In the centre of the aula, a male and a female model dropped their silk robes and climbed up the spotlit platform. The woman perched herself on a table, clutching an empty vase to her chest. The man crouched underneath. He held flowers—covering but not concealing different parts of his body. I sat uncomfortably on the wooden steps of the marble hall at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, breathing in the warm studio air. Duomo’s Wildest Dreams was playing in my head. Using charcoal sticks, I started sketching their beautiful naked bodies on the canvas.
I signed up for life drawing classes as an easy way to fulfill my credit requirements. For the first class, I showed up unafraid. It seemed unlikely for a non-graded assignment to intimidate me. Yet, as the class began, a wave of awkwardness and unease washed over me.
I was 16 when I was diagnosed with idiopathic scoliosis—a condition with an unknown cause that forces the spine to curve sideways. Mine was shaped like the letter S, drawn by a child. My doctor asked if I wanted to correct it with surgery, which I firmly refused. But refusing to be ‘fixed’ made me feel like my body would in some ways always be imperfect—leaving me confused, resentful and still trying to make peace with my physical form.
In his book Ways of Seeing, American novelist John Berger writes, ‘a naked body has to be seen as an object in order to become a nude.’ Standing before me, the objects of my art felt more like a confrontation of my insecurities and inhibitions. My European peers drew our naked subjects without hesitation—as though they were fruits. At the time, I was in the throes of studying architecture where drawing is a way of facing the unknown. And so I drew—every line, curve and crease. My brush sought to achieve raw honesty. I mimicked the chiaroscuro of a woman’s breast. I outlined the flexed muscles of a man’s derriere. There was nothing judgemental or sexual about it. Within the confines of a studio, cellulite and body hair are merely features that must be dutifully captured. There was a cognitive shift in my thinking—from scrutinising physical imperfections to simply appreciating them.
Culture Club/Getty Images
That summer, I travelled extensively through Europe. At the Louvre, in Paris my friend and I were in awe of Dutch-French painter Ary Scheffer’s 1854 artwork Francesca and Paolo. Their intertwined naked bodies invoked admiration for the star-crossed lovers. “They’re so beautiful,” she exclaimed. I wondered if she ever viewed herself with the same considerations. In the Vatican City, we marvelled at Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. We are reminded that in the Renaissance’s most defining works, the nude form has been treated as divine. In art, every feature of human anatomy is celebrated and yet we see our bodies as aesthetic failures.
