How many naked people have you seen in your classes? I bet you can count them on one hand. That’s been my experience — and I’ve got no chip on my shoulder about it. But here’s a second question: how many nude people have you seen in your classes? For Cara Strever, senior art major, that is a different question from the first, and our utter lack of the nude is troubling.
To continue my inquiry into the nature of Christian university education, I investigated Pepperdine’s policy forbidding the drawing of nude models in art classes. Many art students such as Strever believe that this omits an essential element of a classical art education. The nude form has been prominent throughout the history of art. What I learned was that no such anti-nude policy at Pepperdine officially exists. It simply is the way things are and the way they have always been — Pepperdine art models are always clothed.
Strever quotes several prominent art critics and academics that distinguish between nakedness and nudity. The first is a vulnerable, unexpected and awkward state, and the second is an intentional, purposeful and natural state. Many artists see depicting the nude as a way to understand the human body in the fullest and most mature way. However, Pepperdine’s de facto avoidance of the nude communicates that at this school, being uncovered is being naked, and being naked is probably bad.
Some Christian colleges are like us in this regard. For example, Biola University’s figure drawing classes do not feature nudes, yet its “policy statement” on the subject waxes lyrical about using art to seek truth without reservation, both by inspiring us to higher things and “by describing the depths of our depravity.” The fact that the college avoids nudes in practice suggests one of the following: A.) The depiction of the nude in art is not important. B.) The depiction of the nude is beyond the depths of depravity or C.) There is some other barrier at work.
Azusa Pacific claims such a barrier. A professor there says that it was for the lack of a private enough facility, not for theological consensus on the issue, that they don’t currently offer nude figure drawing.
Other Christian universities, such as Notre Dame and Westmont, do study nudes. Meanwhile, most non-affiliated universities consider it a quite normal and expected part of an art program. So, why does Pepperdine refrain?
Asking several faculty and students, I heard a variety of reasons ranging from budget — wait, Pepperdine is a low-budget college? — to the vague statement that having nude models would be good, but not essential. The overriding reason was that it might be uncomfortable. It might cause controversy. It might be awkward for some people.
For art major Brighton Demarest-Smith, such an attitude is a much larger issue than the opportunity to draw a nude figure, or lack thereof. “Nude or clothed is irrelevant. It’s the ability to draw the form, and the critical thinking developed in that process, that makes an artist successful,” he said. Overall, he sees the art department as generally underdeveloped and lacking in rigor. “Good artists constantly question … and at Pepperdine, we aren’t questioning.”
Pepperdine’s art department does seem disproportionately small. It has but two full-time professors for painting and drawing, limiting selection of courses and viewpoints. One could argue that to its limitations, the art program has produced few Seaver alumni who are influential in the art world.
Is it that Pepperdine is unwilling to question that it might make people uncomfortable? Or is it especially distrustful of the art realm as a forum for questioning and exploration? Political science majors discuss rape, genocide and all sorts of other awful events. Science students have the opportunity to study and view all parts of the human body in working with cadavers. In our psychology and sociology classes, we discuss the phenomena of sexual fixations and deviance. Yet when it comes to art, we prefer to keep it light. Spiritual writer Donald Miller, best known for his book “Blue Like Jazz,” often argues that the church detrimentally limits artistic expression. In a blog post he writes, “In creating works of art, you are exercising your own freedom of expression, a freedom many people do not experience because they are bound by religious customs and unwritten codes and rules.” While this is not always true, it is a tendency we must guard against.
Which is more troubling, the mystery of the unknown or the guarantee of mediocrity? For many art students at Pepperdine, the answer to that question seems to be growing increasingly clear.
