I've spent the last week doing an international interactive art thingy called "six_events". It's a little difficult to describe, so I recommend going here to understand what it was all about:
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=280211565
The main body of this will be the reports I sent each day to the organiser, Matthew Lee Knowles. Each daily report also contains references to photographs. They can be found here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/10634308@N03/sets/72157603801879566/
1 - BUS. Mon 21/01/08
Well, that was odd.
The idea was to take an unpremeditated bus ride, and since I normally cycle to work I was wondering how to fit it in. It seems the fates decided.
I got up this morning to torrents of water falling from the sky - a bus ride had been decided for me! This required getting some cash out of the machine at Asda and breaking it at a paper shop (Asda being closed). I'm of the sort of age that won't give a bus driver a tenner.
After that, catch the bus to work from Radcliffe Bus Station - not the least depressing place in the world, especially at 6.45am (see pic day 1-1).
Disaster - the paper shop was shut!
A walk was required to find another paper shop for change and then another bus stop. Both were found, but neither were especially nice (qv. day 1-2). An unpremeditated beginning to my journey.
When the bus eventually arrived at 7.20, it was getting quite full (day 1-3). It's amazing how so many people can be so quiet in such a small place, each sitting entirely on their own next to someone, listening to the windscreen wipers' rhythmic squeeeeeeek. Everyone has such protective body language, covering themselves with newspapers, bags and hands folded on laps - including me. It smelled of rainy coats and faint tobacco and Monday-morning-don't-want-to-go-to-work-ness.
How to decide where to get off? Fortunately a woman - about 30, black and slim with a plastic bag on her lap - had sat down beside me, so I let her decide. Also fortunately it was at 7.45 at the stop before Bolton Bus Station where I normally get off (day 1-4). I'd like to give that angel a small vote of thanks for saving me another soaking.
As an extra prize, I saved the ticket. (day 1-5)
2 - ROAD. Tue 22/01/08
I found my magickal road through my complete inability to find hi-vis gloves in Bolton. It turned out to be, at least temporarily, the road with no name. So at 2:25pm I got off my bike and pushed around the corner, to be faced by the back end of a wagon, evidently called Smitty (day 2-1).
Whatever it's called, it's a noisy road that rises up and down like Newton's gravity - what goes up above the railway must come down beyond the railway (day 2-2). No apples fell on my head.
This is a road which keeps its dangerous buildings behind bars (day 2-3) - possibly to stop them from attacking unsuspecting situationists pushing their bikes - although the elephant on the pavement gave me some very good advice for life (day 2-4). The shouting of the children from the school across the road threatened to drown out the traffic.
Finally at the end of the road, and at the end of about ten minutes' pushing, the mystery was revealed (day 2-5). Green Lane. Hurrah!
So it's back on the bike and off to the modelling gig.
Oh, bugger. I forgot to clap!
3 - BUILDING. Wed 23/01/08
I've had to cheat a bit on this one!
The building I entered at 7:45 this morning was the one in and outside of which I work - The University of Bolton, specifically the caretaker's office.
I've seriously discovered the building today. I've discovered how hard it is to get full filing cabinets through double doors and that the most popular receptionist is leaving in two weeks!
I did get to sit down, but closing my eyes for more than a moment wasn't really much of an option - so I tried to listen to the University. It sounds like people talking, and talking, and talking. Given time surrealist conversations could be created in the style of the cadavre exquis simply by recording the snatches of conversation of the people who walk past a window.
The photo record was simple - four piccies of the office, which I wanted to leave, taken facing South, West, North and East in that order.
It's amazing how easy it is to forget one's intentions when thrown into a world of busy-ness, and I was glad to leave the building for another day, six and a bit hours later at 2pm.
4 - SUPERMARKET. Thu 24/01/08
Have you ever felt like Kevin McCarthy in Invasion of the Body Snatchers? I have. It happens every time I walk into a supermarket, and walking up and down the aisles feels like I'm pretending to be a zombie so they don't notice me.
