Enfilade

From The Courtauld (and note the two virtual sessions, June 17 and June 18):

Pose, Power, Practice: New Perspectives on Life Drawing
The Courtauld Institute of Art, Vernon Square, London, 20 June 2024

Organised by Zoë Dostal and Isabel Bird

From the 16th century to the present, drawing the human body from life has remained a mainstay of Western institutional art practice. Despite significant shifts in the aesthetics, media, and purpose of art over the last five hundred years, life drawing endures in both the studio and the classroom.

Pose, Power, Practice is a one-day symposium that seeks to reassess the state of the field on life drawing and apply new critical frameworks to this sustained practice. It aims to better understand life drawing in all its complexity, from its presumed advantages to its consequences. This is a practice deeply intertwined with concerns central to the discipline of art history, including but not limited to: the power dynamics of the gaze; the politics of representation; recognition of multiple forms of artistic labour; formulations of race, dis/ability, gender, and sexuality; and critiques of institutions. How has life drawing changed across time and place? How and why has it endured as a pedagogical practice, despite repeated dismissals of its “academicism”? What uses does it hold today, for artists and art historians alike?

Our re-evaluation of life drawing will start with two virtual panels earlier in the week, hosted in collaboration with The Drawing Foundation. At Life Drawing After Death on Monday, 17 June, 16:00 BST and Life Model as Laborer and Artist on Tuesday, 18 June, 13:00 BST, we will dive into topics that will resonate with and inform our in-person discussions on the varied perspectives, ethical considerations, and diverse practices that make up life drawing. Visit The Drawing Foundation’s event webpage for further details.

Organised by Dr Zoë Dostal (Kress Fellow, The Courtauld) and Isabel Bird (PhD candidate, Harvard University)

p r o g r a m m e

10.00  Registration, with coffee and tea

10.30  Welcome
• Professor Alixe Bovey (The Courtauld)
• Zoë Dostal (The Courtauld) and Isabel Bird (Harvard University)

10.50  Session 1 | Life Drawing as an Enduring Practice
Chaired by Tara Versey (Royal Drawing School)
• Antje Southern (The King’s Foundation Diploma Year), The Creative Impact of Life Drawing at Fine Art Foundation Level: A Case Study
• Susanne Müller-Bechtel (Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Leipzig – Young Forum), The Experimental Arrangement in the ‘Aktsaal’ at the Early Modern Academies and the Effects on the Artistic Practice
• John Fagg (University of Birmingham), ‘Take the pose of the model, yourself’: Empathy in Robert Henri’s Pedagogy and Practice

12.15  Lunch Break

13.45  Session 2 | Exposure and Expression: Life Modelling
Chaired by Carole Nataf (The Courtauld)
• Fra Beecher (Director of United Models Life Drawing CIC), The Body, Captured: Photography and the Life Room
• Tomáš Valeš (Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague / Department of Art History, Masaryk University, Brno), Employed, Exposed, Captured: Life Model Praxis in 18th-Century Vienna
• Yanyun Chen (School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Tufts University), Skinning Nudity: Life Modelling Practice in Singapore

15.10  Coffee and tea

15.40  Session 3 | Beyond the Life Room: Unexpected Practices
Chaired by Professor Joanna Woodall (The Courtauld)
• Suri Li (University of Cambridge), A Renaissance Nun’s Drawing Practices: Suor Plautilla Nelli (1524–1588) and Her Drawing of a Young Woman
• Oriane Poret (Université Lyon 2, LARHRA), Beyond Human: Drawing from Non-Human Life during the 19th Century
• Nick Robbins (University College London), The Life Academy and the Origins of Landscape

17.00  Drinks Reception