Struggling with a young woman while attending our Life Group the other morning I was considering the convention. I remembered that William Blake thought a naked woman to be the most brilliant work of God. Michelangelo found a foot to be more noble than a shoe. Edgar Degas found them all the more interesting in a tub. Robert Henri thought respect for the nude would eliminate shame. Auguste Rodin named it an eternal form and a joy to all the ages.

Like an echo from some primitive rite, rendering nudity is a time-honored craft and one of the few acceptable forms of public nakedness. Even medical doctors do not have the privilege of staring for hours. Whether old or young, male or female, plain or beautiful, when stripped of its fashions, the human body has integrity. You feel the energy within; your brush begins to speak in body language. I treat my nude woman as a kind of illuminated landscape; hills and valleys, a complex puzzle of beauty and practicality. Form that follows function. It's the exercise of all exercises, light and shadow, chiaroscuro--the sphere, the cone, the cylinder. Artist and teacher Wayne Thiebaud said, "It's the most important study there is; the most challenging, the most difficult." There's definitely something about it. Educator Martha Erlebacher feels the nude makes it possible to contemplate our sexuality in safety.

The young woman changes poses--the two-minute, the five-minute, the one-hour. Heads go down with each change and the eternal re-invention begins again. The human body is the fleeting temple of our souls--the outward, evident skin of the human animal. Intuitively we know it to be something good and wholesome, and its mystery, wonder and dismaying difficulties humble us.

Best regards,

Robert

PS: "There is nothing in all the world more beautiful or significant of the laws of the universe than the nude human body."(Robert Henri)

Esoterica: Michelangelo took delight in anatomy and the design and engineering of the body. "He who does not master the nude, cannot understand the principles of architecture," he said.