Please Note: Lengthy Automatic Essay!
Dear All,
I write in response to the recent(ish) intellectually
charged debate which become far too interesting and
stimulating not to participate in. Although I didn't
get a chance to do so any earlier (due to busyness), I
wanted to thank all participants for their highly
thought provoking, challenging and seriously diverse
views on the subject, as well as thank Steve Garner
for facilitating this unique professional platform, as
always.
I would like to point out that there still exists a
great deal of ignorance, prejudice,backward attitudes
even amongst art teachers and lecturers (whether they
be in primary, secondary level or FE/HE teaching (Fine
Art or Art & Design) today; let alone amateur,
semi-professional,so-called professional/commercially
successful artists' categorical statements on what
drawing, painting, sculpture, design 'is' or 'isn't'-
most of which are very often blatantly exclusionary,
restrictive, ignorant ramblings or hypotheses about
drawing which limit drawing solely to either: tonal,
linear, perspectival, representational,
traditional(classical)or positive drawing, which
paradoxically and ironically enough makes all sound
contemporary works, deliberations and definitions of
drawing (I
am using the word definition to umbrella thoughts,
processes, products, researches, understandings,
interpretations, deliberations etc)look ridiculously
out of age, place, context(although it should be the
other way round) and is shocking and quite painful to
experience such ignorance and narrow-mindedness even
amongst senior art educators (which are sadly found
even in many Further/Higher Education institutional
settings, postgraduate programmes included) even in
the world's prime London art schools.
The examples are simply infinite, both from personal
formative experience and those of taught students. We
are not talking about third world countries or stuck,
isolated Eastern Eurpeoean towns or cities; we are
talking about artists, educators or artist-educators
living and working in the prime capitals of Western
Europe. These so called professionals, who, by means
of having all access to all art historical or modern/
contemporary reasearches and advances in drawing in
the form of exhibitions, media articles, periodicals,
books, internet resources etc can not be justified
whatsoever to categorically and ignorantly dictate to
others what drawing 'is' or 'isn't' based on archaic,
ridiculously out-of-date definitions.
Perhaps a secondary school teacher anywhere in the
world could be forgiven for shouting at one of her
students that "black is not a colour" (with complete
disrespect for the various colour spectrums in the
history of painting, including da Vinci's and Robert
Motherwell's contributions where black is a colour).
Likewise, perhaps a primary school teacher could be
forgiven for categorically stating that ink does not
constitute a painting medium when a student says that
they "want to paint with a fountain pen" (as use of
wet painting does constitute the act of painting
whether the tool of painting is a paintbrush,
fingertip or metal tip), but not FE/HE lecturers!
Total disrespect or stubborn ignorance of Toulouse
Lautrec, Kitaj, Motherwell, Adami, Newman etc, all the
artists who drew/draw (linear) in colour with their
paintbrushes. So much for awareness of advances in
modern drawing-painting, whether they be a month or
century old. So much for 'modern' definitions.
Only absurd (ist)logic can offer an explanation- such
people watch Big Brother or Coronation Street (or
equivalents) rather than read the most fundamental
resources on modern art (drawing/design, painting,
sculpture etc) and clearly lack the mental morality
which precludes having researched or thought about
what drawing 'is' or 'isn't' or how it can be defined
in the (post) modernist era.
The simultanaeous existence of drawing, painting and
sculpture when Matisse drew automatically, randomly
(motor skills) with his scissors. Matisse literally
drew, painted and sculpted with his scissors. The sad
irony is that despite the passage of almost a century
since the invention of 'collage' (this is in speech
marks for obvious specific reasons), certain people in
question are still unable to understand what has
happened or what has been happening in the last
century or so. There are still some lecturers in prime
FE/HE art schools who still rigidly claim that
drawings, paintings, sculptures made with scissors or
any unorthodox tool/mediums/means for that matter are
not drawings (no need to name and shame although they
should be), the intellectual standings of such tutors
being as low as poorly read primary/secondary school
teachers in a generic village or town anywhere in the
world), and that in order to paint or produce a
painting "you must only use wet paint which comes out
of a tube", again with no comprehension or respect of
modern advances.
