The Performing Body: An Ethnographic Field Study with Life Drawing Models

When presenting their body, life models differentiate between performing and appearing. Since they associate performing with subjectivity, presence, and expressiveness, they see the act of performing as something "different from somebody coming, taking off the clothes, sitting down, and making the naked body available". Most of my interlocutors describe their profession as performance, implying that there is movement in the act of posing, even when they must stand still, be silent, and avoid direct eye contact. Referring to "emotions", "presence", "sensuality", "expressiveness", or "energy", they suggest that the relationship between model and artist is determined by transference and counter-transference rather than by symbolic interaction. In their view, poses which are listless, challenge and disturb the gaze; and poses which reveal expression, sensuality and emotion attract and draw the gaze. Thus, perceiving themselves as performers, some life models describe performance as an act which goes beyond "creating pictures for artists" and beyond appearing or representing bones, flesh, skin, and hair. It involves drawing the gaze.

While emotions are invisible, embodied emotions are visible. The still and silent body speaks; its language is emotions. Each performing body has its own language. In the same setting one body is frightened, the other is ashamed, the third one feels joy. The body is the "embodiment of dynamic human relations" and a medium of "influence within the artwork itself" (O’ Reilly 2009: 17). In this regard, this paper aims to present how contemporary life drawing models whom I studied with, describe the ways how socio-cultural and political dynamics shape perceptions of and understandings about the human body, and how those perceptions and understandings influence the embodiment of pain, joy, shame, fear, and moreover, of the self and the other.