The supermarket I chose was Morrisons in Bolton on the way home from work (day 4-1 and day 4-2). Walking in at around 2:10pm and using my funny little trolley token for the first time. I'm really glad to say that there was no muzak, in fact everyone was remarkably quiet (and wearing invisible blinkers).
My find for less than a pound was easy, a local newspaper for 38p! (day 4-5) The hunt for the thing to relocate was a little harder - until I saw the chocolate Santa leftover from the Christmas displays. Here's the little fella for me! Now where would he be happier?
I found his ideal new home on the magazine rack (day 4-3). I think he'd like to be a male model.
Then I queued to pay (day 4-4)!
What to do with the newspaper? I decided to anonymously donate it to whoever had my bus seat after me.
The overriding feeling on this day's event was nervousness. Why did it feel naughty to take photos in a supermarket? There were signs saying no this and no that, but none saying no photography. Yet, I was still expecting to be thrown out by a security guard.
How's that for social brainwashing?
5 - PUB. Fri 25/01/08
This was by far the scariest event of all. I don't like pubs very much anyway and I made a poor choice - I chose the scally pub!
Anyway, on the way to my birthday night out (at a much nicer private nightclub for goths, trannies and other misfits) I chose the Black Lion in Salford for my sixth event (day 5-1, day 5-2).
I entered the pub at approximately 9:25pm, immediately screened out the appalling music and the fact that I was being scrutinised by the Mancunian equivalent of the clientele at The Slaughtered Lamb, and gave the small troll behind the bar my nicest smile.
"Hi, how are you?"
Silence.
"Could I get a glass of water please?"
She refused my offer of payment, so I took the glass to a small table in an, as yet, unoccupied area and photographed it (day 5-3). I then left the pub for somewhere much, much nicer. I was there for a total of three minutes. It didn't even smell pleasant.
Day 6 is going to be a lot more fun.
6 - Park. Sun 27/01/08
The last event but not the least enjoyable.
I entered my park at 2:20 pm. Okay, call it a park. It's more of a small field behind a council estate (day 6-1), but it has a kiddies' play area so it's officially a park. It also has coal tits which I stood and watched/listened to for a while, but couldn't photograph because they move too fast for me.
I also, as instructed, looked at the sky. A January sky isn't particularly interesting (day 6-2). Much more interesting was the strange insect-caused growth (day 6-3) on the budding tree (day 6-4), although you can't play golf with it! (day 6-5).
The field also proved itself to be a park by virtue of having a path, seats and doggy-do bins (day 6-6 and day 6-7). Finally, I found that it also had a front gate! (day 6-8). Serves me right for going in the back way.
A cold and dull Sunday doesn't make for an exciting day in the park, there were two other adults and one child on the play area, but the birds were excellent little performers for the 15 minutes I was there. Gone at 2:35 and back home to warm my ears.
Conclusions:
Why did I do this? Possibly because I was asked. Part of me wonders if Matthew isn't some odd person who gets off by having people do weird things for him. If he is he's going to be drowning in emails!
Actually it felt a lot like psychogeography, the making of the mundane into something special, the ordinary into something strange. It's a psychological method of living like a Betjeman poem.
Doing weird things like this makes one look at the world in a different way, even if it's only for five minutes, and for all of us that's got to be a good thing.
Love,
Seán
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Sunday 27 January 2008
Wednesday 23 January 2008
Genocidal Vegetarians.
For those who don't already know, I don't eat meat. In fact I eat the absolute minimum of animal produce one could have without actually being vegan. There are three main reasons for this:
- Meat is, for me, unnecessary and expensive.
- Due to a genetic cholesterol problem animal products, particularly red meat and dairy stuffs, are bad for my health.
- I don't particularly like the damned stuff.
There are some veggie fascists out there who would hate and vilify any meat-eating human being. I'm not one of those and fortunately they're becoming rarer. It's not an ethical matter for me - if I had to eat meat to survive I would. Thankfully, I don't.
