Drawing: Research, Theory, Practice - Volume 6, Issue 1, 2021

In order to present visual art as a paradigm for philosophy, Maurice Merleau-Ponty investigated the creative processes of artists whose work corresponded closely with his philosophical ideas. His essays on art are widely valued for emphasizing process over product, and for challenging the primacy of the written word in all spheres of human expression. While it is clear that he initially favoured painting, in his late work Merleau-Ponty began to develop a much deeper understanding of the complexities of how art is made in parallel with his advancement of a new ontology. In this article I focus on the materiality of Merleau-Ponty’s work in progress through an examination of his unfinished manuscript and working notes in the Bibliothèque national de France (BnF) in Paris. Through a reflection on the potential of these archive documents to reveal new insights into his working processes, I establish a connection to Merleau-Ponty’s own embodied thought mechanisms to uncover comparative methods of enquiry to those used in drawing practice.

Suppose we consider an independent artist tolerance allows for a ‘margin of error’ as an aesthetic measure, it follows that its innate implication must impact on any, and all artworks, its intervention and the effects of its making. Seeing this independent tolerance, strangely, intersecting with a certain drawing and its erring in doing, this writing considers the link between error and an enduring measure of the artist’s hand and reconsiders its indexical relation to the artist. The inquiry begins with a reflection on Katharina Hinsberg’s (1999) Nulla dies sine linea ('No Day without a Line'), where error and a detached automated approach to drawing is emphasized. Going on, brings into the discussion Warhol’s ‘blotted line’, which prefigures a notion of a ‘failure of reproduction’ and the production of its effects. Elaborating, on Hinsberg’s subjective resistance and Warhol’s failure of reproduction, the discussion brings on board Christopher Wool’s, and Wade Guyton’s technical execution and erring. Marked by craft, tools and by decisions about tools, Wool’s and Guyton’s work resolutely embraces the hand encumbering the reasoning of the mind’s judgements and the use and fidelity of machined methods of reproduction. Wool’s roller, stamp, stencil, and Guyton’s skewed digital technologies, their operational error and technical failure take the mind and the hand back together, and demonstrate that perhaps the trace of the artist’s hand, no matter how dispassionate, ironic or vacuous of meaning stubbornly remains a drawing’s most compelling message.

‘Literacy’ refers to the ability to both assign meaning to – and to create messages. Transposing this concept to ‘architectural literacy’ could refer to the assigning of meaning to architectural messages and the ability to create such messages. ‘Architectural literacy’ suggests that architects employ a distinct language to communicate, process and design spatial propositions and that the knowledge of such literacy could be of importance to a broader community. In architectural practices, drawing is used to discourse about forms and spaces. Our approach to disassemble architectural drawings in a set of functions, aims to add understanding about a specific ability to learn and understand architecture. Disassembling architectural drawing in a set of functions stems from a reflective conversation upon our practices as drawing teachers in architectural faculties. In an attempt to (re)structure the didactic foundations of our own teaching practices, we started discussing the kind of drawings architects resort to. This research gradually revealed a set of distinct, yet interrelated functions and activities. We introduce architectural drawing as a specific faculty of a large field of drawing practices, which revolves around the convergence of perception, imagination, disclosure and artistic expression. Learning about the distinct activities and abilities to process forms and spaces provides a knowledge base to explore foundations of architectural reasoning.

Standing apart from traditional illustration city illustrations are interpretations by illustrators that take urban space as their primary source. The practice of drawing in the city, what I call drawing in situ, is part of a methodology to construct city illustrations that aims to know as you go carrying out a performance that is not premeditated before departure but discovered along the way. These illustrated cities work as mediators between the physical city and the illustrator’s imagination striving to present alternative perspectives about urban space. In this paper, I reflect on how subjective approach and embodied experience in the city emphasize the illustrator’s skills to contemplate, understand, and synthesize the city in one or a series of drawings.