[Having said this, there are many primary, secondary
and further education art teachers who possess deeper
and higher levels of knowledge of fine art practice
and theory than some higher education lecturers but
this is another territory]
Analogously, the previously mentioned reflects a sort
of mental fascism demonstrated or practiced by some in
educational settings and is akin to Orthodox minds
trying to kill Protestant minds, or Orthodox minds
declaring Reformists non-existent/inconsequential,
or even worse, Orthodox minds still secretly and
sinisterly existing in the best and most advanced art
schools (even in London), passing unnoticed in their
teaching practice whilst strategically shmooozing to
maintain their posts.
Is it any wonder that some so-called educators or
artists lack any scope for deliberation (most of us
would have encountered at least one incompetent tutor
in FE/HE in our educational lives- one tutor would ask
me "what does 'x, y, z' mean" constantly during
tutorials, referring to the most fundamental concepts
and movements in 20th and 21st century art) whilst
dictating to me/us their own isolated, backward, weak,
incoherent ramblings on what drawing is or isn't.
The tutor in question was a patient of the disease of
the completely unquestioning and unthinking mind and
it is still a mystery how such a mind could slip into
advanced education so unnoticed and thus represent
such a renowned school. Undoubtedly, the saviour was
the artistic and academic rigour of all other tutors
including visiting lecturers who all proved greatly
instrumental in my development in varying degrees.
"You cannot draw, paint or sculpt with scissors, they
cannot be called those, they are just...collages".
The words of a senior HE drawing tutor.
The cutting blade could not be a drawing, painting or
sculpture tool (even when appropriately, purposefully
used to satisfy all definitions) and sculpture could
not be made out of paper.
I am sure Offili could easily demonstrate how their
portrait sculpture could be made out of dung.
Unsurprisingly, there was nil dialogue or benefit
gained as tutorials served mainly as empty gapfillers
consumed by questions being asked to the student on
the meaning of basic art terms and intermediate level
words in English (ah, FENTO standards).
Imagine if such an incompetent mind was asked to
reveal such statements to the Heads of art schools.
What fury, what catastrophe, what disgust, outrage!
"You cannot draw (paint, design, sculpt etc) using
objects/installation, video, cameras, photography,
concepts, words, computers, body, performance etc).
They are not drawing, painting, sculpture".
Immediate removal from the post would occur as the
shame for any institution would be too great!
The tragedy is, whilst some educators maintain this
sort of artistic and academic Orthodox fascism or
discrimination, they are intellectually terrorising
students and artists of the future from the comfort of
their tutorial holes just like cochroaches who are
afraid to come out in the light and sound of people.
A tutor asking a student the meaning of Minimalism is
one of the many reasons why we need to be conversant
or sophisticated in verbal langauge as practitioners
and researchers in visual art language.
I would not so much blame them if they did not know
the meanings of marouflage, cloissonism, decalcomania
etc but Minimalism, Purism,Post Painterly abstraction
and intermediate level English words?
Just because fine/visual art language has been or is
predominantly image based or dependant doesn't mean
that we should not communicate ourselves with words.
Art & Langauge (they were never two different things
to begin with contrary to popular misconception) are
intertwined like DNA: texts/words/concepts and
images/symbols/signs.
Striving, searching (/researching) for definitions is
*vital* regardless of discipline. Verbal/written/oral
language is at times equally as imporatant in the
communication of ideas, thoughts, feelings, concepts,
theories etc as is visual communication in any
discipline, including positive sciences. Many
physicists produce highly visual/graphic/colourful
diagrams to illustrate findings, phenomena or
experiments and these considerably enhance or
instigate human understanding, in the same way as
artist-researchers writing/speaking dissertations,
theses, essays, articles to enhance the viewer or
listener's understanding. Verbal langauge (written or
spoken) is key to undertstanding modern, conceptual,
performance or body art. Laziness of the mind is no
excuse not to bother with vital definitions and it is
the laziest of minds who reject expression through
words (spoken or written) or complex imagery.
