I’m asking for a friend of mine on deviantART. In her words:
Needless to say, she’s not too keen on doing it. This teacher is also really shitty in other ways, doing stuff like making students work on a piece and then ordering them to rip it up and failing them if they don’t. Anyway, can he actually make his students do this?
He’s not requiring it in the sense that she will go to jail if she doesn’t do it. He’s not even requiring she be nude: “… or with 1/3rd clothing if you like”.
She has many options: refusing entirely, doing it with 1/3 clothing, asking the teacher for an alternative assignment, asking college management to be put in another class, or changing schools, as examples. It doesn’t sound like she even thinks he’s a good teacher so this might be an opportunity to explore alternatives she’d prefer for this and other reasons.
Frankly I think she’s being overdramatic, especially with the “pervy” and “creepy fetish” comments. If she says anything like that to others and they take it seriously, he could lose his job or worse.
Hmmm… don’t know. Definitely not the minors.
My advice would be to go over his head and/or transfer to another teacher if possible.
Complain to an administrator, go on record if possible. Even if it’s legal, it’s wrong, and a formal complaint could lead to a change.
I think a nude self-portrait is a pretty common assignment for art majors, from what I gather.
Taking the photo though, that’s kind of creepy. Or at least, to require that one do so is.
THAT part I would refuse.
And drawing a nude portrait, well, you can have a pose in such a way that nothing shows.
1.) Nudity is not such a big deal. There are a lot worse things that can happen to a person than to have been seen nude.
2.) You probably should get out of “art” because, like it or not, nudity is not a big deal in art.
3.) The instructor may be a perv but so what, there are ways around it. Find out if he is legitimate. How long has he been teaching the class? Is he a respected art teacher?
4.) Take a picture of yourself sitting on the toilet with the seat down and all of your “goods” covered. On the two dimensional sheet, have nothing showing that would not be seen if you were on the beach in your bathing suit. You have satisfied the perv but have not compromised yourself.
5.) Distinguish between what is seen and what the artist wants you to imagine. For example, the whole method in movie making is to make the audience believe that they have seen a lot more than what actually appeared on the screen.
6.) Don’t get angry, get smart.
7.) You don’t owe your body to anyone. If the perv insists on seeing the “goods” then he can get busted. Remember that if you are learning art there is no way around doing life drawing. Someone is showing you their “goods”. It’s not sexual. It’s part of the process. In photography art it is often an accepted practice that the students pose nude.
8.) A difficult hurdle in art is going from nude/sexual to nude/art. There is a tremendous difference and America is the worst place to try to make the differentiation.
9.) Good luck!
Nude models may be showing you the goods but it’s in their contract. Art students don’t sign a contract that says they need to take nude photos of themselves and give them to the teacher. I’m wondering about that too.
She’s an artist not a model. Artists don’t work usually in the nude and have no reason to work in the nude. This “assignment” makes not more educational sense then if a teacher had instructed the students in a music or chemistry class to send him nude or semi-nude pictures of themselves.
A problem is that if this teacher has a history of failing students for trivial reasons (“making students work on a piece and then ordering them to rip it up and failing them if they don’t”) and is collecting nude pictures of his students for ulterior reasons, then he’ll probably react to this by giving a failing grade to any picture that doesn’t show “the goods”.
I dunno. Despite talking about NUDE over and over again, the actual assignment is to do this in 1/3 clothing- perfectly acceptable for beach wear, in other words. I think this assignment is about discovering and pushing your own boundaries and making art that is deeply and publicly personal. Good artists know how to reveal parts of themselves that may make everyone involved uncomfortable, and always have to be ready to push their limits. This is a ham-handed approach to cultivating that, but I think it’s probably as good as you are going to get with a one-size-fits all assignment. If your friend is a real artist, she’ll find a way to turn the assignment on it’s head- choosing a very unflattering angle, or something.
Ask her to look over the course’s description, and the sign-up forms. I’m assuming no one under the age of 18 is allowed to take the course, correct? If under 18s are being asked to do the assignment, there are definite problems, (if you are in the US, not sure of the laws elsewhere) and this should be brought up to college authorities. (Not sure of the ladder/process.) Does she have the assignment in writing or recorded so she can prove she’s not just having a hysterical reaction and misunderstanding? He just wants to “look at” the photo, not have it turned over to him though, so maybe he is on the up and up with this. Still skates the line though. Maybe he’s trying to give the students empathy for the models?
I would also ask a couple of questions.
1.) You call him a “teacher.” Is this a college course or a high school one. (I am assuming and praying the former…)
2.) Is this project the part of a unit? (e.g. has your friend been working on portraits, nudes, or what?)