The results from drawing in situ become an extension of the illustrator’s body: intimately connected to movement and the direct experience of urban space. Far from simplifying the depiction of the city, the artistic practice as research explores the dynamics between different urban dimensions (architecture, moods, people, and stories) employing the artistic techniques better suited to expressively represent the illustrator’s encounter with the surrounding environment. My artistic practice as research, here presented, regards the different ways in which the dynamics of the city enhance, complement, or contradict urban perception and the understanding of urban space by the illustrator. It shows that the practice of drawing in situ is simultaneously engaging with and describing the city, experiencing, and learning through movement and creation. The drawing ability of the illustrator appears as a skilful way to disturb the usual perceptions of the cities focusing on the entanglements of lived experience in which the illustrator also takes part.

In this project the limitations of perspectival drawing are revised and reconsidered through a particular visual (dis)ability: keratoconus. Perspectival representation is based not only on a single and immobile eye, but also on an ‘able’ eye. The de-formation of keratoconic vision offers a new means to consider the perspectival drawing by extending beyond the limitations of its structure. The degenerative keratoconic eye thus calls attention to the intricate mechanism of sight and to the eye’s machinic functioning. By referring to Creative Evolution by Henri Bergson and The Large Glass by Marcel Duchamp it becomes possible to articulate the nuanced relations between the complexity of the eye as a complex structure and the simplicity of its unitary function. Through keratoconic vision, one experiences the formations and (de)formations of the visual image due to the eyes’ functioning and dysfunctioning. This then leads to the search for an alternative medium that is similar to such a nuanced embodied visual experience. The interval between the machinations of vision and the simplicity of its function is more closely resembled through the visual experience of the stereoscope. The digitization of the stereoscope further unfolds this notion of the durational interval that lies between the machinations of vision and their unitary function, increasingly veering towards the former. Emerging digital stereoscopic imaging begin to utilize feedback and interaction and thus produce new ways to imagine the complexity of the eye(s) and visuality more broadly.

Reportage drawing is a way of visual journalism and records opinions as well as observation. In ethnographic fieldwork, reportage drawing has been used as a method of visually documenting ethnographic discoveries. The question is: what are the most significant skills that a reportage drawing artist need to effectively document visual materials? This paper proposes three important skills: speed-drawing, understanding of subjectivity, and appropriate use of conventions. Speed-drawing is essential for on-location settings to help quickly capture important aspects of moving subjects. Understanding the influence of subjectivity is important in an ethnographic setting, as it helps the artist to realize what cultural characteristics are valuable from their point of view so they can quickly decide what to record and what to omit in a fast-paced reportage setting. Applying conventions makes it easier to translate three-dimensional scenes into two-dimensional drawings and can also be used to add more information, but needs to be used wisely to avoid loss of crucial visual data. With practice-based research as core methodology, this project justifies the proposed argument with the analysis of my own reportage drawing practice, including both the process and the outcome.

Figure drawing is a rich and problematic context for exploring drawing conventions with many connections to contemporary art and visual culture. The human figure can inspire students to more fully develop their own artistic practice and to critically engage with contemporary art and visual culture. Representations of the human body in art and visual culture are also relevant to important issues in the lives of students. Figure drawing has a long history associated with technical skills, ideas about mastery and the artist’s training. Skill, knowledge and drawing techniques, when combined with critical conversations about representing the human body, provide rich topics for discussion and reflection. How the human form is dressed, undressed and depicted in art and popular visual culture reflects vital issues about gender, race, identity, beauty, compliance and agency. This paper describes a range of different methods to give the skills associated with drawing the human form context within contemporary issues and to disrupt conventional and uncritical approaches.

This paper describes the conceptually democratic drawing project, ‘We Will Draw with Anyone about Anything’. This action research activity explores the communicative value of collaborative drawing while promoting the deskilling of preconceived institutional necessities for rendering expertise. Exploring the interdependency that is entailed in sitting down at a table and having a collaborative face-to-face conversation with another human being can be different from the modes of communication that comprise the digitized sphere. This project aspires to engage participants in collective visual knowing and simultaneously be a critique of the commodified capitalist approach to drawing practice.