I posted this first on the ALFG Discussion Board to get our subscribers’ take on it:
Should Christian Art Students Study the Nude Figure?
This question especially came to mind when I learned of how Gordon College, a Christian college in Wenham, MA, recently modified it’s Art program when they developed a curriculum that includes the study and rendering of the undraped human figure.
As many of you know, a Figure Drawing curriculum using undraped models is not unusual for most college and university Art programs.
Gordon College Art Department representatives say that the rationale is to work respectfully with the human figure attempting to bring honor and glory to God in the process.
They base this, in a Christian context, on a time-honored professional practice, holding the belief that the human form is the crowning achievement of God in Creation – worthy of the artists’ expert knowledge, and comparable to the scientific knowledge of the human body in medicine and biology.
Gordon representatives state: “If you can accurately and expressively draw or paint or sculpt the human form you can draw anything”.
So what is your take on this?
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I’ve been a model for college art classes for 27 years at many different schools in three different states (although the majority have been here in north Texas). I have always viewed my modeling as a service to the students who both want and need to study the human body in order to create an artistic representation of it. I don’t see any conflict between my relationship with Christ and with providing this service for the students. I am His creation. My body is a temporary residence while I am on this earth, and I don’t see any issues with using it for purely academic purposes, especially when it aids so many.
Modeling provides a good supplement to my income, and I find the work very rewarding. I get to be the center of attention for three hours, and the nudity keeps me grounded with a certain kind of humility. When most people I know have to go in front of a group, either for a speaking engagement, to give a presentation, or for an inteview, they try to look their best–sharp clothes, hair combed, “flaws” hidden, etc. My nudity in front of these artists and art students keeps me from trying to be anything that I’m not. There is an honesty and, dare I say it, a modesty, in being a nude model–modesty in the sense that I am not flaunting any kind of material weath by my clothes or adornment. And from a practical matter, when one is posed in one position for long periods of time, being nude is just much more comfortable. Try staying still for an extended length of time. You become more aware of the waistline of your pants or underwear, the socks gripping your lower leg, the shirt squeezing your middle if you’ve got any kind of twist going, etc.
A lot of people I go to church with know about my modeling from my appearance on the game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire back in 2001, but many of them just assume that modeling is in my past. They can’t reconcile nudity and Christianity because of the attitude in the church that the unclad body is either shameful or will incite lust in others. And yet, nudity was never denounced in scripture. God told Isaiah to go nude in public for three years (Isaiah Chapter 20). Jesus was crucified nude. And our bodies are made in the image and likeness of God. When we see a member of the opposite sex nude, lust is not the natural response. It’s what we’ve been conditioned to.
For further explanation, I would refer anyone interested to http://www.mychainsaregone.org/MCAG-article-lies-1.htm. You can follow the links to the other parts of the article.
Thanks for chiming in, Peggy and sharing your voice!
Tony-
IF WE MUST DRESS WITH MODESTY SO NOT TO CAUSE OUR BROTHER AND SISTER TO FALL INTO SIN. HOW MUCH MORE SHOULD WE IN OUR ART BE OF MODEST. . I WONT STAND BEFORE GOD AND HIM SAY WHY DID U CAUSE UR BROTHER TO LUST WITH THE TALENT I GAVE U..I MUST DO ART THAT IS HOLESOME AND TRUE WITH THE BEAUTY THAT EDIFYING UNTO GOD.
i agree with peggy. there’s a shortsightedness to answering this question with ‘of course, God made the body and its beautiful. so lets celebrate it’. you have to take into account sin and the fallen world we inhabit. there’s a reason adam and eve were naked and ashamed. if the goal of Christ-likeness is to go back to how it was before the fall, then the end goal for all of us is a nude colony? We are to love our neighbor as ourselves. Culture must be taken into context and we live in a culture of exploitation – of lust and the objectification of persons with souls as flesh alone. we need to protect that. our naked bodies are reserved for our spouses alone. the isaiah ‘the naked prophet’ parallel falls flat. he jam into public nude for people to gaze upon him for not for aesthetic purposes…it was for a metaphorical purpose. isaiah 20:3 “Then the LORD said, ‘Just as my servant Isaiah has gone stripped and barefoot for three years, as a sign and portent against Egypt and Cush” we will surely use sin to justify sin and this is what it is. porn is mainstream nowadays. this is gateway. (when i was a kid, i snuck into my dads room to look through his photo magazines specifically to seek out nude photos. tactful art introduced me to porn. 15 years later, God finally freed me.
of course, “christian” artists, working within academia a century or two or three ago, often (mostly?) drew and painted from the nude without any sense of guilt or shame. is this attitude more indicative of contemporary christianity and, if so, is it a reflection of religiousness, fear, over-sensitivity or _______?
