From the sixteenth century to the present, drawing the human body from life has remained a mainstay of Western institutional art practice. Despite significant shifts in the aesthetics, media, and purpose of art over the last five hundred years, life drawing endures in both the studio and the classroom.
Pose, Power, Practice is a one-day symposium that seeks to reassess the state of the field on life drawing and apply new critical frameworks to this sustained practice. It aims to better understand life drawing in all its complexity, from its presumed advantages to its consequences. This is a practice deeply intertwined with concerns central to the discipline of art history, including but not limited to: the power dynamics of the gaze; the politics of representation; recognition of multiple forms of artistic labour; formulations of race, dis/ability, gender, and sexuality; and critiques of institutions. How has life drawing changed across time and place? How and why has it endured as a pedagogical practice, despite repeated dismissals of its “academicism”? What uses does it hold today, for artists and art historians alike?
Organised by Zoë Dostal (PhD candidate, Columbia University and Kress Fellow, The Courtauld) and Isabel Bird (PhD candidate, Harvard University).
Programme
10.00: Registration opens
Coffee and tea provided for attendees.
10.30: Welcome from Organisers
Zoë Dostal and Isabel Bird
10.50: Session 1
- Antje Southern, The King’s Foundation Diploma Year, ‘The Creative Impact of Life drawing at Fine Art Foundation Level: A Case Study’.
- Susanne Müller-Bechtel, Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Leipzig – Young Forum, ‘The Experimental Arrangement in the “Aktsaal” at the Early modern Academies and the Effects on the Artistic practice’.
- Bill Platz, Queensland College of Art and Design, Griffith University, ‘Vulgar learning and life drawing puppets‘
- John Fagg, University of Birmingham, ‘“Take the pose of the model, yourself”: Empathy in Robert Henri’s Pedagogy and Practice’.
- Q&A
12.35 – 13.45: Lunch Break
Provided for speakers, chairs, and organisers.
13.45: Session 2
- Fra Beecher, Director of United Models Life Drawing CIC, The Body, Captured; Photography & the Life Room.
- Tomáš Valeš, Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague & Department of Art History, Masaryk University, Brno, ‘Employed, Exposed, Captured: Life Model Paxis in 18th-century Vienna’.
- Yanyun Chen, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Tufts University, ‘Skinning Nudity: Life Modelling Practice in Singapore’.
- Q&A
15.10 – 15.40: Comfort Break
Coffee and tea provided for attendees.
15.40: Session 3
- Suri Li, University of Cambridge, ‘A Renaissance Nun’s Drawing Practices: Suor Plautilla Nelli (1524-1588) and Her Drawing of a Young Woman’.
- Oriane Poret, Université Lyon 2, LARHRA ‘Beyond human: Drawing from Non-Human Life During the 19th-century’.
- Nick Robbins, University College London, ‘The Life Academy and the Origins of Landscape’.
- Q&A
17.00: Drinks Reception
18.00: End of the event