Hitler
Life is amazingly balanced. For every ridiculous veginazi out there there also seems to be an equivalent anti-veginazi. These are the rare people who think that a person who doesn't eat meat needs treatment, or to grow up. I'm going to call these the "carninazis".
The carninazis have a wonderful phrase which has been churned out to me on several occasions. I've even seen it on a t-shirt.
"Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian"
Really?
So?
To be fair, most people trot out this little phrase as a sort of joke. Bizarrely, though, some people actually take it seriously. Whilst anyone of average intelligence and a little time to sit and think will soon realise that this statement is irrelevant, the hard-of-thinking carninazi actually sees some connection between a distaste for meat and ordering the violent enslavement and death of an entire race of one's fellow human beings.
The List
Whether Evil Adolf was veggie or not is under discussion by historians, so it may not even be true. But, working on the assumption that it is true, I'd like to forward a few more names.
The following people, to the best of my knowledge were NOT or are NOT vegetarians:
- Benito Mussolini
- Joseph Stalin
- Mao Tse Tung
- Saddam Hussein
- Osama bin Laden
- George W Bush
- Richard Nixon
- Margaret Thatcher
- Kim Il-sung
- Torquemada
- Hernando Cortez
- Charles Manson
- Joseph Goebbels
- Herman Goerring
- Walt Disney
- The White Queen of Narnia
- Matthew Hopkins
- and Father Abraham!
So there! Nah-nah-ne-nah-nah!
Love,
Seán
Tuesday 22 January 2008
Six_Events.
I'm doing six_events.
More on this later but for now information can be found here:
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=280211565
Love,
Seán
More on this later but for now information can be found here:
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=280211565
Love,
Seán
Saturday 12 January 2008
Who Me?
In my last post I made a statement which I think might need a little working on:
". . . I'm trying to be who I am and not what I've been made."
It seems a pretty glib thing to say at first, but what does it actually mean? I know what I have been made because I am very much the sum of the last 40-odd years of experiences, learning and buggering things up. Everything I have done and everything I have had done to me has resulted so far in the person typing this.
Me
Physically I am the results of two sets of DNA, which has blessed me with wavy hair, bad eyesight and the family nose, and a lot of physical experiences which have had a variety of effects ranging from trained thigh muscles to permanent scars. In other words, I'm just like any other person on average. But this is just the physical side and - even though I believe that a person is not a body or a mind or a soul/spirit but an inter-related, ever-changing combination of all the above - I'm going to discount the body as not who I am.
What I'm getting at here is a question that has plagued religious and spiritual thinkers and philosophers since forever - If I am thinking, who is the I that is doing the thinking. If I am a combination of the primal me and everything else that has made me, who is that primal me and how do I find him? In fact is he a "he"? Maybe he's a "she", an "it" or even a "they"!
Paganism
As a good Pagan boy I try to live by a deceptively complicated guideline known as the Wiccan Rede. I'm not a Wiccan, but then again I'm not really an anything specific - pigeonholes are restrictive and get on my nerves - but the Wiccan Rede is useful. It goes:
"An it harm none, do what you will"
This is open to interpretation, as are all rules and guidelines. My own works something like this: using the proviso that as little unnecessary harm of any kind is caused to everyone and everything around you, including yourself, then do your own will
"Doing your will" is a very Thelemic bit of jargon and not one I like much because it conjures images of some complete and total deadlegs from whom I would prefer to be disassociated. The trouble is that I'm not sure I can think of a better one. As James Curcio has said, Will is synonymous with Identity, but Identity in action. To do your will is to be yourself just as hard as you can manage. This takes us full circle back to the original question: who is the me that I must be to be who I am?
Circles.
So far this article is going round in ever-decreasing circles and will soon disappear in a puff of smoke up it's own arsehole. Before it does, perhaps it's time to look in a different direction.
