Take Your Clothes Off and Keep Your Mouth Shut: My Twelve Years in a Union as a Fine Arts Model

Take Your Clothes Off and Keep Your Mouth Shut:
My Twelve Years in a Union as a Fine Arts Model

Author, Bruce Lerro, Co-Founder and Co-Organizer Socialist Planning Beyond Capitalism

Orientation

How I got involved in modeling
My father's family was very poor. He was one of seven kids who lived in Brooklyn New York, the sons and daughters of an Italian-American family. My father was a very good artist growing up and despite ridicule, he persisted. When he was about 18 he brought his drawings to Manhattan to show advertising agencies his work in the hopes that they would buy them. They liked what they saw and he became a freelance commercial artist. He married my mother right after World War II. He worked very hard and raised our standard of living to middle class as we moved to Jamaica, Queens about 1950.

My father and I got on very well until I became a teenager. From the time I was 13 to the time I moved, our relationship was very tense and sometimes volatile. I left home at the age of 21 in 1970 and after 2 years of hitchhiking I settled in San Francisco, safely 3000 miles away. In my late twenties, my relationship with my father began to improve and I "allowed" myself to admit that I really was interested in art. I began taking art classes at City College of San Francisco. One day in a figure drawing class the model did not show up. The art teacher started to pull out of the cabinet some materials for us do draw a still life. I went over to her and volunteered my services. "You will pose for the class?", Donna asked. I said "yes" and she said "of course, you can keep your clothes on". But I was having none of it and insisted that I be nude like all the other models we had drawn from. She reluctantly agreed.

I posed for the class and had a great time doing gestures, five-minute, then 10 minute and three 20-minute poses over the course of three hours. At the end of the class she came up to me and said I was pretty good at it. So the next time we had a model, I asked them what was involved in becoming a model. I found out you had to audition and that they had auditions twice a year. Two months later, I auditioned for the San Francisco Models' Guild and got in. For the next twelve years I worked all over the Bay Area - about five gigs a week. The pay was pretty good (by today's standards maybe $46 dollars per hour). Click Here

Overcoming stereotypes about being an artists' model
One of the stereotypes is that artists' models must be beautiful. This is not true, in fact, many artists have told they prefer models who have "character" rather than just a pretty face, or as some say, "skinny little white girls". me As an artist myself I agreed. In fact, at the auditions if you were anything but a skinny white girl you had an advantage. The second stereotype is that artists' models and artists have sexual relations. This may have been true historically but not likely once artists' models formed unions or a "guild".

The third stereotype is that male artists' models were more vulnerable than females because males could get erections. While this is certainly possible, it is less likely if men stay in control of their imagination. Some male models in the guild did get erections but most of us knew these male models were playing some kind of weird game to see if they could freak out the female artists in the room. If males were accused of getting an erection by the teacher or students they were placed on probation. If it persisted, they were kicked out of the guild. In my twelve years of working as a model I never get an erection during a session.

The last stereotype is that modeling for artists work is easy. As an artists' model I was making a living with my body and I had to discipline my body to stay still. What this requires is not only having a limber body but understanding what your body's limits are. In fact, at the auditions for becoming a model a panel of judges (4 or 5) would ask the potential model what kind of pose they would do for a gesture: a one minute pose; a five minute pose; a 10 minute pose; a 20 minute pose and then a three-hour pose. The model was judged based on how reasonable the pose was for the duration of time. Potential models were disqualified for not knowing their bodies well enough to take poses that were unrealistic.

From the point of view of the artist there are two requirements. The first is that the pose be dynamic, asymmetrical and action-oriented. Also, that the pose can be held for the amount of time required. Artists want models who can take poses that show a person in motion in everyday life, not just sitting symmetrically on a chair or standing straight up. Both are boring. Breaking a pose is a big deal, especially on the longer poses of between 20 minutes to three hours. To change the pose means the artists have to reorganize their pictures to adjust. On the longer poses, models sometimes move a little unconsciously and have to be put in the right place. That is why a model's position is marked with white chalk on the floor right before a break. This helps the model to return to the exact place after the break

Why an Artist's Model Needs a Union
Most artists' models want a union for the same reasons other working-class people join unions - more money, stable and better working conditions. The three places members of the models' guilds would work at would be colleges, and universities, private groups and for individual artists. Having a models' guild adds stability for all three participants. Schools, art groups and other individuals know the artist's model has passed an audition that was judged by peers. This means their behavior will be professional and up to the standards of the guild.

