Models of/in research

Diving Into The Lacuna: An Ethnography Of The Life Class

DEFN: Lacuna A hole, pit from lacus or Lake, Lacune
1. In manuscript, an inscription, the text of an author, a hiatus, blank, missing portion. Also transf.
2. a gap, empty space, spot, cavity.

This is an extended version of a paper I intend to give at a cultural studies conference in December. It’s based on parts of the first chapter of my thesis on the use of artists’ models in Australia since 1945.

I have adapted the paper to this setting among art historians chiefly in order to address some of the pressing questions of methodology and interdisciplinarity. While I would say that I am researching a subject related to art history largely within disciplinary approaches of cultural studies, many methodological as well as theoretical issues cross both fields. Basically I am here to generate a discussion and exchange some ideas on ethnographic research and art history.

I am also interested in how contemporary art practices can be researched and critically described within a social context where written descriptions have an intensely reflexive relationship with cultural production, and promotion of cultural products. This problematic positioning of contemporary art writing has influenced my research approach.

My research is not specifically on artists’ life models, but their use in Educational and Recreational settings, within what are generally described as life classes. There is not a huge amount of published research on artists models, and most of what does exist is based on Europe up until the early twentieth century. while some writers argue that this decline is due to the prominence of as catwalk and photographic modelling in the 20th century, its is also true to note as did Karen de Perthuis (who completed her PhD on fashion models) that “scholarly attention to the model is a relatively unmapped landscape”. The paradox between the massive cultural emphasis on analysing figurative images and the lack of research on the experiences and practices of the subjects of such images is discussed in my thesis but will not be dealt with in this paper.

While research on artists’ models is rare, it is not unknown, especially for artists models to do a thesis on the subject. In a number of cases, academic writing has been a way out of life modelling, or a convenient purging of what is for most models, and many students, a temporary casual job. At SCA an artists model Eliza Bell, wrote an MVA thesis to accompany her performance piece “permission to look”. This was 10 years ago, and I’ve heard that she runs TAFE weekend workshops in Gippsland and Kangaroo Valley as “the naked lecturer’, but I can’t locate her. I also came across a chapter in a berg anthology on fashion theory from 1998, by Gordon Roe. Titled “ the body of Art and the Mantle of Authority” Roe’s chapter declares itself to be “the result of ethnographic research on the lives of ‘professional’ artists models.” He then provides his definition of professional model and states that he too is a model, but that he sees his ‘peculiar position’ as an anthropologist ‘would’, and observing the studio as an outsider, and asking questions of instructors, art students and models. Roe states that he interviewer a total of 13 models and an unnumbered amount of ‘art schedulers’. These were spread across Canada and London, and roe questioned them about their experiences in life classes rather than posting for individual classes.

Roe’s paper would seem to be a precursor of the research I want to undertake. He has a similar subject, similar methodology, and familiar list of citations derived from feminist theories of the gaze, feminist theories of the nude, feminist art history of artists’ models, and a bit of Bourdieu for good measure. Roe’s argument is also interesting, and explains the inclusion of his paper in a book about fashion theory. He describes models as ‘the body of art’ and the models work as turning themselves into an aesthetic object, and this being mediated by the use of robes, which he describes as the ‘mantle of authority’. Roe describes the life studio as akin to a theatre, and the robe as a stage curtain and discusses the robes mediating role in descriptions of different types of models robes; long, large and subdued for those who were introspective or felt threatened, shorter, brighter or thinner for those who were more confident, more physical or more sexual in their style of modelling, or one model who had several for different personae that she presented at different jobs. Although 4 off the 13 interview subjects were male, roe didn’t include any descriptions of what type of robes, if any that they used. He also described the use of the robe, and changeroom, and conventions of undressing and disrobing as according to a singular convention of the model, changing form street clothes to a robe in the changeroom, and then wearing the robe to the podium where disrobing occurs at the start of a pose. It is my understanding that such protocol is pretty universally enforce din the united states, but it certainly isn’t in Sydney, and doesn’t even exist in continental Europe. This anomaly points to wider problems with roes text, and one that is shared by many popular descriptions of life classes. Roe writes in the present tense, and provides descriptions as generalisations. Roe’s descriptions are harnessed to rather formulaic invocations of John Berger/Laura Mulvey analysis of scopic regimes as intractably and irreversibly gendered. While this may be understandable for a writer from a decade ago, it is perplexing that he has cited Judith Butler in what is a glib and rigid analysis of gendered roles of artists and models. Roe’s paper quickly slides from perplexing into aggravating, as he cites feminist interventions into the life class as specifically threatening the models own “mantle of authority’ as an active agent in mediating the patriarchal and objectifying gaze.