Pope Tim Leary and Saint RAW the Optimistic, both following others and being followed in their turn, have shown that we can change how we are made. Using various techniques we can alter our socializations, our behaviours, our attitudes and our habits - and we can do it ourselves. Brainwashing techniques have shown that even the most deeply entrenched beliefs can be reversed, and advertising and propaganda show us that new beliefs and attitudes can be injected into the human mind with very little difficulty. How many people with dogs even noticed the smell before the Shake & Vac lady danced backwards across her living room?
When one wants to alter oneself in the ways suggested by Wilson and Leary there is usually an aim in mind, even if it's only to become more open-minded. The aim of finding the True Will is in stripping away the layers of social conditioning and beliefs until all that's left is the pure primal self. This isn't really changing oneself, which is like changing one's mental "clothes" - it is more like stripping completely naked. (Good grief, I'm on nudity again! It's becoming an obsession.)
A Radical Thought
The concepts of primal Self or true Will imply a certain belief - that there is such a thing. It's the assumption that the human being has a single, eternal and unchanging central core which has become known as the Soul. What if this isn't true?
I'm not proposing that we are all soulless automata or that there is no spiritual dimension at all to the human being, only that it's not a separate and eternal thing. If the human soul is as capable of change, growth and deliberate alteration as the mind and body are then how much more wonderful it surely is. It means that I am not some abstract thing distant and separate from my mind and body, but a soul/mind/body gestalt where all the bits blend to become indistinguishable at the edges. It implies that when my body dies and changes its state by becoming part of the soil fertilizing a tree whose buds feed a bird, then so do my mind and soul in their own ways.
It also implies that all creatures must be like this and therefore, by a process of extension, so must groupings of creatures - like families, societies and forests. I am part of my family and a separate individual at the same time; my children are part me, part their mother and individuals in their own right at the same time. Could there be, therefore, a family soul which joins us and is within us in the same way that we form a gestalt as individuals all together under one group concept? If there is it is made of the combined souls and DNA of the parents within the children, but the parents' souls are made of their parent's souls ad infinitum. Extend this far enough and you end up with a universal physical/intelligence/spiritual gestalt which covers and includes everything that exists/does not exist, has/has not existed and will/will not exist - ever!
Big thought!
Have I answered my question, though? Probably not, except to say that I think I'm getting there. Not only can the true I be found, I can decide what I ought to be. I think!
Love,
Seán
". . . I'm trying to be who I am and not what I've been made."
It seems a pretty glib thing to say at first, but what does it actually mean? I know what I have been made because I am very much the sum of the last 40-odd years of experiences, learning and buggering things up. Everything I have done and everything I have had done to me has resulted so far in the person typing this.
Me
Physically I am the results of two sets of DNA, which has blessed me with wavy hair, bad eyesight and the family nose, and a lot of physical experiences which have had a variety of effects ranging from trained thigh muscles to permanent scars. In other words, I'm just like any other person on average. But this is just the physical side and - even though I believe that a person is not a body or a mind or a soul/spirit but an inter-related, ever-changing combination of all the above - I'm going to discount the body as not who I am.
What I'm getting at here is a question that has plagued religious and spiritual thinkers and philosophers since forever - If I am thinking, who is the I that is doing the thinking. If I am a combination of the primal me and everything else that has made me, who is that primal me and how do I find him? In fact is he a "he"? Maybe he's a "she", an "it" or even a "they"!
Paganism
As a good Pagan boy I try to live by a deceptively complicated guideline known as the Wiccan Rede. I'm not a Wiccan, but then again I'm not really an anything specific - pigeonholes are restrictive and get on my nerves - but the Wiccan Rede is useful. It goes:
"An it harm none, do what you will"
This is open to interpretation, as are all rules and guidelines. My own works something like this: using the proviso that as little unnecessary harm of any kind is caused to everyone and everything around you, including yourself, then do your own will
"Doing your will" is a very Thelemic bit of jargon and not one I like much because it conjures images of some complete and total deadlegs from whom I would prefer to be disassociated. The trouble is that I'm not sure I can think of a better one. As James Curcio has said, Will is synonymous with Identity, but Identity in action. To do your will is to be yourself just as hard as you can manage. This takes us full circle back to the original question: who is the me that I must be to be who I am?
