Drawing Conclusions

To begin with: What is a drawing? After the Modernist era even this is a complex question. A drawing can be many things: a surface scratched can be a drawing; a sketch that defines a projected idea; or a unique work on paper; or a work that uses line as its dominant characteristic; or a work that is calligraphicÖ

The problem is not one of inclusion but exclusion. After the triumph of Modernism, we are no longer faced with a conservative traditionalism that will not allow genres to be crossed and cross pollinated. Instead our quandary is how to classify anything in a meaningful way. No longer are quality and taste sure criteria, or even meaningful. Objects and acts are dismissively given an acceptance as art without any interest in value or importance to the history of art, the contemporary world or the very individual regarding it.

In the shadow of this immense aperture of possibility, drawing still remains a fundamental activity for the artist, the designer, the engineer and the doodler. As the body of work that makes up Drawing Conclusions demonstrates, the range of interests are as broad as the history of drawing allows. Based on the open call, the work here was selected from the submissions and only then broken up into the three categories. This curatorial system created an aleatory relationship to the work to be included but functioned as a strong directive through which to categorize. Much of the work is in new media, alternative ideas of drawing and methods that would, only half a century ago, have been anathema to the very understanding of drawing. Nevertheless, the work does not represent a preconceived idea of what a drawing should be but what a drawing could be. In this sense we can disregard the constricting idea of what makes a work a drawing (as opposed to a print, a painting or a photo, a video or a sculpture) and use the category to broaden the sense of drawing as an active engagement with medium (drawing on paper), an idea (using something as a sketch for later development) or a method (using line and gesture toward autonomous and expressive ends). With this as the starting point, and using the work to suggest its own categories the work here has been divided into three separate but related categories.

Physical

If drawing has a place within European-based histories of art, it is most certainly in the study of the human figure. From the sketchbooks of Jacopo Bellini and Pisanello - masterworks of the fifteenth century-, the figure has always played a central role. This tradition was continued in the French Academy and in many ways laid the foundation for all that would be rejected by the pioneers of Modernism. The idea that the observation and understanding of the human figure in nature was primary to an artist was one of the first targets of the great 19^th century Modernists Manet and Cezanne. Accused of crudeness due to their apparent disregard for anatomical correctness, both placed value on the picture plane, that is to say, on the structure of the work and its ability to transmit meaning. Despite the many claims that the figure was no longer relevant to art, especially at the height of Abstract Expressionism, it never disappeared, even in the work of one of the greatest painters of the New York school, Willem DeKooning. For todayís artists working with the figure, the narrative, expressive and psychological possibilities of the human form are not stymied by the complex history of figuration, the omnipresence of photography and the popularity of cinema. Instead, these elements offer todayís artist an enriched vocabulary. Whether academic, expressionist or otherwise, the figure challenges as much as the most experimental formats.

Natural

Within the Western tradition, the autonomous nature study has formed a significant role since at least the drawings of Leonardo in the 15^th and 16^th century. The scrutiny of plant and animal life formed a central part of the intertwining of artistic and scientific pursuits during the Enlightenment. The attempt to understand nature was fundamentally linked to its representation in drawing. With the invention of the camera, the botanical or natural drawing, as a necessity for a scientific text, lost its urgency. What followed was the development of an aesthetic to which the artist no longer needed to tie a scientific value. The result has been a personalized relationship to natural phenomena and nature as an inevitable source for studies of design and structure.

Structural

The work in this category comes out of the rich tradition of 20^th century art that was born with the Cubist revolution in the first decade of that century. Working through the many possibilities spawned therein, these artists develop a work through the intense examination of underlying structures, abstraction and the intense concreteness of the work they do. The visual similarities and historical references ring throughout the past century. Some of the work has traces of Mondrianís development of the abstracting of a tree; others show a debt to works of the abstract expressionists. There is also the clear influence of Minimalist and Process work; as well as an interesting link to so-called primitive arts, particularly aboriginal painting. Nevertheless, the work here is not framed within an ironic art-historically self-conscious mode. It is instead an apparently personal exploration of a sense of the structure and underlying principles within the very act of drawing as well as the finished work.

Drawn Conclusion

While this small survey offers no conclusions on the current state of drawing, it does give an insightful glimpse into the numerous and complex possibilities inherent in such a singular and seemingly simple act as drawing. It is, then, perhaps, no more than a sketch of some of the contemporary possibilities offered in the art of drawing.