West Hollywood Academy of Art

West Hollywood Academy of Art is the setting for Norma Jeane’s Thursday-evening drawing classes during her marriage to Ex-Atleta. There, she encounters women who hold her gaze so completely that she sometimes forgets to draw. The academy becomes a quiet counterpoint to Hollywood’s manufactured images of women: its models are varied and unadorned, and their ease under observation both frightens and impresses her.

Classes During Marriage

Norma Jeane attends the academy every Thursday evening with her husband’s permission, though it is not wholeheartedly given. Away from the limited Hollywood circles she now frequents, the classes form part of a quieter life: she has a new address and telephone number, has nearly stopped reading newspapers and film magazines, and is learning to draw. Her interest in the lessons is genuine, even as her marriage shapes the conditions under which she can attend.

The Models and the Gaze

The models at the academy are not the beautified figures familiar from studio publicity. Some are young, most are older; they are generally neither made up nor carefully dressed, and their bodies bear ordinary signs of age and difference. Norma Jeane is fascinated by their apparent lack of embarrassment before the students’ scrutiny. She admires their composure, while their presence also makes her uneasy.

Attention and Significance

As she watches the models, Norma Jeane’s charcoal hesitates and sometimes snaps between her fingers; her attention to the women displaces the act of drawing. The academy thus brings her into contact with a kind of looking unlike the commercial gaze that has shaped her public image. Here, she is a student looking at women who seem indifferent to being watched, and their unselfconsciousness gives her a different measure of what a woman’s body can be in public.