On Saturday, December 16, Deputy Arts Editor Isa RingswaldEgan and Social Media Editor Tal Bloom attended a drop in sketching session at the Wallach Gallery’s exhibit, Partisans of Nude. 

Unsure of what to expect, we stepped out of the fluorescent orange elevator of the Lenfest Center for the Arts and entered into a brightly lit exhibition room stretching out horizontally on both sides. The room was filled with portraits, sculptures, sketches and other art focused on the human body. 

The collection displayed works from formerly Ottoman but not yet Arab countries from 1920-1960, when these countries were colonized by the French and British. The nude genre was incredibly important in early twentieth century art in the region, as artists sought to redefine themselves as post-Ottoman and cosmopolitan. Curated by Kirstein Scheid, professor of Art Studies and Anthropology, the exhibit displayed some beautiful works viewed through an enlightening historical context.

Narratives often forget the nude genre as entirely taboo now in Arab countries, however, nude art was taking up space in professional studios and exhibits in Tunis and Cairo in the twentieth century. In fact, nude art inspired literary movements, and a nudist movement in Beirut. Though it is often framed as introduced by colonial powers, this is challenged in the exhibition, by demonstrating nude art’s presence in local art histories.

In the middle of the gallery there were three nude stone statues, surrounded by a circle of black stools with paper and pencils sitting on top of them. A woman, whose name we unfortunately never caught, was instructing someone on the best ways to provide contrast in a figure nearby. We approached and took seats and supplies while she asked us about our level and introduced a few exercises to start with. 

As beginners, we were urged to start with a few 30 second gesture drawings, approaching the figures from different angles to get a sense of the tone of each pose, the principal gesture of the sculptures. This helped to prevent us from thinking too much about the details and just getting the whole body on the page. After getting our pencils moving, we were suggested to try some blind contour drawings to get a further sense of the figure. Without taking our eyes off of the figure to look at our drawing, we drew the outline of the figures, focusing on guiding our hands through the lines we could observe in the pose. This resulted in some art that did not look like sculptures, but filled the page with a mob of sort of abstract silhouettes. It did, however, get us to see the shapes in a way that better guided the drawing. 

We were also given viewfinders, small blue hollow rectangles that looked like little frame mats to help us visualize the forms within the limits of the page, allowing us to play with focusing closer on smaller portions of the body. In the remaining time we continued to work on sketches of the figures; if we had any questions, the instructor gave insightfully frank and encouraging advice. The quiet of pencils scratching paper and the calm of focusing your whole attention onto one figure made the experience pleasingly absorbing, a welcome short break from the stress of finals.

The session lasted about 45 minutes, and we walked into the 5 pm darkness of the Manhattanville canvas admiring the playful results of the various exercises. Partisans of the Nude will be on display in the Wallach Gallery until January 14th, and another free, drop-in sketching session will be held on January 13th. We would highly recommend attending for a relaxing and informative break from the chaos of shopping season, and for a creative start to the new semester.

Art via Bwog Staff