3.) Does your friend have another instructor in whom she could trust? (Maybe a favorite from last semester?) Could your friend tactfully ask the other instructor about this project?
My one and only piece of advice:
If your friend is still not sanguine about the prospect of showing her body, I do see a way out. Instructor specifically mentioned things you would do naked, like brushing your hair after a shower. Last time I checked, my bathroom mirror gets pretty darn foggy. I can easily see a good picture for use as a starting point for a sketch like this:
Subject leaning over sink, staring into a mostly foggy mirror, applying make-up. The picture is taken from behind and through a door frame. The frame covers the posterior; the position of the leg obscures the “lower naughty bits” 
, and the bend of the arm obscures the “upper naughty bits.”
Ought to be interesting enough to warrent a sketch, without being, well, … sketchy.
I want to start by saying that I registered specifically to reply to this question, because I’m not really sure about where most of the other replies I read came from.
Now, I’m not an artist, nor do I play one on TV (but wouldn’t that be cool if I did?) but I’m dating a man who just graduated from a fine arts school in California, and he was never once asked to draw himself in the nude, or even with “1/3 clothing”. He did do some self-portraits, but they were mostly of his face. He also did a lot of life drawing of live, nude models, and he didn’t have a problem with that, but I think he might have had a problem with drawing himself in the nude and displaying the finished product.
So the fact that your friend doesn’t feel like showing the teacher a nude photograph of herself (or one of her “in her panties”) or putting a huge nude drawing of herself on display doesn’t mean she should drop out of art school.
That being said, my boyfriend did have some teachers who were a little bit off-kilter in terms of what they thought it was acceptable to say and assign to students. So I asked him what he thought of the situation, and what he said was that she can probably work around it and not have her grade penalized. He advised that she do the picture while in her bathing suit, using a modest one-piece, or while wearing a towel (which is generally what I’m wearing when I brush my hair after getting out of the shower, anyway, so a “candid” shot of that sort of thing, at least for me, would include a big fluffy towel) or something of that nature. Other options might include a big tee shirt of the sort that are for sleeping in.
If the teacher has a problem with that, and it’s the sort of problem that’s likely to reflect on her grade, then she should go to the dean or whatever oversight administration there is for the school to raise her concerns. I wouldn’t phrase it in terms of “this teacher is such a perv!”, because that’s not likely to be taken seriously (in my experience dealing with school administration, anyway) but more in terms of “he asked me to show him a picture of myself in my panties for this assignment and I wasn’t comfortable with that, so I tried to compromise with a bathing suit, and he’s told me that he’s going to give me a lower grade because of it. I’m worried about this having a negative effect on my grade.” The administration might just tell him to back off, they might do more, who knows.
The important thing is that she be above reproach in terms of doing the best job that she can do, so that the teacher can’t claim to be giving her a low grade because of a shoddy finished product.
For the record, I agree with her that anyone who feels that this sort of assignment is okay has a screw loose.
Sounds bogus to me. I’m married to an artist, who studied at New York’s School of Visual Arts as well as a couple of colleges, and who has taught art and it sounded bogus to him, too. His first thought: Here is an art department too cheap to hire a model.
Some friends of mine have taken life drawing classes at the local Art Students League where they were, in fact, too cheap to pay a model, and used volunteers from the class. Emphasis here on volunteers.
Now the OP’s friend will, in fact, reveal herself big-time to anyone who sees her work if she’s any kind of an artist, but plenty of people have gotten through art school without doing nude portraits of themselves–although self-portraits are pretty routine and it’s certainly not unheard of for the artist to choose to do the portrait undraped. (In fact a friend of mine has a pretty cool self-portrait from his college days, where he painted his own self-portrait, but also reflected in the mirror was a girl in his class who was doing her own portrait in the studio that same day and she did have her shirt off. So he put her in there, too.)
So there might be a bona fide reason for the portrait itself but I can’t think of any reason at all to require that it be done from a photo, or for that matter to produce the photo. As she noted, it’s more of a challenge to work from a live model–at least more challenging from the point of view of actual technique.
Oh, and one-third clothed? What is that, one out of three erotic points?
Professor asking students to provide him with nude (or nearly nude) photographs of themselves? Completely out of line – and even more so if they weren’t offered an alternative assignment, and weren’t forewarned about this before signing up for the class. And what could the students learn from this that they couldn’t learn from drawing from a nude photo of someone else?
