Rapid cultural evolution may mean there are very few practices with historical relevance left for an artist to directly experience an ancient artistic expression, distanced from their contemporary epoch. It was always an historical simulation, like a proof of a classic equation underpinning pre-Einstein physics, vital but redundant at today's speeds.
Life drawing can be a backstop to the ideological hegemony of the contemporary art critical establishment and its unaffordable educations. Simple drawing, with its mimetic basis, preserves a localized control in the practices of an accessible medium, like chalk on paper. With growing access to the internet and cell phone cameras, there is no reason to decenter the expressions of any human on earth with internet access. We can all post too.
The art establishment, the art museums, and their state supported curatorial practices, with a bloated art market of rare fine art objects, can all now stand aside. A globally accessible medium and methods of dissemination can express the personal artistic cultures of billions, as currently available on Instagram, Youtube, Facebook and Google Plus. We live in a great age of artistic expression, albeit small, simple, and sometimes shy.
In this common global social space, the discourse on life drawing may reside, free of the dominance of contemporary art, the art academy, and identity politics with their enabling institutions.
Life drawing can still use its great historicity, while exploiting the easy, grass roots internet connection to real space, real cultures, and real artistic power in eye and hand.