That Time Your Visual Arts Professor Disrobed and Asked You to Peform a "Nude Gesture"
Via reader JC comes word of a University of California-San Diego visual arts prof who really wants his students to let it all hang out.
From the Guardian:
Ricardo Dominguez, who teaches a visual arts class at the University of California at San Diego, required the students to be naked for the final part of the course.
The professor also disrobed for the exam, which involved students participating in a "series of gestures", according to the local Fox 13 television channel.
The unconventional assessment came to light after the mother of one of the students complained about the nakedness.
Rest easy, though. The prof means nakedness in a metaphorical sense (though he seemed to be pretty literal in his own case).
Rodriguez said he had never received a complaint during his time teaching the class. He said the class took place in a darkened room, lit by candlelight.
"At the very end of the class, we've done several gestures, they have to [do a] nude gesture. The prompt is to speak about or do a gesture or create an installation that says: 'What is more you than you are,'" Dominguez said.
"If they are uncomfortable with this gesture they should not take the class," he added.
The department chair put it this way:
"There are many ways to perform nudity or nakedness – summoning art history conventions of the nude or laying bare of one's 'traumatic' or most fragile and vulnerable self. One can 'be' nude while being covered."