Circles.
So far this article is going round in ever-decreasing circles and will soon disappear in a puff of smoke up it's own arsehole. Before it does, perhaps it's time to look in a different direction.
Pope Tim Leary and Saint RAW the Optimistic, both following others and being followed in their turn, have shown that we can change how we are made. Using various techniques we can alter our socializations, our behaviours, our attitudes and our habits - and we can do it ourselves. Brainwashing techniques have shown that even the most deeply entrenched beliefs can be reversed, and advertising and propaganda show us that new beliefs and attitudes can be injected into the human mind with very little difficulty. How many people with dogs even noticed the smell before the Shake & Vac lady danced backwards across her living room?
When one wants to alter oneself in the ways suggested by Wilson and Leary there is usually an aim in mind, even if it's only to become more open-minded. The aim of finding the True Will is in stripping away the layers of social conditioning and beliefs until all that's left is the pure primal self. This isn't really changing oneself, which is like changing one's mental "clothes" - it is more like stripping completely naked. (Good grief, I'm on nudity again! It's becoming an obsession.)
A Radical Thought
The concepts of primal Self or true Will imply a certain belief - that there is such a thing. It's the assumption that the human being has a single, eternal and unchanging central core which has become known as the Soul. What if this isn't true?
I'm not proposing that we are all soulless automata or that there is no spiritual dimension at all to the human being, only that it's not a separate and eternal thing. If the human soul is as capable of change, growth and deliberate alteration as the mind and body are then how much more wonderful it surely is. It means that I am not some abstract thing distant and separate from my mind and body, but a soul/mind/body gestalt where all the bits blend to become indistinguishable at the edges. It implies that when my body dies and changes its state by becoming part of the soil fertilizing a tree whose buds feed a bird, then so do my mind and soul in their own ways.
It also implies that all creatures must be like this and therefore, by a process of extension, so must groupings of creatures - like families, societies and forests. I am part of my family and a separate individual at the same time; my children are part me, part their mother and individuals in their own right at the same time. Could there be, therefore, a family soul which joins us and is within us in the same way that we form a gestalt as individuals all together under one group concept? If there is it is made of the combined souls and DNA of the parents within the children, but the parents' souls are made of their parent's souls ad infinitum. Extend this far enough and you end up with a universal physical/intelligence/spiritual gestalt which covers and includes everything that exists/does not exist, has/has not existed and will/will not exist - ever!
Big thought!
Have I answered my question, though? Probably not, except to say that I think I'm getting there. Not only can the true I be found, I can decide what I ought to be. I think!
Love,
Seán
Tuesday 8 January 2008
News in the Nudes
I've just realized that this is my first post of 2008, so if you're reading this -
Happy New Year!
Anyway, part of the inspiration for this inconsequential ramble came from here:
http://losing-the-thread.blogspot.com/2008/01/topfree-equality.html
The other part came from the fact that very soon I'm going to spend two hours sat/stood/lay in front of a group of people, and I won't have any clothes on. In my quest to question the entire universe therefore, I'm going to ask why. Not why am I doing it ? per se, I already know that. I'm doing it because I'm good at it and I enjoy being paid £8.50 per hour for being an attention-seeking old tart! What I'm questioning is why our dichotomous relationship with the naked human body?
Bare Bits
It seems strange to me that our western society uses the nude as the greatest of its art forms, yet at the same time considers nakedness as something corrupting. For instance, I can take my children to an art gallery full of, often very realistic, paintings and sculptures of people without clothes but they can't see an unclothed person on a film because that gets rated as adult.
Film censors are strange like that. A 14 year-old can watch some of the most horrific violence, yet as soon as someone takes their clothes off the film gets an adults-only rating.
