I've had only one part-time job in my four years at Ball State University. No, it wasn't wiping down tables in the Atrium, and no, it wasn't pushing book carts at Bracken. For an entire school year, I made my way up and down the back elevator in the Art and Journalism Building to the fourth floor where I posed nude for drawing classes. I'd actually started the summer before in Fort Wayne, where the pay was a cool, non-taxed ten dollars an hour, so by the time I was baring myself at Ball State, my parents weren't allowed to be upset.
The questions about the job were always interesting. One of the most popular was "HOW can you bring yourself to DO THAT?" coupled with "I don't think I could ever DO THAT!" The insinuation was that I was being turned into an object of pornography every week, but I'd answer them the same way I answered the question of how I could be a vegetarian: "You'd be surprised."
Regardless of how many painters, sculptors, or filmmakers the general college student from the Midwest can name off the top of his or her head, one thing remains certain: art moves under the radar as a hot topic. More specifically, people have been trying to determine for years what makes it Art with a capital 'A'; the first people to praise the Sistine Chapel will also be the first to condemn Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ," the 1989 photograph for which he submerged a crucifix in a jar of urine.
A central argument in the debate seems to be the pairing of the statement "that's not art" with "even I could do that," as though art exists on some higher plane, untouchable by the hoi polloi. When I was working in the Art Department, I often met with the accusation that I was, in fact, another victim of rampant erotic America, as though the nude human body has only to do with sex and nothing else.
But in light of "Piss Christ" and the Art Department's insistence on proudly displaying its nudes, how can we be sure that such flagrant displays of disrespect for the proud traditions of Michelangelo and the good ol' boys aren't lumping us in with the downfall of the rest of Western culture?
You'd be surprised.
For one thing, art can stand separate from humanity's desire to know, literally, who we are; it doesn't mirror the evolution of everything else. Yes, technology has changed how we view ourselves (think of your Crayola self-portraits at age four and then think of your professional senior pictures), but art doesn't have the obligation to progress in the same way everything else does. It would be horribly patronizing to the painters at Lascaux simply to tolerate their stick-figured cave paintings because they didn't have access to digital cameras. ("That's very nice, Og, you did a very nice job on the mammoth's tusks. How intelligent you must be.") Who has set the standard so high as to bar normal, every day people from responding to their surroundings by using their surroundings?
The question remains: what makes it Art with a capital 'A'? Are the nude portraits in the Art and Journalism building art, or do they really have less value than, to draw an example from Tuesday's Daily News Forum, Kris Knight's excrement in a toilet bowl?
The experience of modeling nude certainly is a unique one. The model removes all street clothes in the undressing room and then puts on a robe, which will be off again in a matter of minutes. The model steps onto the carpeted platform in the middle of the room and then, for twenty minutes to an hour, he or she is transformed into a series of doodles, sketches and masterpieces. One student stretches and extends the arms in a benediction over the piece, and another accentuates every harsh angle. The model lies down, stands up, twists, and turns in an effort to be one more springboard in the artist's creative journey. An exchange has taken place: the model has bared everything so that the artist can do the same.
Instead of "worthless" or "worthwhile," a much more important distinction must be made. Is art about the finished product or about the process?
Write to Joel at jtmiller@bsu.edu
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