Drawing Then and Now

Transcription

Drawing Then and Now
The evolution & continued relevance of an ancient medium
Wednesday, August 29, 12
Drawing has...
• deep historical roots
• a long and varied role in human expression
• continued importance in contemporary art
• an enduring and evolving function in the digital age
Drawing: Deep Historical Roots
• How long have humans been drawing?
• What were the first drawings?
• What relationship do they have to drawing
today?
Deep Historical Roots: Paleolithic Cave
Painting
Deep Historical Roots: Paleolithic Cave
Painting
• Chauvet Cave, Southern France
• Earliest known cave paintings?
• 30,000 to 32,000 years ago (c 30,000 BC)
• Monolithic, immobile, ritualistic purpose
• few to no human forms
Werner Hertzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams
Deep Historical Roots:
Ancient Egyptian Funerary Texts
Deep Historical Roots: Ancient
Egyptian Funerary Texts
• Collectively known as the “Book of the
Dead”
• 1550-50 BC (roughly 2000-3500 years ago)
• Multiple surfaces (papyrus!)
• Ritualistic purpose
• Filled with human, animal and hybrid forms
Chinese Brush Painting
Deep Historical Roots: Chinese Brush
Painting
• One of the longest unbroken artistic
traditions
• Earliest “independent” art, 220-589 AD
• Earliest art criticism (Xie He’s “Six points to
consider when looking at a painting”)
• Long tradition of working from life, enduring
ink tradition
Chinese Brush Painting
Scholar by a Waterfall, Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279),
Ma Yuan (Chinese, active ca. 1190–1225)
Album leaf: ink and color on silk
Drawing: A Long and Varied Role
• Medieval Period (500-1400)
• illustrated religious texts, scribal pattern books
• drawing and writing done by scribes, often monks
• Renaissance Period (1400-1700)
• evolution of pattern book into sketch book
• drawing expands, but still a secondary form
• Enlightenment: Foundations of the modern age
(1700 )
• drawing respected as independent art form
• advent of photography changes role of drawing
Medieval Period
A Long and Varied Role: Medieval manuscripts
Bible, A.D. 1407, Malmesbury Abbey, Wiltshire, England
Medieval Period
A Long and Varied Role: pattern books
Scribal pattern book, Gregorios Bock, c. 1510
Early
Renaissance
A Long and Varied Role: studies from nature
Antonio Pisanello, Apes (from the artist’s sketchbook), c. 1430
Early
Renaissance
Antonio Pisanello, The Vision of Saint Eustace.
Early
Renaissance
Antonio Pisanello
Renaissance
A Long and Varied Role: anatomical studies
Leonardo da Vinci
Anatomical study of the
arm, (c. 1510)
Renaissance
A Long and Varied Role: preparatory drawings
Leonardo da Vinci
The Virgin and Child with
St. Anne and St. John the
Baptist
(c. 1499–1500)
Renaissance
A Long and Varied Role: Renaissance perspective
Filippo Brunelleschi
Perspective drawing for Church of Santo Spirito in
Florence (c. 1499–1500)
Renaissance
A Long and Varied Role: Renaissance perspective
Filippo Brunelleschi
Perspective drawing for Church of Santo Spirito in
Florence (c. 1499–1500)
Renaissance
A Long and Varied Role: The first reproductions
Albrecht Durer
Coat of Arms with Lion
and Rooster, c. 1500
Engraving print on
paper
Early
Enlightenment
A Long and Varied Role: The independent work of art
Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Interior of a Prison, 1744-5
Pen and brown ink wash over black chalk
Enlightenment
A Long and Varied Role: The era of reason
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780-1867)
Enlightenment
A Long and Varied Role: The era of reason
"Drawing is not just reproducing
contours, it is not just the line;
drawing is also the expression, the
inner form, the composition, the
modeling. See what is left after that.
Drawing is seven eighths of what
makes up painting."
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780-1867)
Enlightenment
A Long and Varied Role: The Age of Reason
Francisco de Goya y
Lucientes
The Sleep of Reason Produces
Monsters: Plate 43 of Los
Caprichos, 1799
Etching, aquatint, drypoint,
and burin
Late Enlightenment
Modern Age
A Long and Varied Role: Rejection of the academy
Edgar Degas
Ballet Dancer Standing
ca. 1886-90
Late Enlightenment -> Modern Age
Paul Cézanne, Large Pine, watercolor and pencil, 1905
Late Enlightenment -> Modern
Age
Pablo Picasso, The Frugal
Meal, 1904
etching
Late Enlightenment -> Modern
Age
Pablo Picasso, Nude, 1910
ink on paper
Modern Age
A Long and Varied Role: The Avant-garde (Dada)
Hannah Hoch, The Bride, 1933, Photomontage, collage on paper,
Lustige Person, 1932, Collage, 19x25,9 cm
Modern Age
A Long and Varied Role: The Avant-garde (Surrealism)
André Masson
Automatic Drawing, 1924
Ink on paper
Drawing: Continued Relevance
• Since the beginnings of modernism and the
avant-garde movements of the early to mid
20th century, drawing continues to evolve as a
medium.
• How do we define it today?
• Why does it continue to be relevant?
• Why take drawing when photography captures
nature perfectly, and computers can describe
a more perfect line than any human could ever
draw?
Continued Relevance: Drawing in Contemporary Art
Kara Walker, installation view, "no place (like home)," at the
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1997. Cut paper
and adhesive on wall, 12 x 85 feet.
Continued Relevance: Drawing in
Contemporary Art
William Kentridge, Stereoscope, 2007
split screen animation
Vija Celmins, Night Sky, 1994
charcoal on paper
Francis Alÿs, The Green Line, 2004
performance
Evan Roth, Graffiti Taxonomy Diptych: New York and Paris, 2011
silk screen print
Continued Relevance: Drawing in Popular Culture
Evan Roth, visuals for “Brooklyn Go Hard”, Jay-Z
Continued Relevance: Drawing in Design
Frank Gehry
architectural design process
Continued Relevance: Drawing in Design
[Drawing addresses] our being in the world. Electronic media tend
to distance us from our location. While the far is made near,
conversely, the near is made far. Drawing, in contrast, requires time,
attention, and focused acknowledgment of a particular place...artists
and designers maintain sketchbooks for a reason: drawing demands
immersion in a situation, drawing tests our observations; drawing
within the confines of a sketchbook nudges us to take more care, to
learn from the previous page and improve on the next one.
-Marc Treib, Drawing/Thinking: Confronting an Electronic Age
[Drawing addresses] our being in the world. Electronic media tend
to distance us from our location. While the far is made near,
conversely, the near is made far. Drawing, in contrast, requires time,
attention, and focused acknowledgment of a particular place...artists
and designers maintain sketchbooks for a reason: drawing demands
immersion in a situation, drawing tests our observations; drawing
within the confines of a sketchbook nudges us to take more care, to
learn from the previous page and improve on the next one.
-Marc Treib, Drawing/Thinking: Confronting an Electronic Age

Drawing Then and Now

Transcription

Similar documents