Tonight I'm thinking about Levin and the nudes her painting professor did of her. I remember looking at the framed nude portrait she had in her bedroom and envying her older lover his skills. I can barely draw stick figures, and his portrait of Levin was amazing--- sunlight and shadow, the way her nakedness blended with the room, the way the furniture and windows set off how lithe and alluring she was. I'd seen her naked, of course, seen her naked in all sorts of rooms. But I did envy him the things he must have seen in her, the things he brought out in her image. He could see things in her that I couldn't. I could write about her; I could tell her stories. But I couldn't see her.
I can't decide whether thinking of Levin made me recall a 1991 film called "La belle noiseuse" or whether seeing the film again not so very long ago made me think of Levin and her portraits. If you haven't seen the film, please do take this as a recommendation. I purchased a DVD of it not long ago and sat enthralled with it here in the lakeside flat. I'd seen the film years ago--- probably because Jane Birkin is in it, and Ms. Birkin will always be a major crush of mine. "La belle noiseuse" was released in 1991. A young Emmanuelle Beart is the female lead, the muse to an aging painter. Beart would've been twenty-six, I think, when it was filmed. The film is almost three hours long, and Mlle. Beart is naked through most of it. The story is about Beart and the painter, about her modeling for him as he tries to reclaim the ability to paint. It's deeply powerful--- about obsession as much as desire ---to watch the painter pose her, move her, drive himself as he does figure studies, as he tries to build a painting from an idea he gave up twenty-five years before. Much of the film is about the techniques of painting, about shots of a disconnected arm wielding brushes or charcoal, doing washes, sketching out lines and curve. It's a film I wish I could've watched with Levin all those years ago, and it's a film I wish I could watch with my blonde NZ friend--- Jill, we'll call her ---down in the Land of the Long White Cloud.
The act of painting, the act of drawing--- that's an erotic thing all on its own. I've never been able to draw or paint or even sketch. Once upon a time I did do photography. I spent Saturday mornings at university climbing over buildings looking for architectural moments, and I did spend time photographing girls with whom I was involved, dressed and undressed both. Some of the photographs I took of lovers and companions were good, and my subjects appreciated how I made them look. But no matter what I could do with a pre-digital SLR, it wasn't painting or drawing. In those days I tried to emulate the styles of fashion photographers I liked. I may have been reasonably good at it, but it always lacked the power of a painting. I could do light and shadow, I could pose a girl in some wicked outfit or naked on a rooftop...but it wasn't the same as the painting on Levin's wall or the sketch she gave me of herself in a rented seafront bedroom.
That bedroom sketch, with its shadows and the hint of the girl face down on the bed, did remind me of David Hamilton. Hamilton died in 2016; I only discovered that a couple of days ago. When I was first off at university, Hamilton's photography books were something art-school girls as well as aging nympholepts collected. "Summer in St. Tropez", "Dreams of a Young Girl", "Sisters", "Premiers Desirs"--- I had all of those when I was eighteen or nineteen. I even saw the film versions of "Premiers Desirs" (yes, a very young Mlle. Beart was in that) and "Summer in St. Tropez". Levin had her own copy of "Dreams of a Young Girl"; I do remember that.
I suppose all those books are long out of print. We're long past the days when David Hamilton's photos of young girls were on art-photo notecards and postcards. You know why, of course--- Hamilton's models were are all either in their teens or at least appeared that way (Emmanuelle Beart was twenty when "Premiers Desirs" was filmed). By the time he died, Hamilton must've been on any number of enemies lists and very likely being considered for indictment under British law about "historical offenses" with young models.
Nonetheless, I do remember Hamilton with fondness. You could always tell his photographs--- the long-limbed, coltish models, the way he used sunlight and settings down in southern Provence. Levin told me once upon a time that she knew that there was something very cliche-pervy about Hamilton's work, but that she couldn't stop looking at it and wishing both that she could sleep with all the models...and be one herself. I haven't owned any of his books in years and years, but I'd like to see them again. I know what I thought of them in my own undergraduate days, and I know what I thought of them a decade later. But I have no idea how I'd see them now. We see bodies and nakedness very differently from the way we did in Hamilton's day, or even in the Nineties. We see the idea of coming-of-age very differently, too.
It's so easy for me to imagine Levin at nineteen or twenty as a Hamilton model. I just wish I could have drawn or painted her myself. I wish I could have taken more photos of her, especially in that city with wrought iron and a seawall--- and saved them down the years. I wish I could've looked at Levin naked in a deserted Victorian house and painted the passion I always felt in her.
One day I must ask Jill in NZ if she's ever posed nude for paintings. She's had nudes taken of her on camera phones (what posh, wicked Millennial girl hasn't?), but I'd love to know if she ever posed to be sketched or painted--- or even posed for higher-end art nudes. I can imagine some ghostly figure with a DSLR shooting photos of Jill, but she needs--- has needed since she was the age of a Hamilton model at St. Tropez to be painted. It's only paint on canvas that draws passion out.
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