Live Nude Girl: My Life as an Object is a lively meditation on the profession of art modeling as it has been practiced in history and as it is practiced today. Kathleen Rooney draws on her own experiences working as an artists’ model, as well as the famous, notorious, and mysterious artists and models through the ages. Through a combination of personal perspective, historical anecdote, and witty prose, Life Nude Girl reveals that both the appeal of posing nude for artists and the appeal of drawing the naked figure lie in our deeply human responses to beauty, sex, love, and death. "Ms. Rooney seems as compelling a talent in her future off the pedestal as on." Huffington Post "A compelling memoir that blends observation, personal revelation and scholarly inquiry." Los Angeles Times "A spirited and thought-provoking exploration of the human figure, Live nude Girl Beckons the oft-clothed to share the thrill of taking it all off." Utne Reader "As we watch her pose, Rooney examines nude modeling from every angle: historical, sociological and biographical. She explores the territory between female beauty and intelligence, art and pornography, object and observer -- even the border between life and death -- with insight and passion." "A spirited and thought-provoking exploration of the human figure, Live Nude Girl beckons the oft-clothed to share the thrill of taking it all off." "We'll be watching as Ms. Rooney seems as compelling a talent in her future off the pedestal as on." "We'll be watching as Ms. Rooney seems as compelling a talent in her future off the pedestal as on." An art model's take on taking it off Live Nude Girl: My Life as an Object is a lively meditation on the profession of art modeling as it has been practiced in history and as it is practiced today. Kathleen Rooney draws on her own experiences working as an artists model, as well as the famous, notorious, and mysterious artists and models through the ages. Through a combination of personal perspective, historical anecdote, and witty prose, Life Nude Girl reveals that both the appeal of posing nude for artists and the appeal of drawing the naked figure lie in our deeply human responses to beauty, sex, love, and death. "Kathleen Rooney boldly and bravely dissects what it means to disrobe in the name of art--and money. For anyone who wants to know why a woman would prefer to be nude rather than naked (and what the difference is), read Live Nude Girl and find out." -- Rachel Kramer Bussel , editor of Best Sex Writing 2009 "Though the title of Kathleen Rooney's Live Nude Girl: My Life as an Object seems to promise an external approach to the subject, modeling nude for art classes, the book itself is surprisingly introspective, learned, and thoughtful. While revealing what a nude model does, how she does it and why, what she feels and thinks while doing it, Rooney explores what her profession means to her personally and what it means and has meant to others. The writing is enticing, engaging, inviting, and the anecdotes it tells are irresistible." -- Peter Stitt, editor of The Gettysburg Review "If Live Nude Girl caught your eye, promised, beckoned--good. Follow the enticement and you'll encounter the thrill of a rigorous and questioning mind in motion." -- Lia Purpura, author of On Looking Kathleen Rooney is the author of Reading with Oprah: The Book Club that Changed America, as well as the poetry collections Oneiromance (An Epithalamion), Something Really Wonderful, and That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness, the latter two written collaboratively with Elisa Gabbert. Her essay "Live Nude Girl" was selected for Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers. Live Nude Girl: My Life as an Object Product_Type: ABIS_BOOK Brand: University of Arkansas Press