3rd Entry for January 25, 2010

The pose with the big shadows was about 20 minutes, and the other is about 30 minutes.

I had a thought while drawing that day at the AGO. They had acquired this fancy one-piece foam sofa, with the zig-zaggy profile. I was feeling that it imposed a strong presence on any picture of a person interacting with it.

Not that that is a bad thing, per se. But it is not a visually neutral element. (But is any object that a model sits or stands upon really visually neutral?) M- is a thoughtful model, and spoke about responding to the challenge of how to use his body to make interesting visuals in relation to the couch’s angles. Which further got me thinking about just that – how a model makes interesting visuals. Lots of the best models do just that – they figure out sustainable ways to hold themselves in visually interesting ways.

That set me thinking about music, and covering songs. There is a long history of musicians performing songs written by others. Whether it is Hendrix, Sinatra or Devo, musicians play and interpret the ideas of others. The `idol’ shows have foregrounded that these days. People will talk about so and so’s performance of Credence Clearwater’s [version of] “Proud Mary”, and the performance has a split level: the performance as a stand-alone and the performance in relation to the `original’.

That idea was floating in my head recently watching dance performers incorporating recognizable pop songs into their performances. I found myself thinking of their dance as their `cover’ of a Kate Bush song or a Radiohead song. Not that that is something new, but much of the dance I have seen has used either original scores or unfamiliar music. When I know the music, or it has a pre-existing life in pop culture, I am more prone to taking in the dance as a response to the music, rather than the music being a backdrop or equal partner to the dance. (for me, that is a sliding scale that the relation of all dance to music exists along, and every dance – and every time I see it – that is different. Moreover, this is a very Thomas-centric response. Just because I don’t know a piece of music doesn’t mean it is not canonical or loaded with references for dancers)

So this led me to a question about the relation of artist and model in figurative drawings – are some figure drawings essentially a `cover verion’ of a model’s poses? (Or are they mostly that- and is that necessarily a negative thing?) And if that is true, when are images less a `cover’ of the model and more an original process? I work a lot in collective settings, where the model chooses what to do. I suspect that working privately, in collaboration with a model would be more like a dancer working with a composer to develop new work. These days, I lean to drawing models’ whole figures and eschew compositions that crop limbs, which are two ways a visual artist can impose a composition onto the image of a body.

There is a further level of `covering’ when a model adopts a pose with a an art historical reference – then the drawing is a response both to the model and to the historical work, as well as comparison of the model to the source that he/she is making reference to. Doubling upon doubling.

Food for thought – anyone want to weigh in?