Hi Rachael and Spike,
Thanks for all you have said.
"More grist to the elbow"
Regards,
Cecile Elstein
-----Original Message-----
From: The UK drawing research network mailing list
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Rachel & Spike
Sent: 22 November 2008 12:14
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Fwd: why has there been a swing back to drawing?
Hello Becky, my own naive and hopeful view is that drawing places us in
connection with ourselves fully, here in the life-world.
Instead of the virtual distance we don't necessarily 'experience' but
co-join in absence (that very technology that refines through developed
'etch-a-sketch'-ese within which we do not develop ourselves but follow
a doctrined path), we actualise a freedom of thought through embodied
mark making.
This is very much Jean Baudrillard i realise but i feel it's true and
more important now than ever.
Glamour is too easy for those of intellect who have some experience. Any
basic novice could take a photograph of someone real and through a few
easy steps, refine it on photoshop to make it appear glamourous and
fitting that thin veil called 'beautiful'. The inhuman brush of media
can clean away blemishes, brighten the eyes, enhance and richen colour,
lift eye lids, over-define lashes, balance or make more symmetrical, etc
etc. Is this what we strive for through art?
I think drawing cuts back on gloss of media glamour, it defines human
reaction and modification - searching and finding - but it also leaves
its traces of definition and correction and screams nuance. Drawing is a
language which utilises pressure as well as arc of elbow, turn of wrist
etc. Graphically, before a real drawing, we can intuit feeling and
passion, this is the very language which is bleached away on a computer
screen. This is the very thing which eludes today's multi media
'perfected/corrected' images, depth itself, human contact of emotion,
experience and presence.
The computer is for me nothing but the whiteness of the paper i wish to
destroy with the placing of a presence there. A scan of one brush mark
does not convey the essence of that brushstroke, it conveys an
appearance which is registered by a machine and translated into a
separate language of 0's and 1's and thereore diminished. Like
converting Shakespeare's language into Telly Tubby language. We don't
feel the flow of the medium or the tease of the brush, we can pick up on
the groove created in the paper by the force of the pencil.
If you excuse the lewdness, i guess it's the same as the difference
between having real sex and looking at porn.
:)
Just a luddite opinion.
Spike.
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