On rereading Roe's paper and noting my annoyance, I did a google search and discovered that he is currently a professor of sociology and anthropology at Simon Fraser University in Canada. “Ratemyprofesssors.com” gives him a 3/5 for being able to explain ethnography real well, so either he has improved, or his students have pretty low expectations. I mention this aside, because what struck me in his paper, was the complete absence of any references to ethnographic or qualitative research texts, or any discussion of his research methodology. Furthermore, although Roe locates himself within his subject area as a type of participant observer, he doesn’t articulate where his observations about the life class come form. He doesn't specify which are derived from personal experience, or from observation, anecdote or interview. As such, the reader has no way of verifying what he is saying or of challenging it.

I’ve spent this amount of time on Roe’s chapter, because of its similarities to my own body of work, but also to emphasise the differences. Roe would appear to be committing the worst excesses of interdisciplinary research; researching personal experience, using shallow or outdated theoretical exegesis and small and poorly defined research methodologies. Right now, I may appear to be committing a further excess of interdisciplinarity research, that of ostentatious performance of transgression as I now stand and remove my own ‘mantle of authority’ or old working uniform.

My research on my former occupation of artists’ model, means that I can never occupy a position of invisible or absent embodiment. My interest in reading and researching the life class came from specific embodied experience of it, and every time I mention that I was a life model, then people’s eyes invariably glance downwards, away from mine. Rather than whinge and make people feel more awkward, I feel it is more useful to explore and explain what embodied research involves.


I’ve spent this amount of time on Roe’s chapter, because of its similarities to my own body of work, but also to emphasise the differences. I’ve described the text of his paper, the major difference between his an my research is analogous to life drawings. Roes chapter, is the only chapte rin the book featuring illustrations. He has included a number of line drawings of faceless, and mostly genital-less models, by a cited but unknown artist. I am curious about the purpose of the drawings, which are little more than fairly, asexualised quick life drawing sekthces. Are they meant to be na indication of the ‘work’ or objectification, the asexuality of life modeeling, the banality of art? The text doens’ refer to them, except to cite the artist, not the models, nor the date or place where they were drawn. In many ways this mirrors ro’es text itself. Each image depicts a figure, floating in a vacuum. Ro’es text is about ‘models’ but cited in the context of a universalised ‘life class’, the models emerge as little more than metonymic fragments of a modernist imaginary. Roe gives no esriptions of the types of life classes, or the types of institutions employeing moredle,s, nor expores the quality and stauts of the drawings as cutlurla products. He makes a brief reference to a comment from a model saying ‘they are not about us’, but doesn’t explore what the point of drawing form the model actually is. Whle it is arguable that the status of life models hasn’t changed much since the ninteenth century, it is undeniably that the status of life draing and life painting has definitely changed in relation to what is exhibited nd studied as contemporary or even significant art. Roe mentions that most artist models gain most of their income form institutions, he doesn’t explain tha tthis is due to the decline of professional artists use of models, or discuss how the two settings may influence the noature of posing and of who works as models and under what conditions.

I would juxtapose the drawing sin Roe's paper, with (imaginary or real) drawings, which show quite a different approach. These drawings depict scene – where someone is posing, and in some of them you can even see draers. These drawings a repordouced according to a convention of mapping a view onto a page, which is quite different from the contoured or arabesque emphasis of the drawings in Roes paper. These are two of at least four distinct approaches to teaching drawing, some of which are documented, and others not. I’m not prais the merits of either parroch but drawing ana analogy with research and writing. While I find buzz words tedious, I would state that good ethnography has more affinity with the ampping approach. Rather than seeing models as a subject tfor research, I regard the life class as a field, to be entered and described, and y position within it to be mapped, and plotted. The field or place is something whih I am quite conscious of.