On the other hand, artists' models need to know they will be treated on the up-and-up by their clients. This is almost never an issue with schools, whether universities or community colleges. It rarely came up with artists' groups but it would come up occasionally with individual artists, almost always men. This would mostly involve women who might be asked to take suggestive poses. If you are an unaffiliated individual model, you have no protection against this. Unaffiliated artists also might be subject to sudden, arbitrary changes in wages.

As a member of the model's guild fees per hour were set, along with travel expenses. There was no negotiating about wages. The guild also specified what the conditions the artists' model could expect. That meant clean props, pillows, chairs and stools, a designated area to dress and undress and five-minute breaks every twenty minutes.

Occasionally, even at schools, some of the teachers would trick a model into taking a pose that had a lot of action but was very difficult to hold. One sculptor at a school, Elio, was notorious for always wanting new models. He would maneuver them into taking hard poses with which they would be stuck holding twice a week for three hours over 4 weeks. At the new models' initial meeting, they would be told about Elio to make sure they were on their guard against him. A union allowed models to compare their experiences so that good places to work were distinguished from difficult places. Also, because models were on the road a lot, knowing the backroads during the rush hours was crucial. We gave each other route tips.

How Was the Guild Organized?
We had an average of 25 models in the organization, but this number rose or fell depending on whether the guild was expanding or static. It also depended on how much work models were willing to do. The hardest working models worked about 5 to 6 jobs a week which translated into 18 to 20 hours a week. By today's standard of maybe $46 an hour that's about $700 per week. Most artists' models loved the part-time flexibility which allowed them to do other things like draw, be in theatrical or dance groups. We paid dues once a month which helped pay for the booking secretary. The booking secretary was the infrastructure of the organization and had a

very challenging job. It was about a thirty-hour week in which they would field requests from clients and also take calls from models asking for work. It was very trying because clients would call in at the last minute and expect the secretary to fill the slot immediately. On the other hand, models were unreliable, wouldn't call in or might act like prima donnas.

To give you one example of the diplomacy involved, occasionally two models worked together. One model, Janet, and I got along very well together. When a client called in and requested me, I had had to pick a female partner. This time I picked Janet. The booking secretary had to tell me that Janet didn't want to work with me. When I asked why, the secretary said that she didn't like the way she looked in the paintings/drawings with me. When I pressed him, I found out why. Janet was a big woman. Not fat, but big-boned. At the time I was slim and she thought the difference in our sizes made her look like an Amazon. The booking secretary had to be very diplomatic in how he phrased issues like this. I volunteered to be the booking secretary one summer while our regular secretary was off. I hated it, mostly because I found both the clients and the models way too flakey. I never appreciated our booking secretary as much as I did after my experience doing his job.

The Models' Guild had meetings once a month, usually on Saturdays and we would have a potluck. The meetings consisted of a treasury report about money coming in and going out, issues with clients and internal issues between models. They were productive meetings and enough happened from month to month to justify 9 meetings a year, with the summers off because of the light workload.

Two times a year we had fundraisers, which were called drawing marathons. At a reconverted Naval Base in San Francisco, Ft. Mason we held drawing, sculpting and painting classes. At the end of spring and also around the second week in December used this space for these drawing marathons. The marathons consisted of all the models posing for all the artists from 10AM to 4PM. We had different types of stages for different lengths of poses. There would be stages for gestures, 5-minute, 10 minute, 20 minute poses and three hour poses. The models would rotate around these stages. For example, if my shift was from 10am-to 1 pm I would be given a card that said "Bruce: 10AM-10:20AM, gestures; 11:30AM- 11:50AM; ten-minute poses; 12:30PM-- 12:50PM, twenty-minute pose.

We also treated the day as a chance to sell the food we made. So when we weren't posing, we would be at the counter selling food. If was fun to interact with the artists in a more causal, playful way. These marathons were also a way to show ourselves off to artists who might not have ever seen us before. We all brought our calendars just in case any of them wanted to book us. Since many of us were also artists so we would bring our sketchbooks and draw the other models in our off-time. At the end of the day we would push the model stands next to each other and have all the models posing together with all the remaining artists drawing us on one giant stage. It was a very special occasion that I always looked forward to.

Reading, Writing and Modelling
San Francisco had a very good bus and subway system and so for most of my day jobs I was on them reading. I could typically read half an hour to and from a gig most of the time. During my five-minute breaks I alternated between walking around the room to see what the artists were doing and reading some more. I mostly hid the books I was reading from the artists because they were either books about communism or books that required some kind of explanation to justify. I remember reading the whole of Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy riding the trains and subways in San Francisco. I also had what I called a "philosophical notebook" in which I would write my reactions to what I was reading. Much of the time I was posing for the artists I was thinking about what I was reading and then on my breaks writing what I had come up with. Later, as a college teacher, some of those jottings turned into lectures or articles I was to write many years later.

