model, and as an expression of worship of her as an alternative ideal of womanhood. The flowing black hair, pale skin, red lips and nudity give her a vampiric appearance and suggest she may represent the femme fatale -  the strong woman who reduced man to subjection through seduction. Her dual gesture of surrender and captivity in her arms behind her back serve to mitigate this assertion of female power. These undertones of sensuality and death invert the portrayal of the virgin mother.

Edvard Munch, Madonna, 1895.

As a devout Christian, Eric Gill often used religious imagery in his work. His life was marked by a tortuous religious exploration and he converted to Catholicism in 1913. He made many compositions on the subject of the mother and child, in both sculpture and wood engraving, but with a stylised modern twist. He was part of a new artistic generation that heralded the development of modern British sculpture. His Madonna and Child of 1919 is typical of the erotic religiosity that Gill employed to add a new and compelling dimension to the traditional subject of Madonna and Child. The figures are simplified and geometric, and the profile of their faces is represented by a single eye. Despite this modern simplification, the halos and the curved geometry of the figures recall Byzantine icon painting, used as an object of veneration in Orthodox churches and private homes in the Eastern Roman Empire. It placed an emphasis on symbolism over naturalism, and conformed to strict canons of representation in order to manifest the unique presence of the figure depicted.

Eric Gill, Madonna and Child, 1919

Vanity

Traditional Vanitas paintings originating in the 16th and 17th centuries are still-lifes intended to remind the viewer of their mortality and of the worthlessness of worldly goods and pleasures. Symbols of vanity include jewels, gold coins, and often a skull or the figure of death himself alongside decaying fruit or flowers. During the Renaissance, vanity was represented as a nude woman, serving as a warning of the ephemeral nature of youthful beauty and the inevitability of death. She is often depicted attending to her hair or looking into a mirror, as in the Rokeby Venus by Velazquez. In this instance her reflection is said to appear much older than her body, a warning of the ephemerality of beauty. Venus was regarded as the most beautiful of the goddesses and often seen as the personification of female beauty. This meant she lent herself to representation of Renaissance ideas of vanity, which included taking pleasure in one’s own appearance, demanding admiration and a sense of superiority.

As John Berger explains, there is more behind such representations of women in front of mirrors than meets the eye. He addresses the male artist; “You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting ‘Vanity,’ thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for you own pleasure.” In doing so, the artists invites the viewer to participate in her condemnation, thus offering them full permission to behold her with guilt-free desire. This led the painting to become a target for suffragette Mary Richardson in 1906, who slashed its surface five times with a meat cleaver. In fact if Venus were admiring herself in the mirror it would not be possible for us to see her reflection from our position – what she would actually see is us looking at her.  This phenomenon has been titled 'the Venus effect’.

Velazquez, The Rokeby Venus, 1651.

The Pre-Raphaelites were a group of painters who had a particular interest in vanity. They often portrayed women with loose flowing hair, when in reality it was only worn this way by children; it was customary for adult women to braid or pin their hair up meaning it was only visible when dressing or undressing. Its appearance in art has therefore an intimate, erotic significance. This is the case for Rosetti’s 'Lady Lilith’, a woman known as the first wife of Adam, associated with the seduction of men. She is shown as a “powerful and evil temptress” with harsh facial features. According to a sonnet that Rosetti wrote and inscribed on the frame, Lady Lilith represents the beauty of the body, whilst a companion painting 'Sibylla Palmifera’ represents the beauty of the soul. This suggests that Lady Liliith functions in part as a vanitas, reminder of the ephemeral nature of bodily beauty. Although Lilith is a mythological figure, Rosetti’s painting depicts her as a modern woman, contemplating her own beauty in a handheld mirror. She epitomises the rising trend of the narcissistic female figure in art. However unlike Velazquez’s Venus, Lilith is a powerful, threatening, sexual woman who resists domination by men. This has led her to be considered a symbol of the feminist movement.

Rossetti, Lady Lilith, 1866.

Aubrey Bearsdleys 'Toilette of Salome’, created 40 years later is more of a celebration rather than a condemnation of vanity. Like Lady Lilith, Salome’s vanity goes hand in hand with great power over men. She famously seduced Herod through her dancing in exchange for the head of John the Baptist. Decadence, a prevailing feeling of the time that characterised the drawings of Beardlsey, was concerned with cosmetics, artifice and self-presentation. These themes are all present here. Salome sits naked at her dressing table enjoying the attentions of a masked barber as she prepares for her dance. As in Rosetti’s work, attention to the hair is used to portray vanity. In the same series is 'The peacock skirt’ (peacocks being another conventional symbol of vanity), indicative of Salome’s obsession with her seductive power. The works are reflective of a modern society grown over-luxurious and sophisticated, and one in which Beardsley himself participated as a dandy. Although this means that the work is not directly critical, its anticipation of Salome’s eventual death as a result of her vanity once more links it to the traditional vanitas - reminder of the inevitability of death.      

Aubrey Beardsley, The toilette of Salome, 1906.