Life Class: Today's Nude: press coverage
The Observer, 21 June 2009
The Sunday Times, 12 April 2009:
"After preserved sharks and unmade beds, Channel 4 is leading a revival of figurative art by broadcasting life drawing classes featuring nude models on daytime television.
"The new series will provide a counterbalance to the brash Britart movement popularised by Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, but is likely to cause controversy among traditionalists by showing full-frontal male and female nudity well before the 9pm watershed." (Cristina Ruiz)
The Independent, 13 April 2009:
"Alan Kane, the artist who had the idea for the show, said: 'Because it is educational and non-sexualised nudity, Channel 4 didn't have any concerns with it at all.'
"Although known for his conceptual work, such as his collaboration with the Turner Prize winner Jeremy Deller, Mr Kane said what inspired him to become an artist was life drawing and he has mourned its diminished popularity. 'It has definitely come off the agenda at art school,' he said.
"Once seen as a must in developing the skills of would-be artists, life-drawing, or figure drawing as it is also known, has seen its status decline in recent years. Many art students have shunned taking the classes, forcing some schools to drop it from the curriculum." (Mark Hughes - read full article)
The Daily Mail, 13 April 2009:
"John Beyer, of viewing standards group Mediawatch-UK, claimed Channel 4 had 'an obsession with sex and nudity'.
"But John Whittingdale, the Tory chairman of the Commons culture select committee, said that, in principle, he would not object to nude life drawing classes before 9pm if they were in an 'educational context' and avoided 'gratuitous titillation'." (Daily Mail Reporter - read full article)
Hotline, June 2009:
"Discovering what the viewer's efforts will look like isn't a key motivation for Kane - though there'll be an opportunity to post your drawing up on the website. He's more interested in setting up a situation where the rarified atmosphere of the life room is brought into the living room, and beyond - and in this sense Life Class ties in with Kane's best-known work, Folk Archive, the ongoing project he and Jeremy Deller initiated in 2000 which, gathering together strange objects, rituals and pastimes from around the country, deliberately blurs the boundaries between 'high' and 'low', amateur and professional, popular and conceptual art." (Martin Coomer)
Financial Times, 20 June 2009:
"'I hope no one is at home trying to multitask and do the washing up. Because it won’t work!' When someone on the television tells you what to do in such forthright terms, and when that someone is the artist Maggi Hambling – a commanding figure you would not want to disappoint – you are more likely to put down your cup of tea and get back to what you should be doing: in this case, drawing what is on your TV screen. [...]
Life Class is groundbreaking television – not just because of the nudity (interestingly there are no UK laws against nudity on TV at any time of day, as long as it isn’t in a sexual context), but also because of the interactive nature of the programme. The brainchild of contemporary artist Alan Kane, in collaboration with the arts commissioning organisations Artangel and Jerwood, the series is intended to democratise culture and create, as Kane puts it, an 'interesting new space' for TV." (Rebecca Rose - read full article
The Observer, 21 June 2009:
"It's strangely compelling viewing. Mostly the camera is on the model, who does not move while the artist, out of view, sketches the figure and muses aloud on technique. Often they're simply silently working, the only sound the scratch of charcoal on paper. Nothing much happens (the phrase "watching paint dry" comes irresistibly to mind) but in a way everything happens - at the end of each programme you see a drawing or a painting that hadn't existed 30 minutes before. You may even, if Kane has his way, feel compelled to put down the remote control and draw the model yourself while you're watching." (Louise France - read full article)
The New Statesman, 25 June 2009:
"I’m sitting in front of a large and naked woman named Lucy who is lying in a foetal position on the floor of a Victorian art gallery in north London. I have spent the past 40 minutes trying to capture both the exact curve of Lucy’s fleshy backside, in charcoal on the paper I’ve got propped on my knees, and, with a putty eraser, the way that the light is falling on her upper buttock. So engrossed have I become in this effort that I have long forgotten the reason I am here: to observe the atmosphere of a life class, and to get a sense of the curious relationship of model to amateur artist. Who wants to take notes, though, when you can draw?
"In the previous day or two, I have been talking and reading about just this sense of intimacy, which comes through abstract observation of a stranger’s flesh. I have not spoken to Lucy, who is lying surrounded by about a dozen other concentrated voyeurs engaging with her from different angles, but in drawing her I feel not only a connection with her, but also a powerful sense of responsibility to portray this connection as closely as I can on the paper in front of me. It is quiet in the room, but this is more the quiet of a church than of a theatre; it’s not a spectacle, so much as a sense of communion. As I draw, I realise what a very long time it is since I have drawn anything at all, apart from sketches for my children, though the act feels so natural, and so consuming, that I can hardly believe I don’t do it as a daily ritual." (Tim Adams - read full article)