Where would art/artists be without literature, peotry,
mythology, philosophy, art history or newspapers?
Haven't we all grown up by reading or being read story
books which our verbal minds illustrated? Wasn't the
verbal communication of words which created images in
our minds (in the absence or presence of images)?
Didn't we all develop both physically and verbally?
Didn't our visual imagination develop alongside (and
owing to) our verbal imagination?
Art needs verbal langauge (the degree to which and the
specific kind is hugely irrelevant to this particular
debate) in order to exist, live, evolve, reform. Art
needs to be communicated and expressed not solely by
image but also with words.
Every art form needs and exists with words.
Even music uses words (lyrics, musicals, opera).
The peotry of Sarah Reilly takes on a fuller meaning
and existence when she reads and performs her own
peotry- to the extent that it becomes a composite of
body drawing, performance and poetry.
The poet-artist or writer-artist is proof that even
poetry (written language) needs oral/auditory (her
voice) and visual language (the body used as the
drawing tool that creates visual images of thoughts
and emotions) for optimum expression/communication.
Of course verbal, written, oral langauge has its
limitations; these limitations are synonymous and
simultaneous with limitations of human communication
and therefore inherently house abundant hope for
ongoing improvements, expansions, contributions.
Developing langauage is crucially important and
instrumental for sophisticated communication. There
are many who rightly state that visual/fine art
langauge can be limited, repetitious and restrictive,
hence the extreme or cutting-edge developments which
have occurred in fine art practice and research over
the last century; it is apt that 21st century art is
referred to as mixed, inter or multi media.
We would be nowhere if all philosophical, literary,
poetic, mythological, scientific, historical, art
historical words/books/definitions/modes were gone.
Language is man, man is langauge (my humble words).
It is vital to create, improve and expand definitions.
What is giraffe? What is literature? What is drawing?
Although mainly a drawer, painter, sculptor myself
(lesser so a conceptual and performance artist),ie
someone who is narrow-mindedly and categorically
expected to communicate only with images, I would hate
to imagine a world in which there are just images and
no words, concepts or definitions.
No books, no dictionaries, no scriptures, no alphabet,
no hyerogliphs, no verbal communication.
Basically no human mental activity. No thinking.
Image-making and writing: the same thing?
If words are the products of thinking; an active,
creative mind, then, aren't images exactly the same,
the products of a thinking, creative, active mind?
Isn't an alpabet a set of visual signs, symbols or
images (in places) which we visually learn to decode,
understand and use to communicate to others so that
they understand what is being communicated?
Isn't the written/spoken word a set of the above?
Isn't the created image the same?
It is only a logical deduction that, if someone
doesn't understand from created images alone, doesn't
it become even more vital to communicate to them with
words (or vice versa)?
The example of the tutor who, despite having seen
examples of visual minimalist and purist art, asks the
student what minimalism etc is, is a good example of
man's need to improve verbal communication skills.
Does this example not illustrate the utter necessity
to be conversant both in visual and verbal langauge
for researchers and practitioners in any field so that
ideas/feelings/findings etc can be communicated?
An established performance (conceptual/political)
artist of the 60s uttered a seeming cliche recently:
"Ignorance is not a crime, persistence is"
This translated to art education would be as follows:
"Bad teaching is not a crime, persistence is".
How many educators in FE & HE still need to grasp the
significance of Kurt Scwitters for his *drawings*
(pictorial, relief, sculptural); Barnett Newman for
his drawings challenging the positive pictorial space
with the negative, as well as double image, meaning,
reading; Escher for the same and use of repeated
pattern in drawing/design; Albers for bridging
traditional/figurative drawing and revolutionising
abstract(ed)drawing; the body drawer Oppenheim who
marked himself intentionally with the sun to create
the drawing of a book on his chest and communicate
statements; Emin for carrying her entire bed piece
into the gallery space rather than presenting us with
an exhausted representional drawn-painted version of
the artist's bedroom seen since Van Gogh.
