a survey of drawing - Black Dog Publishing

The Drawing Book [8.0] 21/10/05 11:23 Page 2
Leonardo da Vinci
Plan for Casting the Sforza Monument, c. 1493
THE
DRAWING
BOOK
a survey of drawing: the primary means of expression
edited by Tania Kovats
Black Dog Publishing

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CONTENTS
6 TRACES OF THOUGHT AND INTIMACY
Tania Kovats
12 INVESTIGATING THE STATUS OF DRAWING
16 DRAWING INTO PAINTING
21 SPATIAL DRAWING
25 IN PARALLEL: DRAWING AND SCULPTURE
25 THIS DRAWING LIFE
35 DRAWING IN PART
Kate Macfarlane and Katharine Stout
42 MEASUREMENT
88 NATURE
138 CITY
200 DREAMS
252 BODY
Charles Darwent
302 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
304 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
306 CREDITS
310 INDEX
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TRACES OF THOUGHT AND INTIMACY
6
TRACES OF THOUGHT
AND INTIMACY
Tania Kovats
When NASA first started sending astronauts into space, they realised that the
ballpoint pen would not work at zero gravity. A million dollar investment and
two years of tests resulted in a pen that would write in space, upside down,
on any surface and at any temperature from below freezing to over 300 degrees
centigrade. When confronted with the same problem, the Russians used a pencil.
I was given the ‘Russian Space Pen’ by a friend at the very beginning
of compiling The Drawing Book. I think this story may well be apocryphal but
I can’t think of a better place to start than with an astronaut and a pencil
in space. The Drawing Book is a cosmology of drawing. By this I mean that the
drawings in this book describe and trace a vast tract of experience. Constructing
a visual narrative with this collection of drawings situates these traces into
a possible order. This is not a chronological or geographical order, but it is
a conversation between the drawings made by artists, scientists, designers,
engineers, filmmakers, illustrators, children, architects and other visionaries.
It is also appropriate to start this book with a story, whether true or not.
Any book has an implicit narrative to it. It also has an inside and an outside—
not all things have this, images don’t. You can enter a book. There is a time
before and a time after a book and a sequence to the time you spend with
it. The intention of The Drawing Book is to take you, the reader, on a journey.
What drawings do, as well as what drawings are, is one of the subjects of this
journey. Drawings are not simply things to look at; they are a direct form of
positive communication. Part of the reason they communicate so directly is
that drawing belongs to everyone. Acts of drawing occur all the time—someone
applying eyeliner, doodling whilst on the phone, or making someone a map
on the back of an envelope. We are all mark-makers.
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MEASUREMENT
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I must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s.
I will not reason and compare; my business is to create.
William Blake
William Blake
Elisha in the Chamber on the Wall,
c. 1819-1820
pencil and watercolour on paper
24 x 21 cm
William Blake’s work, as an artist and a poet, represents a meeting point between
word and image. In this image, we enter a room within a room through the frame
of the picture, leading us into the world of the visionary.
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MEASUREMENT
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Borders can show where to cross or where to turn back. The border
between a drawing and the rest of the world is the edge of the paper,
and of course there is a sense in which a drawing’s image must turn
back when it reaches that edge. The artist’s pencil can crowd right
up to the last millimeter of paper, yet the more insistently it does so
the more clearly it demonstrates the effectiveness of drawing’s
particular kind of border.
Carter Radcliff, Drawing Distinctions: American Drawing of the Seventies
Eva Hesse
Untitled, 1966
ink and pencil on paper
30 x 23 cm
Eva Hesse
Untitled, 1969
ink, gouache and pencil on paper
59 x 45 cm
The work of American artist Eva Hesse in the 1960s utilised primary forms in
a manner unique to her; the eccentric abstraction of her simple shapes
demonstrates a more intuitive, sensuous approach than that of the more formal
experiments of her contemporaries.

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MEASUREMENT
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Eva Hesse
Untitled, 1961
ink and crayon on paper
26.5 x 23.5 cm
… every corner in a house, every angle in a room, every inch of
secluded space in which we like to hide, or withdraw into ourselves,
is a symbol of solitude for the imagination…. An imaginary room
rises up around our body, which we think well hidden when we take
refuge in a corner.
Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
Eva Hesse
Untitled, 1967
watercolour, metallic gouache, and pencil on paper
29 x 39 cm
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MEASUREMENT
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In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect
of the work…. If the artist carries through his idea and makes it into
visible form, then all the steps in the process are of importance.
The idea itself, even if not made visible, is as much a work of art
as any finished product. All intervening steps—scribbles, sketches,
drawings, failed works, models, studies, thoughts conversations—
are of interest. Those that show the thought process of the artist
are sometimes more interesting than the final product.
Sol LeWitt, Paragraphs on Conceptual Art
Sol LeWitt
Folded Drawing, 1971
paper
28 x 28 cm
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MEASUREMENT
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What is this drawing? Why, it is a calf, a square, a flower…. No matter
that it is the material deposit, on a sheet of paper or blackboard, of a little
graphite or a thin dust of chalk.
Michel Foucault, This Is Not A Pipe
Jan Vredeman de Vries
plate from Book of Perspective,
1604-1605
David Musgrave
Form in a Bag, 2004
graphite on paper
35.5 x 30 cm