'The Nakeds' at the Drawing Room

It’s nearly time for everyone to start back at college and we have been finalising briefs, writing handouts and putting together new lectures. One result of the college refurbishment is that we have reinstated a dedicated life drawing room. This will mean that life drawing becomes available again and for drawing students there will be 2 hour sessions on Thursday evenings, 5 till 7.  I shall be hosting these, so any of you interested in either just sharpening your concentration and ability to look or just wanting to make images from the body should come along, the sessions will be open to all drawing strand students.

Interestingly The Drawing Room is staging an exhibition looking at contemporary approaches to figure drawing. Any of you interested in developing a body of work around this theme should go. It opens 25^th of September and is on until the 29^th of November. A wide range of artists will be represented, including one of the college’s ex-students, Georgina Starr as well as images by Joseph Beuys who I worked with at one time back in the early 1980s when he visited the college.

This is the line up:

David Austen, Fiona Banner, Joseph Beuys, Louise Bourgeois, George Condo, Enrico David, Marlene Dumas, Tracey Emin, Leon Golub, Stewart Helm, Chantal Joffe, Maria Lassnig, Paul McCarthy, Chris Ofili, Carol Rama, Egon Schiele, Nancy Spero, Georgina Starr, Alina Szapocznikow, Rosemarie Trockel, Nicola Tyson, Andy Warhol and Franz West.

Working from the figure and at the same time keeping the imagery fresh and alive is very, very hard. On the one hand because we are all so aware of what the human form looks like we are hyper-critical of any human image; we are prone to see faults and distortions rather than to praise. On the other hand because so many artists have worked in this territory and the vast majority of historical artists having many years focused training on producing convincing images of figures, that coming to this new means that either you are tempted to despair that your work doesn’t measure up to ‘the masters’ or get too caught up in trying to make yet another ‘nice’ life drawing. The challenge is to re-invent and to yet still be able to engage with hard looking. 

Joseph Beuys

George Condo

Maria Lassnig

Stewart Helm

I’m looking forward to starting these life drawing sessions, it’s not worth doing if it’s too easy and I enjoy a challenge. However if you are going to come, don't just rely on what will be provided, try and bring your own paper, paper quality is vital to a good drawing, and think about applicators, pencil and charcoal are fine, but what sort? How will you erase marks and how will the process of erasure lead towards a 'found' or 'discovered' image rather than a predicted one? You can draw with paint, inks, chalks, directly on to etching plates, cut forms out directly in paper etc etc there is no right way. We will start with short poses and each session for the first 5 weeks will have a different focus, so these will not be 'free for all' sessions. However as the sessions develop I would hope each to see individual approaches coming through and by Christmas the sessions will have changed their focus from directed approaches to sessions designed to help individuals 'hone' their own language. The first session will be Thursday 2nd of October starting at 5pm and will be in the new life studio which is where Advertising Design was last year, just off to the right of the  end of the corridor that runs alongside the first year Fine Art studios. 
The skills required are quite complex, so don't expect quick results, I will therefore expect everyone that wants to do this to attend every week, as sessions will be designed to build up a range of abilities over time and drawing skills are like any others, you need to practice them in order to be able to control what you are doing. It is said that high level skills of this sort need over 10,000 hours of practice before you are in complete control of them, ten two hour sessions will without further practice, not be enough. 

Richard Sennett writes about these issues in The Craftsman see this review