Inspiring Teachers
Many of the art teachers liked me because they told me I had a "presence". Many of them had a presence and made the art space into a kind of magical workshop. One of the reasons I joined the San Francisco Models' Guild is that I wanted to find an art teacher I could study with. Not only did I find one, but I was also lucky enough to model for many art teachers who were extraordinary

Mr. Appleton
Within six months of the time I entered the guild I was sent to the College of San Mateo, a California community college, to work for a man only known as Mr. Appleton. My gig was from 1PM to 4PM. I arrived early in the morning because I wanted a chance to draw the models myself and the arts classes were always open for models to draw. When I walked in, the model was already posing. What I noticed was that to the right of the model was a skeleton that was posed in the same position as

the model. When I looked at the students' drawings I saw that they were drawing the skeleton, not the model. I later learned that Mr. Appleton insisted students draw the infrastructure of the body before daring to draw the whole model. In addition, he had full scale depictions of the muscles that were layered over the skeleton on what looked like medical sheets. He encouraged students to draw this, also. The place looked more like a medical class room that an art studio. I spoke with some of the students on the break and it was clear they loved him.

Once I began modelling in the afternoon, Mr. Appleton would invite me into his office and we would talk about art. He complained to me that one critic called him a "residual neo-classicist". He said he didn't know whether to be flattered or insulted. Then he would lean back in his swivel chair and roar. I could see from his drawings he had an Old Masters' Renaissance approach. After the mid-break, he would wheel out a wagon filled with art history books. He would then sit with most of the students and show them how their style of drawing was similar to the great masters.

Once I began drawing in his class as a student, he brought me into his office and said, "look at this. You draw like Tiepolo". "Oh c'mon on Mr. Appleton!" He would interrupt and say "tut, tut- of course you do". Then he'd whip out a thin book with all of Tiepolo's pen-and-wash drawings and give me the book. "Copy these and bring them to me" he'd say. Other times on the long break he would talk about the history of art, naming people I had never heard of. I'd tell him. "Mr. Appleton, I don't know any of these guys". He would raise his hand and say "Now, now Mr. Lerro, surely you remember-- they will come to you". Mr. Appleton always had a way of making you feel like you are part of something larger, deeper, historical. As I was studying with him, I changed the color of my fountain pen ink to burnt sienna, the color of many of the old masters. I still use that color in my fountain pens today after 45 years. Mr. Appleton was a living legend. The best models talked about what a privilege it was to work for him. I still have the letter he wrote to me two years before he died discussing the value of mixing paint with egg whites.

Joe S.
Joe was more of a beat poet than a Renaissance man. I first met him at a drawing class for architects at UC Berkeley. When I entered the art classroom there was no one there but the students. I did my usual thing of getting undressed in the clothes-changing area. When I came out I saw this well-built stocky guy with a beret and glasses who looked like he could have been a brick layer wheeling in a wagon. The wagon contained not only art books but a boombox for music and some poetry books. When our eyes met, I knew we were going to click. He spread out some fancy cloth for the model's stand, and away we went.

He had me start with one-minute gestures but for the first five minutes the students were not drawing me. They were in the midst of a five-minute drawing meditation in which they were drawing six inch figure eights to syncretized drumming that Joe had picked out for this occasion. Joe's idea was that the human form had a lot of curves and overlapping circles and ellipses. He wanted his students to make a transition so their gesture drawing contained lots of figure eights when their hands hit the page. In my shorter poses the musical tempo was faster. For the 20 minute poses the music would be slower. Joe loved the old jazz musicians, so both the students and I were treated to Horace Silver's Senior Blues, It Never Entered My Mindand Miles Davis' So what?

Towards the end of the class Joe would synchronize the music to poetry that he would read. When I completed my work for the day I was in an altered state. These were architecture students who had some of the very best interdisciplinary training available. They had to be trained, not just in architecture, but in physics, mechanics, acoustics and building materials. They were a long way away from romantic art students but they loved Joe. We all did. I would always ask the booking secretary if Joe had called in any work. Whenever I went to his class we hugged before and after the class. He brought out the best in me as a model. I would push myself in poses for him. The students knew it. Joe knew it. Teacher, model and students each co-creating a new dialectical spiral.

