Students and faculty at the Sir JJ School of Arts say they don’t have the right models to pose nude for them for their figurative painting and portrait classes. The five or six models who do pose nude are in their forties and fifties, and they have been around for so many years that the students know their contours from memory and sketch them almost mechanically.

It is not just the monotony that bothers the faculty. “Each body speaks a different language. There are differences in the physical figures, the dimensions, and even the way students perceive and react to them through their art. In order to learn, students need different and younger models,” said professor Vijay Bondar of the faculty of fine arts.

Nude study is a key part of the curriculum. “Portrait study will help us develop our unique styles. However, the models here have aged and are unsuitable for this kind of study. We do not have much scope to develop our skills in this subject,” said Amol Hirawdekar, final year student of Master of Fine Arts.

Sculpting and painting students study semi-nude figures in their third year and fully nude figures in the fourth and final year.

A student said the lack of enough models had even resulted in third year students skipping nude sketching sessions last year.

Models, for their part, complain about the payment they get. For sitting for seven hours at a stretch, a model is paid between Rs 100 and 150. All models come from slum areas of south Mumbai. Getting younger models will entail higher payment; the state government that decides the honorarium has not yet acted on proposals submitted by the school. “For the past two to three years, the school has been making proposals to the state government to increase the honorarium but to no avail,” said Bondar.

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