Tracey Emin's Bed is a hyper-hyper-realistic drawing:
it is the extreme end of realism where ultimate
reality of a theme/object becomes- and is- reality
itself.Instead of presenting a copy/representational
hyper-relaistic drawing-painting of her bed, Emin
communicates the realities of her life using the
actual objects, substances themselves. What could
depict the stark reality of Emin's daily life better?
By bringing the objects into (a) space (instead of the
flat, two-dimensional, traditional, archaic picture
plane), she draws (a detail of) her bedroom for us,
superceeding Wesselman's attached bathmat/ door etc
and other artists' assemblages or relief drawings
incorporating three dimensional objects.
The lines, the colours, the forms, the texture,
the feel, the smell, everything about the artists'
bedroom is there in Emin's bed. It is a
three-dimensional drawing which is simultaneiously a
drawing, painting, sculpture as well as conceptual
drawing/painting/sculpture. The drawing started in
Emin's (conceptual) mind and is a physical rendition
or realisation of the same concept.
That tutor again: "Emin's bed is not drawing".
An entire century plus has passed with genius artists
leaving entire estates of works/researches, countless
accessible, wide-spread biographies, having already
re-defined or hep re-define the modern/21st century
definitions of drawing (design, painting, sculpture),
easing the role of the 21st century
artist-tutor-lecturer down to merely communicate and
encourage advancements and advanced modes of thinking
and communication in drawing.
Modern drawing practice, ie the drawing of today,
involves all fore-mentioned disciplines, not just
the archaic practice of drawing or sketching on a
standard picture plane with pencil, but the entire,
wealthy diverse process/product, surface/support,
spirit/substance spectrum, not to repeat and restrict
to the archaic, centuries-old, mouldy definitions of
drawing but to expand, contextualise and contemporize.
Drawing onto sand on a beach with a stick is drawing
in fact and it should be called 'landscape drawing' or
'earth drawings' rather than landscape art (not even
sand painting or earthwork).Using the human body to
convey ideas, thoughts, emotions should not just be
called 'body art' but body drawing, painting or
living/mobile sculptures, whether the body (part or
detail) is used as the medium or tool to create a
single or body of art regardless of whether any
traditional drawing tools or mediums accompany the
realisation process or not. There is no doubt that
Kline felt inclined to use the prints of the bodies
onto paper so that the audiences could comprehend his
thought process at the time. Body art might as well be
redefined as 'body drawing', body painting or body
sculpture. There is definitely a need to redefine,
rename, recategorise, rethink, revise.
Dr Angela Eames' definition of drawing (Head of MA
Drawing at Camberwell College of Arts) is one which
I still consider to be the most contemporary and
inclusive definition of modern drawing as it does
not exclude, dictate, ignorantly reject or pompously
define drawing as a restricted practice.
It highlights that drawing (=design) is the basis and
starting point for all creation, not just fine/visual
art creation. It imposes no barriers on the *TOOLS* or
*MEDIUMS* of drawing and as such is a genius
definition.
I will come to her definition later on, I am writing
speedily and automatically therefore my thoughts are
spread out.
"Drawing is whatever makes a mark on whatever takes a
mark"
Deceptively naive, catchy and believable. It seems too
clever to have been written by a small child and
accomodates all tools/mediums such as cutting blades,
computers etc.
However,
A snail makes a mark on soil, a vomitting drunkard
makes a mark on the pavement, an abusive man makes a
mark on a woman's skin, a pilot's plane makes a mark
on the sky, a smoker's lit cigarette can stain and
burn a carpet, a bomber can make a mark on anything
which will take a mark.
Intention and accident, arbitrary and planned, chaos
and calm, chance and order. These co-exist, not just
in an artistic or creative sense but also in a
phenomenological sense. The key is whether the
intended act or accident (or both) is communicated
by a creative language or not, or whether there is
a creative idea behind its inception/conception.
