Live Nude Girl: My Life as an Object

Kathleen Rooney is a damn good writer. I enjoyed this book immensely and was pleasantly surprised to find something so "scholarly" and detailed. I felt like after each chapter I had just attended an art history course, or traveled in time to lands I have never known before. Rooney left me with so many other considerations and other book titles and authors that I had forgotten about and some that I had never heard of before. Like I said, it was as if I was taking a very stimulating class. I found this book amazing and one that I will have to purchase as the copy I read was a library book. This book is so good I am willing to pay full price to have it on my shelf so I can refer to it often. It comes complete with foot notes and index so you can revisit all the little gems she drops for you along the way! Bravo Rooney. You make it look so easy.

"Live Nude Girl" is a spirited and multi-faceted exploration of the author's experiences as an art model. Kathleen Rooney worked as an art model for most of her twenties, while developing her career as a writer and educator. She divides her treatment of the subject into chapters covering major themes, including sexuality, death, and the difference between posing for painters and photographers. The story she is telling progresses through an interweaving of personal recollections, reflections on her recollections, citations from significant cultural critics, and historical anecdotes. Ms. Rooney's talent with structure manages to make this kaleidoscopic approach work; and not just work - it is extremely readable (I burned through it in a couple of days). It's readable on its own merits, as a well-composed piece of writing. Does she take advantage of the titillating elements of her subject to keep the reader's interest? Absolutely. But this plays into her theme as well - the exploration of the nature of the artist/model relationship, in which desire plays a part. I myself am a figurative painter, and have been working with models for many years. There is an enigmatic quality to the work of artists and models; because of its intensity and subject matter, it has too often been mistaken (including by artists and models themselves) for a sexual relationship. Ms. Rooney's investigation helps to clarify this relationship, and I am personally grateful for her long and honest introspection, the complexity of her insights, and her generosity in sharing herself and her thoughts. She has not solved the riddle of artists and models; it remains an enigma. But her attacks on the problem help to define the edges of the enigma. Her writing establishes some basics - "this is true" and "this is not true" - as she circles around the mystery of the meaning and making of art. This is clearly of interest to a readership of artists and models. Hopefully, its more general applicability to the human condition will help it to find a broader audience. The special case that Ms. Rooney treats is that of the process of figurative art. But the questions she raises are questions that go far beyond those boundaries: What is intimacy? Is it possible to be truly seen and to be accurately remembered? How well can we know one another? What is the significance of the vulnerability we embrace or reject in our relations with each other? What kinds of rewards can we expect to get from our grappling with mortality? A final note: the history of figurative art is written almost exclusively in terms of the artists who made the works. I have long felt that this is an injustice to the models who sat for those works. Without the vitality and skill of the models, those paintings could not have been what they were. Perhaps they could have been something else, but in the end, they were not: the models made their imprint on the work as well. This is no mean thing, and it shouldn't be ignored.

As a photographer/artist whom has been working with nude models for over 20-years, I found Katherine Rooney has articulated the many versions of the artist-model relationship extremely well. She has placed in perspective the variations, complications and gray areas which make-up the sometimes ambiguous friendships & creative partnerships that arise between artist & model. Furthermore, Rooney has researched & inserted a myriad of historical anecdotes which offer insight into this ancient practice of nude modeling, thus offering a memoir that is simultaneously personal, academic and enlightening. I recommend Live Nude Girl for every artist & model and for anyone whom has held an unfounded stereotype of what happens in the artists studio.

Models are an essential part of the creative process. As a student of Art and Art History, I have always wondered what motivates women to be nude models and what they think about while posing. Thanks to Ms. Rooney's book, I have a much better understanding of the artistic process from the other side of the easel. Ms. Rooney is a very intelligent woman with an excellent ability to express her thoughts, feelings and experiences in print. She writes very well. I am now a fan and will buy more of her works.

One of the most frequent dreams is that of being naked with a bunch of onlookers around. It isn't the worst of nightmares, but it is usually regarded as unpleasant. But Kathleen Rooney would not find it so. She's not an exhibitionist, or at least she does not get off sexually by showing herself naked to strangers. She isn't a burlesque performer, but does get money by her nakedness. Among her other jobs (she is a published author and poet, and she teaches creative writing) she is an artist's model. It's a way of making a living that has its peculiarities, and in _Live Nude Girl: My Life as an Object_ (University of Arkansas Press), Rooney has told us all about it. It is a personally revealing book of essays on her occupation, a memoir, and a scholarly inquiry into the history and sociology of modeling. It is, as you'd expect, poetic on many pages, but it is also funny, the work of an amused and alert writer who has a point of observation on the model's stand that is unique and is seldom so deeply considered as Rooney has done. In her senior year in college, she replied to a "Be Part of Art!" ad for nude models at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. "Being looked at and not touched or harassed sounded fine," she says. When she took her robe off before the class, she was surprised when no one gasped, recoiled, or laughed. The students at their easels were concentrating intently, but not with any criticism. In group sessions, she likes the thrill of "this combination of my naked vulnerability with the impossibility of my actually being touched." Her best sessions are with individual artists she has gotten to know as friends, and there seem to be many of these. Each session produces a permanent memento, especially in sculpture: "I will age, dimpling like a plucked turkey, rumpling like a punching bag. But I have left a little fossil record of my body through the years, a string of former selves, silly and brave." It might not seem like doing nothing naked would be much of a challenge, but Rooney's book is excellent in explaining just how much work there is to it. Try keeping completely still yourself for twenty minutes, she asks. It's much harder if you are standing; she has seen a model collapse while doing a standing pose (don't lock your knees is the lesson). Sculptors are particularly intrusive, "... with the sculptors continually approaching the model stand to rotate you slightly so they can get a better angle, like you're on the world's slowest and most boring Teacup Ride. They clip you gently in their calipers, and use your limbs to steady their plumb bobs, dropping lines from your elbows, nose, and knees." It is not surprising that photography presents the most disturbing sessions. In part, this is due to the unforgiving gaze of the camera which records for the photographer in a way that paint or clay cannot. It is hard to look good in photos. Any lines might show up, and so when she goes to one particular photo session, she