Apparently not because it would cause people to sin, whether the artist is female (or male) or the subject is male (or female) and is very attractive. I’ve heard many religious students drop out or even fail these courses in school because they feel uncomfortable with nudity and that they are sinning and Christian or any other religious schools would barely have courses like that, unless the model is clothed or in a swimsuit (female) or surfing outfit (male).
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, LR!
Please pass this article along…
Tony-
I grew up in a Christian home and came to associate nudity, in any context, with shame. I am a Christian and I studied art in college. I took two life drawing and anatomy classes. In the first one, on the first day, we drew a nude model. I have always been very prudish and the thought of staring at a nude model for hours a day had me tied up in knots, but once I started drawing and got past the expected “sexual” nature of it, I LOVED the class. The human body was not sexualized in any way. It made me appreciate the creation of the human “machine” so much more–the strength, the gracefulness, the beauty in God’s creation.
There are some people who cannot seem to separate nudity and sexuality. If that’s you, then you shouldn’t take life drawing class. But don’t take it upon yourself to stop others from taking life drawing class. Because most art students Christian or otherwise seem to be able to separate nudity from sexuality.
The Problem is not the class but the mind of the individual person who has difficulty with this. If you are one of those people then you need to work that out between yourself and God.
I took life drawing class with nude models, and it was very non-sexual. Most people who take the class seem to think so too, again the problem is with certain people who have the wrong way of seeing things.
God created the human body and there is nothing wrong with the human body to be ashamed of. There is only those who make it something not to look at; that deny the beauty of God’s creation.
Gimel…well said, also Bruccio, Dawn Maureen, Jess …
My opinion, its good to know your boundary as a man or woman but its not a right or wrong issue to draw nudes.
We live our daily lives seeing stuffs we would claim we dont want to see on a daily basis but we dont allow those things we see on tv, bill boards, accidental exposures, magazines etc determine the way we live our lives as Christians, if we do we will most like be shooting ourselves in the head or blinding the eye so that we dont get another opportunity to see any of such.
if you a Christian artist attends a non christian art school, yu know what to expect anyway, but it the way we get to handle what we see that would matter.
Tell me someone, if you have to imagine a nude figure or draw a human figure in a body suit, i believe you would have to go further trying to imagine and create a picture in your head, which sound to me like doing exactly the same as seeing the figure in front of you, either way an image is displayed mentally or physically and i would say that the mental one is even more tedious a process and also the imaginative effort could make things stick longer than just casually seeing and trying to forget afterward.
Like Gimel said, i will also say, we have Gynae, we have Obstetrician, Doctors, Surgeons and similar practitioners how do these people get to handle these situations… artists shd device similar methods but if its really going to be a problem like it obviously is to many, well simply dont do nude art classes but those who want to do it shd take the necessary precautions to safe-guard their salvation.
I took years of art classes and a few semesters of classes where we drew nude models, the honest truth is there is very little or no sexuality in drawing nudes in art class. Its very mundane and clinical.
The real problem here specially for Christians is seperating nudity from sexuality. Most people don’t realize it is two separate things. There are nude depictions of Biblical figures by famous artist like Micheal Angelo, are they a sexual turn-on? For the majority of normal people, the answer is no.
There is a small minority of people whose mind cannot seem to separate nudity and sexuality and see sexual lust even in everything. For those people they should not take art classes or even read medical books because they contain nudity. But they should by no means stop the majority of people who seem to be able to handle this from getting something valuable out of this and help them learn.
I definitely would find it hard not to struggle drawing an undressed women in front of me. To put the name Christian on the door of the class makes it even worst.
my name is asher lev by chaim potok, written from the perspective of an orthodox jew, also wrestles with this issue. very interesting reading. and a great book.
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For those who are truly interested in what the Bible says about clothing (and the lack thereof), here is a free, downloadable, very thorough and well researched 71 page booklet.
http://boston.server101.com/christian_clothing.pdf
Rom 12:2 NASB – And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.
Just wondering, scripture to back up your thoughts, anyone?
I agree with what Wayne said. Also, before Adam and Eve ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, before they stopped walking with the Lord, they were naked and not ashamed. Their nakedness did not lead them to lust before they ate of that evil fruit. If you follow the lines of a full redemption of humanity to it’s original state, there would not be shame or lust with the human figure, which God fashioned with his own hands. When God was forming Adam, do you think God had to blindfold his eyes so as to not see the shameful thing he was creating, so God himself wouldn’t lust after it? NO, there was no shame in what God was creating, and God said it was GOOD. There are nude figures on the walls of the Vatican and there used to be nude figures in the Jewish sanctuaries in the ancient times. The problem lies with your thoughts, not the human body, and not the model. If you know you will be led into sin, don’t do it and address your problem with the help of God’s grace, but there ARE artists that can look at the human figure and not degrade it like that. The nude figure was originally created by the Lord our God. Why do we hand that creation over to Satan and make it all Satan’s domain ????