I saw a wonderful dechirage example in the form of a
tube poster the other day. It was a splendid negative
drawing-painting. No abstract artist could have made a
large-scale dechirage work as fine as that. Since it
was accidentally and unknowingly drawn by a tube
worker, it cannot be considered as art, however,
because it was nothing like any other torn posters I
had ever seen, it was very formalistically appealing,
therefore, it could well classify as art if presented
as such by an artist or discoverer, on the basis that
it is very aesthetic or a 'found drawing-painting'.
The lines ('aircraft vapour trail') marking the
atmosphere, unintentionally and continuously created
by an oblivious pilot in the sky cannot be art unless
the pilot is also an artist or activist who creates a
visual/creative language in the air deliberately, even
if we do not understand or appreciate the language
communicated with or the language is weak.
We could definitely consider vapour trails as fragile
and fleeting 'found drawings', but again, it is the
artist or creatively inclined discoverer who is able
to define, suggest, propose or categorise it as art.
Otherwise all captains who inadvertently create waves
in the sea with their ships are artists; every baker
is a sculptor; everyone is an artist and everything
everyone does, including breathing is art. In terms of
providing inspiration or awe to artists, however, both
can qualify as highly creative inspirations.
Needless to say almost everyone can learn to produce
art (good or bad is a different matter) or write,
as both involve language acquisition and developing
communication skills, but not everyone who writes or
draws is an artist. Artistic language needs proper
developing and harvesting, whether it be non-verbal or
verbal language (which are both dependent on imagery,
signs, symbols).
Drawing can remain totally in the mind/imagination
without being transferred or materialised onto a
physical drawing/picture plane or be transferred
to any unorthodox medium using unorthodox tools.
In response to the debate about groundlessness. There
is probably no such thing....Say we are floating in
space, are we groundless? No, it is just a different
type of space we are occupying. An astronaut's ground
is the space. If we are creating drawings, paintings,
sculptures, designs on the computer, ie virtual
ground, are they groundless? No because an imaginary,
virtual or two-dimensional drawing/picture plane is by
no means groundless. Everything has a ground or space
regardless of whether that ground is tangible,
earthly, three-diemensional not. When we dream, are
the surroundings we occupy groundless? No, in dreams
things often seem even more real/grounded than real
life. When we fly in our dreams, is that groundless?
No. The unconscious, imaginary, ephemeral, emotional,
spiritual realms/spaces we occupy are not groundless.
They are merely different types of ground.
Duff is sensible when she mentions the ethereal
(spiritual) or ephemeral (fleeting) ways of drawing,
and this is closely linked to the inner realm or
spiritual grounds of the unconscious or imagination.
Shadows can be drawing if created or discovered by an
an artist (if purposefully produced or declared as
found ephemeral/ethereal drawings). Many invisible yet
detectable spiritual or scientific phenomena could
also become the scope of drawing, why not?
If giraffes are purposefully being produced by an
artist with the purpose of communicating something
alongside the use of pattern, form, object, subject
etc, then the process/practice/product of breeding
(producing) giraffes can enter the scope of drawing
practice too.
I congratulate Stell and Hill on their contributions
which I have kept.
True groundlessness would be something we could not
speculate on, as it would shatter all our senses,
spirit and perceptions to such an extent that we would
lose all human reasoning and communicative
functions....
The drawing plane/surface does not have to be in
tangible, physical form, neither at the inception/
conception, nor the process or product/realisation
stage, which is why unorthodox drawing tools/mediums
such as computers, video, cameras are perfectly
feesable drawing tools with which the ground becomes a
virtual one. It could be said that performance,
installation, video art do leave marks on human memory
and technological memory (video tapes, CD-Roms, disks
etc) and are therefore marked on human
as well as technological ground/surface.
Another fascinating aspect to this debate is the
actual definition of definition itself:
definition
• noun 1 a statement of the exact meaning of a word
or the nature or scope of something.
