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Live Nude Girl Bares All
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Would you take off your clothes in front of a room full of strangers if the money were right? In her bold new memoir, former artist’s model Kathleen Rooney reveals all about being a muse.
Kathleen Rooney, author of Live Nude Girl: My Life as an Object, originally took up modeling for artists as a subconscious means of revenge toward the boss who sexually harassed her. During her senior year of college she worked in an art-museum shop in Washington, D.C. In the book, she writes that her bosses “asked us out despite our refusals, insinuated themselves into the cramped quarters behind the registers with us to give us instructions, questioned us about our sex lives, and bought us unasked-for lunches from the museum café.” After her boss finally fired her for declining to sleep with him, she needed new work.
During the first three years of her seven-year modeling career, Rooney simply told her very Catholic parents that she worked as a “classroom aide.”
She trolled the classifieds for a new job and came across a call for models with the slogan “Be a part of art.” Its rhyme appealed to the poet in her, so she interviewed for the job. In light of her former job situation, she found the idea of being naked, but untouchable, appealing.
The first time she walked into a classroom for a job, she dropped her robe with visions of her ex-boss flashing in front of her eyes, and after 30 seconds of discomfort, which felt “like skydiving” to her, she settled in.
Working as a model for painters, sculptors, and photographers helped pay the bills during her stint as a graduate student poet in Emerson College’s creative-writing program, and later as a new college professor who taught classes on American war writing, personal essay, and autobiography at a variety of schools.
The going rate of $12-$16 per hour for classes or $20-plus per hour for private modeling sessions was more than double what she would have made working retail. “I was definitely in it for the money,” she said.
Modeling had its downsides as well. Standing poses are physically taxing. During one session, Rooney saw another model collapse and the ex-Army painting instructor teaching the class galloped to catch her. The model had locked her knees, which cuts off two major arteries, reducing blood flow to the brain. The instructor explained that green Army recruits fainted while standing at attention for the same reason. To pose with hands above the heart for more than five minutes at a time can make arms numb and breathing difficult, just as crucifixion does. Elaborate poses are often held with the help of pulleys, pillows, and other props.
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"Rooney insofar as it works against the traditional conception of women's bodies as sinful."
There may be traditions with this conception but I challenge anyone to read Song of Solomon and come away believing that the Bible teaches this conception.
My God, those days. Been there, and can relate to the bizarre quality of being objectified, on purpose, per hour. Back in my misspent youth I was caught out between-homes, as it were, and got some gigs doing 'art school modeling' in NY and Philadelphia. Better than bussing tables or day-work in construction. And as a guy, oddly, there was almost zero competition back then for the work. I can't remember a single unattractive body or male model under 60--perhaps the studios were a touch chilly.
Rooney is dead on about the weirdness factor, too, but for me it wasn't so much the public nudity or sometimes private scrutiny (prodding, posing, being asked for coffee or whatall on the job) that felt most unnerving. (Anyone can get used to walking around in the buff at a beach.) What was truly bizarre was seeing yourself, your body, your face, an expression--something only your own--a smile, your lips, the way your elbow met your hip--mirrored. Portrait after portrait after portrait, mostly on canvass, paper, sometimes in clay, but unmistakably you. After a few years you start to think of all the mini-me statues and emotionally-revealing psychological portraits ending up in someone's hall, the trash, or cast in bronze in some attic or barn, like a golem, spookily you, uncanny.
...And yes, we models got around, but not with the teachers or middle-aged, 'evening class' husbands and wives who hit on us the most. Non, je ne regrette.
"Live Nude Girl Bares All." Wonderfully redundant.
I don`t really get this. A whole book about being an artist`s model? I am an artist and deeply appreciate those who have modeled for me. There is nothing faintly salacious or erotic about a figure-drawing class. The feeling, rather, is more one of awe at the body`s beauty, and gratitude for having the opportunity to draw or paint it.
I agree with Servius. Why in the hell is it so damned difficult for people, especially women, to admit they like looking sexy because it makes them feel sexy by stimulating sexy responses in others? If you cannot believe that you need to take a remedial course in Sociobiology 101 in a hurry. Regarding women's bodies as sinful is itself sinful if anything is.
Truly great art is a marriage of subject and painter/photographer. And the more the artist connects w/ the model, the deeper and more resonant his/her art will be.
Our society tends to discredit all models of all kinds. In fact, the model plays an important role in the creative process.
Best take on this book I've seen is Ron Slate's at his lit site On the Seawall.
Thank you.
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