Back to art. I can (and will) sit naked in a room full of clothed people, and anybody can see me do it - it's a publicly advertised drop-in group for life drawing. Yet if I walked down the street naked I would be arrested. Interestingly, I wouldn't be arrested for public nudity because it's not actually illegal in Britain but if someone were to complain then I could be arrested for Breach of the Peace. I wonder how many police officers would observe such niceties.
The situation is worse for women, they can't even take their top halves off without someone being appalled by an offensive nipple. Some women have actually used this shock value as a political tool, PETA are famous for it.
Am I a Hypocrite?
At the same time a funny thought arises, I like looking at naked women! I like looking at clothed women too, but I prefer naked ones. Is this a subconscious sexualization or just personal taste in the same way that I like looking at mushrooms, or complicated Victorian architecture?
Thinking of situations I've been in involving group nudity, I've not been offended by anybody's body and seriously impressed by a few, but I definitely liked looking at the women more than anyone else; and women of all sorts of shapes and sizes depending on how it seemed to suit them. Thinking even more deeply, I've just realized that the most attractive people I've met without clothes are actually the people I've already found attractive regardless of what they were wearing, or not. In other words, naked is good and can be a turn-on, but the real turn-on is the person and not their body (I think!).
Phew! I'm obviously not as shallow as I thought.
So Why D
oes It Matter?
It's a question I've been asking myself for a while: why does it matter to be naked? I have realized in a religious context that nude rituals are definitely the best. Being naked ("skyclad"!) in that situation is equivalent to making a universal statement: This is me. Entire. Uncovered. With nothing hidden.
Why, then, is the nude so popular in art? I can understand nude drawing from the point of a couple of the artists that attend to draw me, because they're animation students. To them a good working knowledge of human anatomy is indispensable. Can this be said for the other artists, though?
Drawing a human being, a human being draped in cloth or simply some draped cloth are equally difficult/easy. It's all about line, shadow, highlight, shade and so-on. It doesn't have to be a naked human being at all and yet drawing the naked human being is considered the pinnacle of art. Perhaps it comes from the thought that Man is the Measure of All Things. This uniquely Classical Greek idea has some sway over artists and society in general, but I find it to be a false flattery. Most models would.
Who would you prefer to draw or paint? Would you prefer the almost featureless, slender modern concept of the perfect "body-beautiful" (Kate Moss, for instance) or would you rather attempt to portray a normal person? You know, with fat bits, different textures and a variety of shapes and colours?
Me too!
Why Does it Matter to Me?
Why indeed. Why, if I'm so comfortable naked, do my balls shrink when I disrobe to take the first pose? Why am I bothered about the size of my paunch when I know it makes me more interesting to an artist?
I'm more comfortable naked than most, and I know that most people who don't have a serious hang-up become a lot more comfortable and relaxed after about ten minutes of group nu
dity. But am I still as comfortable as I'd like to be nude in public or am I still fighting my socialization which says that naked equals sex? I think perhaps that it matters because I'm trying to be who I am and not what I've been made.
In an ideal world it wouldn't matter if you went shopping in your birthday suit or a three-piece so long as you were happy and comfortable, but to our societal norms it does. Perhaps as Lily The Pink says in her blog, it's about time we started to go Cretan!
Love,
Seán
Happy New Year!
Anyway, part of the inspiration for this inconsequential ramble came from here:
http://losing-the-thread.blogspot.com/2008/01/topfree-equality.html
The other part came from the fact that very soon I'm going to spend two hours sat/stood/lay in front of a group of people, and I won't have any clothes on. In my quest to question the entire universe therefore, I'm going to ask why. Not why am I doing it ? per se, I already know that. I'm doing it because I'm good at it and I enjoy being paid £8.50 per hour for being an attention-seeking old tart! What I'm questioning is why our dichotomous relationship with the naked human body?
Bare Bits
It seems strange to me that our western society uses the nude as the greatest of its art forms, yet at the same time considers nakedness as something corrupting. For instance, I can take my children to an art gallery full of, often very realistic, paintings and sculptures of people without clothes but they can't see an unclothed person on a film because that gets rated as adult.