The words 'scope of something' is particularly worth
noting.
Defining does not have to be conclusive or definite-
it can be ongoing, just like researches/processes.
According to Eames, drawing exists as the basis and
starting point of all creativity, including fine art
disciplines (interwoven disciplines of drawing/design,
painting, sculpture).
Drawing exists, drawing is, as long as man thinks
(creatively).
Drawing (v) is creative thinking, mark/image making
Drawing (n) is a creative product
Drawing is (Eames)
Drawing exists (Eames)
Leonardo drew in his mind before he materialised his
sculpture (three dimensional drawing), the chissel
being his pencil, the marble his drawing plane. How
many sculptors have drawn from imagination....
It is a unanymously aggreed fact that drawing is at
the heart of all creative arts, whether it be fine
art, art & design, architecture, industrial, interior
or commercial design.
Other general misconceptions about drawing seem to
be that a) drawing is the beginning phase leading to
another artwork, yet another archaic notion adhered to
by some who consider it a prelude, sketch or
preparatory act or activity which precedes the actual
product, therefore is not sufficient, significant or
autonomous enough (this again derives from ancient
definitions/scopes of drawing; drawing serving as a
preparatory, preliminary sketch, study or work
preceeding an actual painting, sculpture, print or
artwork), b) drawing is limited to highly specific
traiditional drawing tools, equipment, media etc
characterised by the use of DRY PIGMENT (pencil,
charcoal, coloured pencil, pastel etc) on the drawing
plane, therefore any drawings done with wet pigment or
paint are not considered a drawing but painting
instead. This invalidated claim and absurd logic is
still vehemently preached by so many, including the
same afore-mentioned tutor who used to assert also
that design and architecture had nothing to do with
drawing (or abstract geometric painting), c) drawing
is black and white, that anything in colour is not
really drawing. If coloured pencils are used it is
drawing, but if coloured watercolour pencils are used
to draw a picture, it is painting d) that black and
white are not colours. This ridicules da Vinci's and
Motherwell's colour spectrums which include white and
black as colours as well as many contemporary masters'
views e) that the use or excessive use
of pattern, motif, sign, symbol etc invalidates works
from being drawings-paintings/fine art. It is quite
possible to create variation within repetition and
thus create an original, strong pictorial language.
The use of overlapping or concentrated lines in linear
drawing does not preclude works from being drawings,
in the same way as the excessive use or repetition of
pattern does not preclude works from being drawing,
although quality is a different matter.
f) the art of drawing is limited to fine art drawing;
that variations, categories, sub-types of artistic
drawing somehow do not exist or are not considered
high art. There are so many architectural, interior
design, industrial, fashion, graphic drawings which
qualify as pure works of art, even putting some fine
artists' drawings to shame g) that drawing is mimetic
not automatic, h) that ground and object have to be
traditional i) that there is no such thing as
automatic, random, intuitive drawing (with complete
disprespect to alla prima, impressionist, automatist
artists) etc.
The list is endless!
Some other quick notes:
Steve's genial contribution below made my day:
"The markings on a giraffe are as good a 'found
drawing' as any, but more deliberately an artist could
in principle become a breeder of giraffes with the
intention that the resulting animals are marks in the
environment"
And yes, repetition does not disqualify something from
being a drawing as patterns/motifs etc are often
embedded in primitive, mythological, historical,
cultural works of art (my words).
Drawing can be process, product or both (in response
to Lili's question).
Concrete (tangible, physical) or conceptual? If
conceptual drawing/art exists, so can virtual art.
Research into the history and development of
conceptual art is highly explanatory.
And that concludes my response!
We are extremely fortunate to have this virtual,
verbal drawing paper to communicate on and I would
be more than interested in continuing this debate.
Kind Regards,
Isabella
Isabella Zuhal Parla
Artist, Lecturer, Tutor
MA Fine Art [Camberwell College of Arts 2004]
PGCE Fine Art [University of Greenwich 2006]
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