Very interesting feedback on this topic.
QUESTION: One thing I’ve heard on this topic that I’m curious about-
Some have said that those that oppose drawing the undraped figure are usually those that have never been in an actual class or studio session where it was done.
Is that true?
Thank you, Mr. Herman (Bruccio)for the correction as well as for commenting on this topic from your first-hand perspective.
(Welcome to ALFG, by the way! Please continue to join us!)
Tony-
Study of the unclad human form is a tradition with a great deal of history. Christians who want to sculpt, draw, or paint the human body need to be able to see the thing they are rendering. You cannot draw or paint something you cannot see. The worry over sinful approaches to this practice are not unwarranted, but the same problem exists in all human activity.
One can practice sports sinfully. One can practice politics, business, or any other human action with a wrong inner attitude. All things are permitted in Christ, not all things bring blessing — and the key in everything we do is our obedience to Christ. “Do all to the glory of God” the Bible commands. Any human act can either separate us or draw us closer to our Creator. Art is no exception.
As a fact-check: Gordon College has not adopted this practice recently as this blog suggests, but have done so since fall of 1993 — ever since the inception of the art major at the school. The only reason it was not practiced before that was that there was no art major at the school.
i think they should. it’s interesting, i never hear this question phrased as: shouldn’t christian art students study the figure?
i’m not sure how long this has even been a concern for christians — it seems to me that a hundred years ago, perhaps even 50 years ago, it wasn’t an issue. and it also seems to me that it’s often more of an issue (as an idea) for people who haven’t actually done it. the practical experience and actual event is far less sexualized than people fear, and much less so than the television, videos or the friendly neighbourhood magazine rack. the actual activity of drawing or painting or sculpting from the model is much less charged than one thinks.
i can appreciate people wanting to avoid the opportunity for their own weaknesses to manifest as sin – that’s smart. and there is a difference between wisdom and fear. that being said, how do we deal with the verses in leviticus that tell us not to look on x’s nakedness because it is sin (everyone is someone’s husband or wife)? it doesn’t even say that it needs to be done lustfully. that is much more problematic – for me anyway – because that’s about my looking, never mind my sinning. if i am easily given to lusting, that is my issue not the object of my lust.
then again, it’s been years since i worked from a naked model (other than my wife).
I think they should have the option to have a nude figure drawing class or a clothed one. I went to both a Christian and Secular colleges and went thru both types of figure drawing classes. The nude one was, hands down, the better choice. You could focus more on the actual anatomy, musculature, bones and skin more so than the draping of the clothing and perfecting drawing fabric (our models at christian college wore very baggy tshirts and shorts). No one in my secular class even once mentioned anything remotely sexual about any of our models b/c it wasn’t something to be feared nor was it something that was acceptable to begin with. We did start out with learning the skeletal frame, and then muscles, and then which bones and muscles were key marks when drawing the figure. I laughed at the above commenter, Gimel, when he spoke of the first person they had to draw. Our first model was a man of perfect stature and musculature, couldn’t have asked for a better poser, but with a mullet, beard, ladies earrings and turquoise fingernails. My ultimate favorite model to draw was a short woman of 5’2″ with a wondering eye and a rolly belly. The human body is a work of God and it is unfortunate that it should cause such turmoil in our lives. The creation shouldn’t be covered in art nor feared in regards to the classroom. If there were an option in a christian college to do nude or clothed then that would leave it up to the individual student b/c they know what’s best for them. But to me, drawing and studying the figure is like studying medicine, like mentioned above. Should Christians be gynecologists? God forbid you see some naked breast. I have had my own problems with temptation but, honestly all of that flies out the window once faced with a pencil, paper, and a nude model. At that moment it’s just God’s creation and my interpretation on paper and i think it’s beautiful.
First, let’s address the phrase “christian” artist.
I understand it, but technically…there is no such thing.
The word “christian” should not be used as an “adjective”…it is a life-type.
In that case we should give props to “christian” trash collectors, “christian” pastry chefs, and “christian” farmers.
Cultural thinking has stereo-typed and boxed God’s people into an adjective, when its actually a noun.
Now…as an artist, the human body is the most fascinating thing you can study and draw.
But…as a person struggling with perversion, it could be the most entrapping thing you can study and draw.
It’s not what goes into the body or stands before it, that corrupts a person, but it is what comes out of that person or is expressed from them, that corrupts.
No more than a doctor blushes when they ask someone to de-robe for an examination, nor should an artist blush when its time to study a figure, dressed or undressed…it falls back to what Dave said, “I know myself.” If the Holy Spirit has revealed to you your struggle or boundaries, praise God, but let us discern whether the struggle is individual or corporate. And being careful that we don’t assign others under our prescribed walk. There’s no sin in a rock (nudity), but there is sin in throwing it at someone (sexual perversion). Shame of being naked happened after the mind was turned away from God, not before.
