Bare Body

« The nude is very difficult to wear, it is a technique of the soul. It is not enough to take off your clothes. You have to get rid of your scoundrels… and your embarrassment. »

-Henri Michaux

Excerpt from my journal, February 25, 2022:

« Yesterday I stripped myself naked. In fact, I’ve been stripping for a while […] ».

Getting naked is a lot. It is delicate. Perhaps, however, it is what is needed in this world, more vulnerability, less masks, more courage, depth, relief. 

I write: « Yesterday I posed naked for artists. It’s called being a live model. It is an experience that I will try to describe […] ».

It is not easy, because during this kind of experience, there is an element that can easily cause uncomfort, the nudity. Both for the model and for the artist, I suppose. I’ve never been totally naked on my own around people who were all fully clothed (it was February, it was cold, and the uncomfortable (and mostly stupid) thoughts of « maybe my nipples will stick out because of the cold and look like two micro-mountains on my chest » or « oh my god they’re actually going to see my arse » were creeping into my mind).

The way we look at a naked body has a huge influence on the way we perceive nudity. Often, we associate nudity with sexuality. The gaze is therefore desirous, it can be perverse. We want to touch this body instead of perhaps just contemplating it. We want to appropriate it, to take a part of this flesh. Sometimes we seduce just for that, we manipulate, the defiled take by force… It can be as trivial as not wanting anyone to see the body of the one you love. This perversion of the naked body exists (to varying degrees) in everyone, because the human body is beautiful. It is really beautiful. We all want to touch, and we all want to be touched. In every sense. But always in the harmony of the situation. You start by touching with your eyes and then things are created.

I have understood to what extent art is in the deconstruction. In reconstruction too. Art really seeks to deconstruct concepts, judgements, expression, ideas, feelings, senses, meaning. Art seeks the essence.

Anyway, I was in a bar in Beirut one night with Ti, when one of her friends joined us. We introduce ourselves, we start talking, and of course we get to professions, she tells me she works with plants, and I tell her I need money (it’s a job to need money, it requires constant work and it’s stressful, especially when you just want it to survive) because I’m broke (my second profession). That’s when she tells me that she totally understands, and that if I want, I can make money posing nude for artists. It’s a few hours commitment and it pays okay. It helps art education and it’s called being a live model. Of course, no one can touch you. The prerequisite is to have a body, and then it’s just a matter of following certain guidelines, holding poses for a few minutes, and of course being naked. I found it fascinating. She told me about her experience, and portrayed it in a positive way. She confided in me that it was quite transformative on a personal level. It’s not easy to take responsibility for yourself in this way, to put aside your complexes. But going through this process is a big step towards accepting yourself as you are.

(Isn’t it just so cool to have interesting and raw conversations like this?)

I take the contact number and decide to pose naked in front of artists…

A few days later, I’m standing in front of the studio door. My heart starts pounding and my throat closes up. Then I remember that I’m here by choice, and that in the end, if it wasn’t for the nudity factor, this anxiety would be non-existent (it didn’t change much, I was anxious, it’s normal). I take a deep breath, it calms me down a bit (not much) and I knock on the door (just to rip the bandage off). MK (an artist for whom I now have a high regard) opens the door and greets me kindly. He is alone, the others are not yet there, this is his (very nice) studio.

We go into the kitchen, he asks me if I want a coffee and maybe something to eat. 

I’m really not hungry. I’m really not, thank you. (Of course, parasitic ideas come up, and I start thinking that, besides having a knot in my stomach, I don’t want to eat just before posing naked in front of people, it will make my stomach stick out, I’ll look fat … and then I stop going down this destructive path, I tell myself I’m crazy and that it’s completely stupid to have this kind of reflexion. And that being crazy i fun. That’s normal too).

I look at his studio and see myself in awe of his work. It’s beautiful, all this creation.

The rest of the artists arrive, greet me warmly, and we go out to the balcony for a smoke. They are all very friendly. I feel at ease. The ashtray fills up and we go inside.

I walk into the main hall and see the chair I’m going to sit in (and pose on) for a few hours. The artists sit down, everyone gets comfortable, it’s time to get comfortable.

« You can change in the bathroom, take your time. » (obviously, I didn’t show up naked with a dressing gown, so well, I had to « change »). 

I go into the bathroom to take off my clothes and put on the robe (which I’ll take off later).

I see the reflection of my face in the mirror, and my cheeks are red as usual (my cheeks are red all the time … once a man who was hitting on me in a bar told me that it made him happy to have this effect on me and I started laughing like crazy).

I look at myself and think that now everything that happens is beyond me. « Who cares if it’s you, Andrea? It could have been someone else for that matter, and it has already been others before. Enjoy this moment, it’s only unique to you.
Look at this moment, in the end, you are just representing the matter, the substance of all human bodies, which simply takes all sorts of forms. It’s just that today, it’s your forms. » It’s cool to be able to do that. Represent the female human body just for a few hours. I decide to embody that body. To give these artists something to make art with. The material is there, in itself. It is the body. You have to inhabit it, make it move, freeze it, explore it.

So I leave the bathroom, find myself in front of a dozen pairs of eyes, and take off the dressing gown. (It’s so funny I’m getting chills writing this and a big smile on my face, I like to be provocative and this was just to provoke myself, I didn’t think I could do it, and then I did, and it was crazy). I was surprised by the power I felt I had. I was really comfortable, it was weird.

Often when I undress with someone, the eyes are full of desire, excitement, sometimes passion. These were observant eyes. The artists were observing the curves of my body to analyse how they were going to translate them on paper with the movement of their hand and with the help of a pencil.

I realised that if there was to be any embarrassment, it would not come from me. I’m often naked, being naked is normal, just not in front of people usually… Yet, if people perceive it differently, like in an artistic context, nudity is normalised. The artists were not at all disturbed by the fact that I was naked.

I pose, they start drawing.

As they draw, their eyes go down for a second on the paper, then up and stare at me for a second, then back to the paper.

It was a very special experience.

I left as I arrived. We said goodbye, the artists thanked me, I closed the door and left the studio.

I write in my journal:

« Yesterday I posed naked in front of artists. They were all looking at my body. The moment I took off my dress, I really understood how nudity is a concept that society has made so taboo. Art tries to capture the essence of man through his folds, his gestures, the shapes of his body, the colours and textures of his skin. It wasn’t about me as an individual, it was really about discovering the body, the movement, and it was interesting that it was through my body that these artists were discovering and obviously creating. »

« We are not only body, or only mind; we are body and mind all together. »

George Sand