Life classes again, and this time a model who teaches Yoga. She held the pose for two forty minute sessions without a break: I tried it at home later and suffered acute discomfort over the greater trochanter of both hips (the sticky-out bony bit at the outer edge of the top of the thigh – it’s quicker to use the anatomical term). It’s seriously difficult to get the gesture of the pose correct when the body is contorted: in fact, some of the limbs don’t even look human.
The nature of the pose raises some questions about the relationship between artist and model: we’re all concerned about the model’s comfort to start with, but then get engrossed in our work and run the risk of forgetting the person on the dais. The subject becomes an object if you’re not careful – satirised nicely in “The Horse’s Mouth” by (Mr.) Joyce Carey when sculptor’s model Lolie eventually succumbs after days of posing in the nude for her husband, Abel:
“The diagnosis at the hospital was exposure, shock, displacement of the caudal vertebrae and malnutrition…..Abel’s fussing about his lump of nonsense [the stone] and the trouble with Lolie, did not, as I had feared put me off my work.” (from the Penguin edition1978, © the author 1944)
Some similarities with the alleged indifference of medics to patients? Shurely not, as they say in Private Eye.