Film censors are strange like that. A 14 year-old can watch some of the most horrific violence, yet as soon as someone takes their clothes off the film gets an adults-only rating.
Back to art. I can (and will) sit naked in a room full of clothed people, and anybody can see me do it - it's a publicly advertised drop-in group for life drawing. Yet if I walked down the street naked I would be arrested. Interestingly, I wouldn't be arrested for public nudity because it's not actually illegal in Britain but if someone were to complain then I could be arrested for Breach of the Peace. I wonder how many police officers would observe such niceties.
The situation is worse for women, they can't even take their top halves off without someone being appalled by an offensive nipple. Some women have actually used this shock value as a political tool, PETA are famous for it.
Am I a Hypocrite?
At the same time a funny thought arises, I like looking at naked women! I like looking at clothed women too, but I prefer naked ones. Is this a subconscious sexualization or just personal taste in the same way that I like looking at mushrooms, or complicated Victorian architecture?
Thinking of situations I've been in involving group nudity, I've not been offended by anybody's body and seriously impressed by a few, but I definitely liked looking at the women more than anyone else; and women of all sorts of shapes and sizes depending on how it seemed to suit them. Thinking even more deeply, I've just realized that the most attractive people I've met without clothes are actually the people I've already found attractive regardless of what they were wearing, or not. In other words, naked is good and can be a turn-on, but the real turn-on is the person and not their body (I think!).
Phew! I'm obviously not as shallow as I thought.
So Why D
oes It Matter?It's a question I've been asking myself for a while: why does it matter to be naked? I have realized in a religious context that nude rituals are definitely the best. Being naked ("skyclad"!) in that situation is equivalent to making a universal statement: This is me. Entire. Uncovered. With nothing hidden.
Why, then, is the nude so popular in art? I can understand nude drawing from the point of a couple of the artists that attend to draw me, because they're animation students. To them a good working knowledge of human anatomy is indispensable. Can this be said for the other artists, though?
Drawing a human being, a human being draped in cloth or simply some draped cloth are equally difficult/easy. It's all about line, shadow, highlight, shade and so-on. It doesn't have to be a naked human being at all and yet drawing the naked human being is considered the pinnacle of art. Perhaps it comes from the thought that Man is the Measure of All Things. This uniquely Classical Greek idea has some sway over artists and society in general, but I find it to be a false flattery. Most models would.
Who would you prefer to draw or paint? Would you prefer the almost featureless, slender modern concept of the perfect "body-beautiful" (Kate Moss, for instance) or would you rather attempt to portray a normal person? You know, with fat bits, different textures and a variety of shapes and colours?
Me too!
Why Does it Matter to Me?
Why indeed. Why, if I'm so comfortable naked, do my balls shrink when I disrobe to take the first pose? Why am I bothered about the size of my paunch when I know it makes me more interesting to an artist?
I'm more comfortable naked than most, and I know that most people who don't have a serious hang-up become a lot more comfortable and relaxed after about ten minutes of group nu
dity. But am I still as comfortable as I'd like to be nude in public or am I still fighting my socialization which says that naked equals sex? I think perhaps that it matters because I'm trying to be who I am and not what I've been made.In an ideal world it wouldn't matter if you went shopping in your birthday suit or a three-piece so long as you were happy and comfortable, but to our societal norms it does. Perhaps as Lily The Pink says in her blog, it's about time we started to go Cretan!
Love,
Seán
ADDITIONAL
After publishing this post I decided to decorate it with some pictures. The photo at the top is my "official" modelling picture taken by Sara Smith.
The drawings of me were created by three of the artists during the University of Bolton's life drawing group that I mentioned in the post. Going from top to bottom they are by:
Martin John Hayes
A. Pederson
Dave Cowley.
A special thanks goes to these three artists for letting me borrow their work.
Love,
Seán
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