February 15, 2020

Authentic torso from Jan Wolkers’ ‘Kort Amerikaans’, as displayed at Ars, February 2020

February 8, 2020

He told me that salamanders could sit very still too, and that a recent study even reported the case of a specimen remaining motionless for seven whole years.

'Strange,' he added, 'given salamanders are evolved animals, gifted with a brain. What can a salamander think about for all those years, provided it thinks?'

'Strange,' I thought, 'our assumption that intelligence should be translated into motion, and that evolution is a headlong rush out of the inanimate realms.'

February 7, 2020

Same as Muybridge’s studies of motion, there exist, on a more discreet note, studies of motionlessness.

Up: Detail from an anatomy book, handscanned at Ars Aemula Naturae (Leiden), in January 2020

Down: Picture from Brodie, Edmund D., et al. “Immobility as a Defensive Behavior in Salamanders.” Herpetologica, vol. 30, no. 1, 1974, pp. 79–85. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3891417. Accessed 7 Feb. 2020.

February 5, 2020

The artist talked about fakirs, ecstasy and saints.

These comparisons were meant to express his model's motionlessness; but meanwhile, each term expelled her further in the geographical and historical distance.

'No,’ the model protested in herself, 'we keep inhabiting the same room, even now that we are experiencing different sensory worlds.’

February 4, 2020

‘The Virgin, Patroness Saint of the Models, posing for Saint Luke’, handwritten caption on old postcard, 2020

February 3, 2020

Studio situation with bodily-proportioned kite

February 2, 2020

- When I make a portrait of you, she told me, I do not simply reproduce your features; I also try to portray the inner world that is proper to you.
- And what is my inner world like?
- It is very still, very dreamy.

I had just spent three hours sitting on a chair, in order for her to finish this portrait. If any vivacity used to inhabit the sitter's inner world, the duration of the pose had swept it all away. It appeared to me that the inwardness she had observed was not mine, but that of the time we had both lived through.

Februari 1, 2020

After the pose was set, I gazed at a wall of faux marble, leaning forward, in such a way that all the weight of my upper body was supported by my hand, which was resting at the edge of a prop.

I cannot remember the duration of this pose; it was surely long enough to lose sense of time.

When I came back to myself, I noticed the changed colors of my hand, and what I observed could not be distinguished from the marbled spectacle I had immersed myself in.

(marbleizing)

January 21, 2020

The model sweats, she sweats profusely, and her smell starts mixing with the other fragrant materials of the life class: vegetal oils, turpentine spirits, animal glues.

Like theirs, her scent is not impure, but heavily present.

January 15, 2020

By 'ecstatic viewpoint', I do not only mean 'the vision of the mystics', but also that of the snails and their erectile eyes.

January 11, 2020

Today, the occupants of the drawing room were middle-aged women aiming at making their first portrait. After hours of labour, one of them stated:
'In the end, drawing proves as difficult as giving birth.'
The humming that followed expressed disapproval.
'Perhaps more difficult, even,’ she reasserted, in a deeper voice.

January 10, 2020

Following the academic tradition, one should not use the tip of the fingers to blend the hatched shadows of the drawing. Skin, even when dry and clean, naturally produces sebum, which will oil the parts that are rubbed, making them more difficult to erase at a later stage.

In other terms, the artist's body should be used as a proper tool, not as a binding agent for graphite. What is valued is a reasoned control over the image, not a dirty intimacy with it.

January 8, 2020

A sculptor's studio, Lelylaan, Amsterdam

Studio situation, shortly after I posed I in the studio featured left

January 7, 2020

A sculptor's studio, Korte Magdalenastraat, Haarlem

Studio situation, shortly before I posed in the studio featured left

January 1, 2020

'Ars Aemula Naturae' ('Art is the rival of Nature') is an art academy in Leiden. It should not be confused with 'Natura Artis Magistra' (’Nature is the teacher of the Arts'), which is the name of the Amsterdam zoo.

I work as an art model in the first one, where a special emphasis is still placed on the practice of drawing after nature. Being in the position of 'nature', I assume that what I face is 'art'. There is no rivalry involved; however, I sometimes envy the position of the buffalo, the ostrich or the zebra, who are all thought to be able to teach.

December 31, 2019

The Wedding of Thetis and Peleus, ca. 490 BC

Thetis and Peleus, detail from a kylix, ca. 490 BC

She feared to be known, and thus kept changing form.
Basics of self-defense.

December 30, 2019

1. Studio situation (remains of a moth crashed on an uncured epoxy sculpture)

December 26, 2019

What a head contained was of little importance to the first anatomists. The earliest mention of the brain is found in an Egyptian medical papyrus, and this hieroglyph can be translated as 'skull offal'.^[1]

^[1] Susan Standring,‘A brief history of topographical anatomy’ in: Journal of Anatomy (2016) 229, p.32

October 23, 2019

In France, the weight of human beings is given by a device bearing a sophisticated name (pèse-personne), a name distinct from the instrument aimed at weighing any other thing (balance). The subject eludes his trivial heaviness by claiming a proper scale.

September 21, 2019

The blue discharge

For the prepubescent girl I was, sanitary napkins advertisements exerted a magical fascination. I had hardly encountered such refined imagery before (perhaps with the exception of the paintings of the Virgin Mary in her ultramarine mantle).
On the screen, shades of blue and white intertwined just as delicately. The fine structure of the napkin was first shown in its immaculate state, and then absorbing a deep-blue flow generously poured over its center. The napkin soaked it all up, while its whiteness barely altered: the beautiful blue left no stain, rather a glaze of pale turquoise over the whole surface.
For this reason, I believed this blue to be the actual menstrual color. In vain, I have longed for the day I would discover a lapis-lazuli stain on my linen.

August 20, 2019

She asked me what I wanted to become.
She said nowadays girls could become anything.
'May I also become a stone?' I asked.
(Back then, the Anthropocene was not a topic yet.)

Self-portrait with coprolithe, 2018

July 3, 2019

Dans The Practice and Science of Drawing, Harold Speed explique la médiocrité du dessinateur débutant par une indifférence spontanée pour les stimuli visuels, en comparaison aux stimuli tactiles.

L’enfant qui cherche à se nourrir se dirige à tâtons vers le corps maternel: le sens du toucher lui est le plus utile. Cette perception tactile et utilitariste du monde l’empêchera par la suite de voir les objets tels qu’ils sont, et de transmettre cette vision.

Ainsi, devant un paysage, l’homme se révèle plus attentif à l’étendue de la surface cultivable, à la boue qui empèse chacun de ses pas ou aux orties qui brûlent ses mollets qu’à l’image en train de s’inscrire sur sa rétine.

Je proposerai ici une hypothèse supplémentaire : si le monde pouvait blesser l’homme par les yeux aussi vivement qu’il sait le faire par la peau, son dessin s’en retrouverait amélioré, le sens visuel occupant alors chez lui une importance plus profonde.