Testimony: While in college, my teacher said that we were going to draw nude models…then, simultaneously, all the fellows looked at each other in sheer delight and anticipation.
Then the teacher reached inside of a closet and took out A SKELETON, then she told us to draw it and learn the name of the bones.
After two weeks of drawing bones, the teacher made us draw muscles, then after a week of that, out comes the first model and it was this overweight 40-something woman that needed the cash, then the next day a fifty year old 5ft. 3in. flabby woman, then model after model came out with Unidentified Body Markings (UBM) and moles and layered-tissue and lumps and hairy-backs…eventually all that assuming that nude models were “perfect specimens” of sinful lust…flew right out of the window and a desire for a good grade and a healthy appreciation of what God designed was forged.
Immediately, I became an artist drawing the human figure instead of pervert sketching out lude fantasies. Praise God!
I think that it’s a shame that this question even needs to be asked. Society has us so jaded and inclining to believe that any nudity will conjure either feelings of, or acts which lead to immorality. An artist whom God has blessed with the skills, talent and desire to create, has also equipped him/her with the holy spirit which should help to act as the barometer in questionable cases of intent. In other words, Christian artists, like any other artists SHOULD study the nude figure. Embrace it for what it is, God’s creation. Then pray to God, and he will govern your intent by guiding you to utilize this knowledge in a way that blesses him. Not studying the nude form as an artist is like saying that married people shouldn’t look at each other nude because of fear of immoral thoughts. Just remember, God didn’t create immorality, Satan did. But God can bring you thru it, if instead of CHOOSING to think immorally, you choose CHRIST. It ain’t easy, but thru consistent prayer and meditation, as well as seeking his word, it can become an awesome habit. And remember, God can se the intent of your heart. He didn’t intend for Satan to deprive us of one of God’s greatest gifts, because of fear. Just take it to God.
I’m very glad this was a topic. I honestly own an artbook that involves nude models, and I am also a strong believer in Christ. I’ve only had it since the fall of this year. The only way that I use it, is for my characters that I draw, however, the majority of them have clothing. I just use the book for a rough outline of how my characters should be portrayed. I’ve been told over the years by both art instructors and family as well as some other art students; that my art lacks accurate body figures. It’s been hard drawing from my imagination, trying to figure out what or how a character should look like, even with clothes on.
I will admit that I have some images in my mind that shouldn’t be there, even for just a quick second.
I think some of those images come from the manga that I have been reading for a long time. As for in Japanese comics, nudity is an okay thing, with some limitations.
I personally don’t feel that drawing from a live nude model gave me anymore understanding of the human anatomy than say drawing from a model clad in a modest swimsuit. I believe this is one of those issues that a lot of us have struggled with in our artistic careers, and I myself have chosen not to due to (as Dave from AMOK says) my propensity for falling into sin.
The Bible is also very clear upon this, stating that if thy eye offend thee, pluck it out. Better to live with one eye, than to sin. If we take this in context (and don’t pluck our eyes out), we then make sure that we remove the temptation to fall into mental sin (such as lusting over a nude model).
I feel that no, a Christian should not draw from live nude models (or photographs of nude people). There are plenty of magazines such as the muscle builder magazines that give us a very good sight of the human anatomy without actually showing us their private most parts.
In closing, I know that during my time at a secular college, I sinned with lust at the nude models. It didn’t happen DURING the time I was drawing, but instead AFTER when I was alone. That’s where I believe the trap may lie for most of us.
Thank you for the comment “It didn’t happen DURING the time I was drawing, but instead AFTER when I was alone. That’s where I believe the trap may lie for most of us.”
I’ve never understood it- why not just draw the models wear leotards? You could still see their outline, but not have to stare at their tail-end.
I’m a girl and so are most of the models, but I still wouldn’t take figure drawing- looking at some random naked person is gross.
I’ve avoided the class for that reason.
Forcing someone to be around random naked people for a class isn’t right.
Devin: It actually IS COMMON at many secular colleges and universities to draw nude models.
I’m not sure about Christian or other religous institutions.
Dave: You’re not being a “stick in the mud”, my friend, you’re just being open and honest.
I would like to mention that the Gordon College Art Dept. states that they do try to make provision for students that do not feel comfortable with drawing undraped models.
Sorry to sound like the old stick in the mud here, but I could not stand there drawing a nude woman and not go into sin. Not judging anyone else simply saying this is a line I can’t cross.
God bless,
Dave
I actually forgot to say this last night, but I did not know it was uncommon to do nude figure drawings. It was standard at the Art Institute of Charlotte!