Bare Essentials

She sits on a chair on a raised platform,at a good distance from the students,still and silent. In the next 45 minutes,canvases fill with sketches of her — her body spare of excess flesh,her limbs taut and graceful,her dark hair braided neatly,her expression aloof except for the brows creased in thought. For the students,Karishma is an education — in the lineaments of the unadorned human form,the curve of the shoulder when she bends her arm,the way light falling on her feet makes them appear knobblier.

For Karishma,the art classes mean a monthly earning of Rs 1,500 a month. She started modelling when she was 14. “When they first asked me to take off my clothes and pose,I was terrified. But over the years,I have learnt to treat it like any other job. I even like the idea that I am a work of art,” says the petite young woman.

On the walls of her home,where we meet her,are naive watercolours of roses and birds. Her years at the art department have made Karishma interested in art,and she paints in her free time. Her father,a night watchman,is asleep inside their tiny one-room home. Her mother,a housewife,draws up plastic chairs and pops open chilled bottles of Sosyo soda for us. A neighbour comes up and tells us that Karishma is a “star” and that many teachers and artists come to visit her. Karishma tenses and brushes the comment away: “My parents do not know that I pose nude,” she whispers,her eyes growing wider. “I try to keep it a secret. Who will want to marry a nude model?” she asks.

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The study of the nude is a Western art tradition that goes back several centuries. During the Renaissance,artists painted nude goddesses like Venus and Diana as symbols of purity and innocence — the naked body drawn always from the imagination. And in the 16th century,a certain Michelangelo Buonarroti crept inside mortuaries to study cadavers by lamp light. He knew that his acts would enrage the papacy,but the sculptor and painter needed to know the human body,its sinews and bones,in spirit and flesh,if he had to excel at his work. But by the 1800s,studying the nude from life became a common practice in Europe’s art academies. The models were usually from the working class,burlesque dancers in night clubs or “women of the night” .

It’s a tradition that has travelled to Indian art schools,where most nude models are underprivileged men and women looking for a steady source of income. One of Vadodara art department’s legends was Kankuben,a model of generous proportions,who could have walked out of an FN Souza canvas,and is still remembered for her distinct lack of coyness. Stories abound of her walking into the class,disrobing without a fuss and falling asleep — apparently after an exhausting night of sex work. Artist Anjolie Ela Menon chortles at the memory of a nude model at Sir JJ School of Art,Mumbai,in the late 1950s: “She would come drunk for her sittings. And fall off the stool sometimes.”

Asmita is in her 40s and has been a nude model at JJ School of Art for 16 years now. It was her aunt Ammu,a name familiar to an entire generation of artists,who recommended the job to her after her husband’s death,when she needed money to bring up her two sons. “Initially,I felt a lot of shame in taking off my clothes in front of so many people. But after a few months,I realised it was better than rag-picking or cleaning toilets,” she says. She earns about Rs 800 a day from three sittings.

When she meets us at the college canteen,she is dressed in a bright sari and has a thread of jasmine in her hair. “Here I present myself neatly. I dress up in a nice sari and look fresh. I am respected by many students who even come and touch my feet. They give me new saris and even help out with money when I need it,” she says. Do her sons know about her work? “No,I keep it a secret from them,” she says,her eyes suddenly wistful.

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“For me,a nude is no different from a bowl of fruit. I see him or her as any other form,” says artist Akbar Padamsee,who photographed ordinary people in the nude for a series he showed in 2006. But he admits that there has always been prickliness around the idea. “Some of the models had day jobs as typists or supermarket attendants. I paid them well and I did not show their faces. I was looking for a particular kind of aesthetic. But other people see this differently.” The artist says he was prevented from exhibiting the images at Pundole art gallery in January because the gallery owners were threatened against doing so.

Families of nude models often do not share the perspective of the artist. Asmita’s sister-in-law Priya is a nude model at a private art college in Mumbai but refused to speak to us because she did not want her husband to know about her work. She is the sole breadwinner of her family — her husband has promised to leave alcohol and get a job,but that may not happen.

Karishma says she is treated with respect on the whole,except for stray instances of men offering her a ride back home. “I do not entertain any requests from men to ‘work’ at their houses. I once beat up a boy with a hockey stick because he threatened to expose me to my family,” she says.

A few months ago,a Gujarati paper ran a story claiming that the university was corrupting young Gujarati girls by making them pose nude. “For a few months,we had to discontinue nude studies,” says Indrapramit Roy,a teacher at MSU. Karishma was one of the models the paper “exposed”.

Despite the fact that nude studies is an important part of the curriculum,models are not paid well — exclusive sittings for artists at their studios are more remunerative. “I have been working for four years but they have not increased my fees. They tell me that the university authorities are very slow with paperwork,” says Karishma.

The informal nature of the work means that the models have little security. “The problem with earning a daily wage is that if I do not come to work,I do not get paid. So I come even when I am ill. Unlike regular staff,who get paid leave and even a bonus on Diwali. I work like everyone else,why can’t I get the same treatment?” asks Asmita. “Look at Ammu. Now that she is old,she is back to doing menial jobs,” she says.

Professor Madhav Pimpre,who teaches sculpture at JJ School of Art,says teachers have requested authorities several times to increase Asmita’s pay and give her benefits of a regular employee. “But it seems this is the last thing that the authorities want to make official. There is always the fear that right-wing forces may create trouble if we do so,” he says.

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Between the awkward vulnerability of the model and the artist’s brushstroke is a silent compact: one which art historian Kenneth Clark pointed out in the opening lines of his 1972 classic The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form. “To be naked is to be deprived of our clothes,and the word implies some of the embarrassment most of us feel in that condition. The word ‘nude’ carries,in educated usage,no uncomfortable overtone. The vague image it projects is not of a huddled and defenceless body,but of a balanced,prosperous,and confident body.”

Pimpre is thinking of such an assuredness and its significance to his students when he expresses his fears that Asmita might drop out because of low wages. “If she goes,we may not get another model. Students will have to study from anatomy books and plaster-of-Paris replicas. That would be terrible,” he says.

(Names of the models have been changed)