Harriet M.
Harriet was a wonderful sculptor who held classes in her home. Her classes were small 6-8 artists due to room constraints. Ascending her staircase to the second floor, you could see her house was filled with sculptures, mostly her own work. They were magnificent. The music she played for her students during the sessions was music from the Renaissance. I loved working for her. She loved the Middle Ages and maybe fancied herself Dante's Beatrice.

One day the booking secretary called me to tell me Harriet had requested that I be the model for a commission she received from the University of San Francisco to do a life-size sculpture of St. Francis of Assisi. The work was intense, three hours a day, three times a week for a month. During that time, we each got to know each other even if we didn't talk that much. I found out that Harriet's husband had died a number of years before and she was alone. Since I always brought books to read, I would tailor the books to what I thought an artist or audience could tolerate. So Das Capital was out. Instead I brought books about art history or famous artists such as the letters of Delacroix. This deepened our relationship since she was trained in the field. She turned me on to Rodin and the San Francisco Palace of Fine Arts where I could copy bronze cast copies of his work.

Now I understood what Voodoo is about
Seeing yourself as a life size sculpture is a great deal more arresting than seeing a painting on a two-dimensional surface, especially with an artist like Harriet who really could get an excellent likeness. Towards the end our sessions the likeness became spooky. One time we were working and she received a phone call. I continued to hold the pose thinking she would be right back. She was away longer than I expected. Then I heard a soft thud. I looked to my right and saw that "my arm" had fallen on the floor. I had a physical reaction in my arm as it something had happened to it. When she returned, she fixed "my" arm and I talked to her about how much my experience was how the psychology of Voodoo worked. She said it wasn't the first time she heard this story from models. For those of you who don't know, a clay sculptor is in a constant battle with the texture of clay. The artist is always spraying the clay. Without enough water the piece becomes dry, rigid and detail becomes impossible. If the clay is too wet, the clay slouches or falls off. Harriet put too much water spray on me.

At the time I worked for her she must have been in her late 40s and I was about 35. Harriet was the only woman artist I ever worked for who I felt might be interested in me romantically. She knew I was in a relationship which probably made me more appealing but probably Harriet realized there was too much at stake to risk an affair so she never approached me. However, the time her interest in me became most clear was when she met my partner, Barbara. We ran into Harriet at an art show around Christmas time. Harriet was uncharacteristically very cold to Barbara and with Barbara's help I put two and two together.

Rick R.
Rick was a very hardworking college teacher of painting at City College of San Francisco. Like Joe S., he came to class armed with art books and a boombox. He specialized in getting the models pose for paintings that were set at different times in history. He had me pose as a gypsy tarot card reader (the image that leads this article). Another time he had me pose as an Egyptian pharaoh with a third eye. Rick spent many hours teaching his students after the classes ended. He may have been the most dedicated teacher I have ever worked with. His students loved him. As with Joe S. we had a very special relationship. One time in his class I was reading a book about the magical tradition of the Tree of Life. He was interested and told me he had read some books on the Western magical tradition himself. One time he hired me to work one-on-one at his home studio. He did an etching of me as I expounded on my understanding of the Tree of Life and its relationship to ceremonial magic.

See this image at Click Here

Marjorie L.
Rick knew I was always looking for work and he recommended an art teacher that he had studied with in her studio. Rick gave me her phone number. I called her up, said Rick recommended her and we arranged a session. At first it was just a single session so she could get a feel for whether or not she wanted to work with me long-term. When she opened the door, I was struck by her beauty. She had her hair tied in a bun with high cheekbones. Her posture and movements reminded me of what an aristocratic woman in Vienna at the turn of the century might look like. She was friendly but reserved. She had the most magnificent art studio I had ever seen. There were busts of sculptures all around. There were skeletons and casts of the muscles of the body. On walls there were paintings which I think she and her husband had done. Her studio could hold between 10 and 15 students whose art benches surrounded the model's stand in a half circle. She had very dedicated art students who were devoted to Marjorie. There was no credit offered for the class and the people were there because they had made a commitment to art. Marjorie and I got on very well and she booked me for a 12-15-hour session. After a short lecture the class would begin and the music was turned on. We listened to Vivaldi, Mozart, Brahms, Chopin, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and more. She served cookies and tea in the middle of our sessions when we had a 20-minute break

On one occasion she had been playing Pachelbel and for some reason I was particularly moved. A wave came across me that I was living in another dimension, a historical dimension of history. We were all in history, artists, models and teachers all dialectically creating something special, something that went beyond our personal lives. Tears came to my eyes. I tried to hold them back but they kept coming covering my face. The students never missed a beat and kept on drawing. Marjorie did not stop the class or ask me to compose myself. She knew something special was happening and let it go. I looked in their eyes and they looked in mine and our relationship intensified. During the break one of students came up to me and told me what a great job I was doing. After the session was over Marjorie was too reserved to ask me what I was crying about. When I told her she put her arms around me. From that session on, I always knew I could get work from her.

