Nude With Outstretched Arms
„Are you sure you’re okay to hold that position for twenty minutes?“ the artist asks.
„Sure“ the model says.
What helps the model to pass the time is inventing a brief interior monologue to accompany the pose Nude with outstretched arms:
– Don’t be afraid, little butterfly! We do not wish to harm you. Spread your wings so we can pin you to the board!
– Countrymen and confederates, we must break the close ranks of the Habsburg pikemen! I will open a passage into the line; protect my wife and children! Now let’s freeze for a second and pray, before poor old Winkelried throws himself upon the pikes, okay?
– Come on, guys, where’s my damned bathrobe? Do I have to air-dry or what?
The model likes to think that if only he hadn’t been born one hundred years too late, he would have been an artist’s model in Montmartre, as celebrated as the most famous male prostitutes of the day. „I would have taken off my clothes in sinister basements and drunk absinthe with Picasso, Modigliani and Mondrian.“
The artist, on the other hand, dislikes looking at the model’s where-the-sun-don’t-shine-parts, but he maintains the professional detachment of an urologist.
