The new series will provide a counterbalance to the brash Britart movement popularised by Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, but is likely to cause controversy among traditionalists by showing full-frontal male and female nudity well before the 9pm watershed.
Viewers will be able to sketch models from home, while an expert will appear in the corner of the screen during each programme to give technical advice. The five-part series, called Life Class: Today’s Nude, will be broadcast on consecutive days in July, before 6pm.
“Because it’s educational and nonsexualised nudity, Channel 4 didn’t have any concerns with it at all,” said Alan Kane, the artist who had the idea for the show, which is produced by Artangel.
Humphrey Ocean, a member of the Royal Academy and one of five tutors taking part in the series, said it would help demystify the act of drawing. John Beyer, director of Mediawatch-UK, a viewing standards pressure group, claimed Channel 4 had “an obsession with sex and nudity”.
However, John Whittingdale, the Tory chairman of the Commons culture select committee, said that, in principle, he would not object to nude life drawing classes before 9pm if they were in an “educational context” and avoided “gratuitous titillation”.
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