Journal of Illustration - Volume 3, Issue 2, 2016

In this article, illustrations of Dante’s Commedia are viewed from the particular angle of textual subversion, which increased in degree over time. After beginning with a consideration of Dante’s own subversive habits in the context of the medieval literary world in order to highlight the fact that illustrators who visually undermined the letter of the text were in ironic harmony with the spirit of this work, the article turns to instances of late medieval and early modern illuminators and illustrators who, in these earlier stages, more subtly punctured the authoritative status which Dante’s text obtained almost immediately following its completion. The article moves on to show that by Dante’s renaissance in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries illustrators felt far freer to blatantly meld their own imaginations with that of the original author, and by the mid-twentieth century, certain Commedia illustrations subjected text to image in varying ways.

Contrary to his later supreme self-belief, as a young man Lucian Freud considered his artistic abilities meagre. Determined, nevertheless, to hammer out a viable means of creative expression he applied his formidable powers of concentration to make up for a lack of natural talent. By and large, his early chosen means was drawing. Through a series of chance encounters, some of these images were used as illustrations for poetry and prose, and this essay reflects upon their shortcomings in fulfilling such roles. Alongside thoughts about the difficulties of translation, it suggests that Freud was unsuited to illustration, being too immature to take on its necessary pictorial obligations. However, his early drawings give several clues to Freud’s later successful career, particularly when imagined within his grandfather Sigmund’s concept of parapraxis.

Reportage drawing is a revelatory act that combines the challenges of quick, gestural drawing with a level of accuracy in the depiction of people and places. Add to that the complications of working in sometimes hostile or, at the very least, less than ideal environments and you have a highly unique drawing act. Reportage drawing, through its quick execution necessitated by environmental flux and other conditions, also provides a window into the genesis of the drawing. The momentary, intuitive process fluctuates between the observed, the imagined and the remembered. Looking at the way in which the drawing is rooted to the in situ experience and notions of place, artists engage in reportage drawing in highly individual ways, balancing intent with the demands of observation in fluid environments. Experience here is twofold: the experience of negotiating the location and the experience of drawing itself. Through interviews conducted with reportage artists Jill Gibbon, Gary Embury as well as my own work and reflections, the aims and intentions of the artists will be compared and contrasted, and tensions between the journalistic and social commentary aims will be explored through individual practice. Jill Gibbon’s practice and research looks at the potential in reportage drawing for political, even radical, expression. Her War Mart work is explored here, which clearly reveals her reportage process, secretly drawing at an arms trading event in London and creating evocative commentary through her hurried, immediate drawings. Gary Embury is the editor of the Reportager website, which provides a crucial platform for contemporary reportage practice. His work is characterized by raw observation and his declared aims for his work are journalistic. This work has great immediacy and reveals the simultaneity between observation and action in drawing. Through a narrative of the experience creating their work in differing environments, the work will be seen as the summation of experience and the complex intentions and self-imposed limitations of the artists, contributing to an intimate look at contemporary reportage practice.

This article examines the emergence of illustrative practices among fine artists to achieve a particular mobility, one that enables them to gather, synthesize and communicate information across diverse environments, locations and communities. The article recognizes a growing appetite among contemporary illustrators and artists to work collaboratively and across previously separate disciplines, and focuses on artists leaving the studio to seek out ever more responsive applications of drawing. This reveals a hybrid, fluid approach in drawing, a new sensitivity in which drawing is used by artists as a way of analysing, communicating and reflecting upon aspects of lived experience, some of which might normally be the province of other research professionals. We explore how these ‘itinerant’ artists use drawing to translate into graphic form information, ideas and practices from other fields of activity – for instance, oceanography (Peter Matthews), medicine (Julia Midgley) and political activism (Jill Gibbon). While these contemporary practices are at the cutting edge, we discuss their direct lineage to Ruskin’s Elements of Drawing (1857) and his belief in the use of drawing to interrogate the world and our position in it. We argue that this underacknowledged mode of practice is timely and significant for a globalized interdisciplinary research community because it reveals drawing’s capacity to intercede, for problem-solving and for building relationships across otherwise disparate communities and areas of expertise.

This article aims to understand the concept of Nepali pann (-ness/touch/flavour) in Nepali children’s illustration – to examine and address how the country’s changing sociopolitical and economic changes have affected the parameters of Nepali-ness and defined visual parameters of national identity – by tracing the historical trajectory.