Nude Models on strike

We won’t take this lying down, say nudes - Times Online: "Doing nothing for a living is not as easy as it looks. That was the militant message from Italy yesterday where artists’ nude models climbed back into their clothes and went on strike for better pay and conditions.

The protesters — male and female — said that they wanted “professional recognition” and full-time contracts. Only 50 of about 300 models at Italian art schools are on fixed annual contracts, with the rest hired by the hour.

Antonella Migliorini, 42, said that it was “a tough, cold job” posing in the nude, often for eight hours a day. “We are not porn stars,” she said. “If you’re lucky enough to have a full-time job you might make ¤25 an hour.

However, there will always be people willing to do it, despite the poor pay. “It can be rewarding to be immortalised as great art,” said Rachel Campbell-Johnston, The Times’s chief art critic, who modelled for Eduardo Paolozzi and Euan Uglow. “But it can also be extremely physically demanding. Rodin used to twist his models into painful positions and make them stay like that for hours. Lucian Freud demands that you turn up punctually day after day. It can take years and you can’t walk out halfway through."