Surely There Must Have Been Some Fooling Around
During all of the twelve years as an artist model, I also drew. As many of you know, if you are artist yourself, chances are that you will draw more often if you have a drawing partner. While I was working I was not only hoping to pick up drawing tips from the teachers but I was also looking for artists who could be friends to join me in drawing outdoors, whether it be landscapes, cityscapes, zoos and even each other.

I first met Cindy at a community college gig in a city in the San Francisco East Bay. I did what I usually did, looked at her drawings as I walked around the room on one of my breaks. She noticed that I carried my own sketchbook with me and asked to see them. I showed her my Old Masters' approach that I learned from Appleton and she seemed impressed. The next time I modelled for the class, six weeks later, Cindy was there. We talked a little more about art techniques between the breaks. By the end of the class I asked her if she wanted to go drawing outdoors together and she accepted. We exchanged phone numbers. Cindy taught children to draw in a local arts' program five days a week in the mornings, so mornings were out. My schedule was erratic, with jobs in the morning, afternoon and evening but not every day. It took some time to arrange a date. Afternoons for each of us turned out to be the best because it gave us the most options for places to draw.

Our first few times we drew in the woods in the East Bay and then at the Oakland Zoo. We'd go out after lunch, draw about 3 hours together, then have an early dinner and I'd either go home or she would drive me to the train to catch my next modelling gig. The third or fourth time we drew together we talked late into the night and she asked if I would stay over, which I did. So we began a romance. Our dates always included drawing, but now we also drew each other and this intensified our relationship.

One day I called Cindy up and told her I was going to be the model for a class that night and did she want to get together in the afternoon before the class. She said yes and picked me up at the train station in time for lunch. We ate lunch together and then took turns drawing each other for a couple of hours. Then we made love. We had no time to shower, had a quick dinner and off we went to the class. There she was drawing me in class after having made love with me three hours earlier. This was eroticizing for both of us throughout the class. She took me back to her house and made love to me again, late into the evening.

The next morning we both woke up late for a work day, about 7:30. She had to be at her art class in an hour and I had to be at City College for a three-hour modeling gig with Agathe B. at 9 am. This was a long train ride and I knew I was going to be at least fifteen minutes late. We crammed down out breakfasts and flew out the door. Again there was no time to shower. I got to City College about 20 minutes late. I had a good relationship with the art teacher, Agatha B. that I had built up from working together many times before so she seemed to take my lateness in stride. Because it was in May, late in the semester, my pose was a single three-hour pose. Not so good for someone who had just gotten 5 hours of sleep.

After the first set Agatha had to come up to me to mark me so I could get back into the exact same pose after my break. This involved marking my feet with chalk and marking where my arms were resting. She had to get very close to me to do this. As she marked me she said in an intonation that was half disgust and half laughing, "where have you BEEN?" Well, I knew where I had been but I couldn't figure out how she knew. That I smelled of sex hadn't dawned on me. On the next break I walked around the room to look at the drawings and some of the students had drawn scratches on my back. "What the fuk" I thought. Then I put it together what was going on. After the class I approached Agatha and apologized. She was great. She warned me in a teasing way that I better not have any more dates before her classes. Technically I could have been put on probation for what I had done. Part of the union contract is stipulating that the model must practice 'good hygiene'. All Agatha had to do was report me to the booking secretary, but she never did. I got away with it.

Conclusion
Working as an artists' model was a great experience for me. I learned a great deal from many teachers and studied with Mr. Appleton for a year. Both the teachers and artists opened me up to an art world I never would have known if I had just taken drawing classes. I got a lot of hours of reading in on most days of the week going to and from my gigs. In the larger scheme of my life, being a member of the guild gave me a lot of good-paying, steady part-time work to support me as I went back to college to get a bachelor's and master's degree between 1984 to 1987 in psychology. I began my new work as an adjunct college teacher the year I stopped modelling.

About three years later, maybe 1993 I ran into my fellow model Janet on a walking trail in Oakland. I asked her if she was still modeling. She said yes, but now she was also a food critic and writing articles about the various restaurants in San Francisco and Oakland. "And you?" she said, "I'm a college teacher" I replied. She never missed a beat. She paused for a minute and said, "so now instead of taking your clothes off and keeping your mouth shut, you keep your clothes on and your mouth wagging". We both had a hoot of a laugh. We hugged and went on our separate ways.