I would recommend complaining to the school administrators. But she should first talk to some of the other students, to see if any found this similarly objectionable (and I’d be very surprised if they didn’t.) Then they could go to the administration as a group, which might lead to their concerns being taken more seriously.
My guess would be that requiring nude photos would be illegal, but given that the option to just wear a swimming outfit is there I doubt you could get any court to say anything but “Meh.”
Now, if the guy is actually abusive, treats his students demeaningly, or engages in sexual harrasment then you could bring up charges against him, but that’s an issue with a pattern of conduct not of this particular assignment.
Your friend should either wear a bikini and turn the assignment in or, if the guy truly is worthy, report the teacher to the administration and try to get him fired. I suspect the latter will be rather difficult though without evidence of specific no-noes (fondling, etc.) Or just accept an F on the particular assignment and live with that or, again, take it to the administration and have them overturn the F for asking for something she feels is inappropriate to ask for. If your friend has a legitimate beef and particularly if her parents also call the school to complain, I doubt she couldn’t get the F overturned.
There has to be a way around this.
If a student had a religious or cultural objection to stripping off themselves the school would surely have to accommodate them.
Hell, my medical school accommodates female students who won’t physically examine males and vice versa (they get their examination techniques tested on lifelike models of the opposite gender and on real patients of their own gender). I can’t see why an art school should have an issue adapting the project for students with objections.
Talk to the teacher, then talk to the head of department, then to whoever deals with equality/harassment/bullying issues.
MHO:
Your friend needs to inform two people immediately of the existence of this assignment (I’m assuming a college setting here): The Art Department Chair and the Provost (Dean of Faculty) of the school. Both should take great notice of the existence of such an assignment. If they don’t, take it straight to the main Dean’s office, being sure to inquire whether such an assignement fits in with the guidelines for accreditation of the department or the school. The listener’s eyes should get really big at that point. It does not need to be explicitly illegal to be something that the school at large should not want going on under their roof. By no means should she do any such assignment that makes her feel uncomfortable, nor should she be forced to endure a bad grade, even temporarily for refusing to do so.
As a former instructor in the arts myself, I say regardless of whatever unconventional merit there might be in creating a nude study of onesself, any illusion of benefit to the student’s professional develpment ends when the work is required for general display and the photos required for submission for the instructor’s private use. These steps, without question in my mind, cross the line from instruction to harassment. An immediate end needs to be put to such “assignments” for the good of the students as well as the school. There is no legitimate excuse for its existence.
Actually, I think he is being creepy, especially since the quote in the op mentions that there are underage people in class …
as to the one third clothing, jerk the guys chain - he didnt specify what third clothing. Borrow a sca member’s chemise [long undergarm,ent that appears to be like a modern nightgown] as women in the middle ages frequently wore a chemise, an under gown and an over gown … 
and in the photo she could have both the under gown and over gown VISIBLY hanging next to her ready to put on.
Frankly, I agree with going to the schools admin and complaining. I dont see why the teacher needs a nude or mostly nude picture of a student.
There’s real merit in pushing your students to explore areas they would not explore on their own. That’s one of the reasons people take courses, especially high-level college courses (which this may or may not be.) Especially art courses, where one of the most valuable things you can acquire is a mentality that feels okay exploring ideas that seemed very weird or uncomfortable at first. It’s not, I presume, a class 100% devoted to technical matters (using a palette knive correctly, arranging the lighting on a still-life, etc.) but a good art course is a course in learning how to think like an artist. To do this, you need to be confronted by ideas, which you’re free to reject after the course is over.
Even if his idea is dumb or pervy, you’re a better artist and a better person if you see what happens when you explore his ideas fully. You may well, as I say, end up unhappy or angry with the result of going where he suggests you go, but so what? It’s a flippin’ college course. You take it, you do it, you experience it and sometimes you hate it, but when it’s over it’s over and sometimes, not always, you’ve learned something valuable. That’s the deal.
Let me suggest another reason for his “rip or fail” policy: it’s a valuable lesson for artists to know that some of their efforts beliong in the trash bin. Students with the mentality that tells them that they’ll get a souvenir (finished drawing, painting, poem, whatever) out of every effort they make are students who belong in an arts-and-crafts class (“Look, Mommy, I made an ashtray!”)–art students sometime neeed to understand that most fine artists end up throwing out, or giving up on, project after project before they work out a problem successfully. It may well be this lesson that the teacher is trying to impart.
It’s not the teacher’s job to be a nice person, or to make your experience a pleasant one. It’s to teach you something. It’s not called “course play,” folks-- it’s called “course work” for a reason.
How big a part of the art world is devoted to nude minors defecating? 