Drawing and materiality 2/2

The capacity for drawing is a most important, and apparently unique faculty of the human mind, and one of the prime techniques in the history of art. Acts of drawing often have been considered as privileged materializations of mental images or ideas.

Individual drawings, the results of such acts, may be coveted as essential documents revealing the genesis of works of art; as windows to an artist’s personality, and as complete and important masterpieces in themselves. With all such appreciation and acknowledgment, there are still great intellectual challenges for both the practical and theoretical analysis of drawings and drawing-acts; especially of drawing as material interface between concept and final production in art – where we can think of the materializing and first outward visibility of the prima idea, as well to the material role of the cartoon and even the counterproof.

From the viewpoint of materiality it may also be said that the technical investigation of drawings and the drawing process has lagged rather far behind the technical research of painting and sculpture. It has been generally acknowledged that studies of the materials aspects of drawings are of the greatest importance for authentication, as well as conservation; and important research has been done after materials employed in the act of drawing, for instance on the production and structure of paper. But compared to other fields of the visual arts, these studies have been incidental and relatively far apart.

Often the actual drawings have been considered and studied as static sheets. Yet, drawings are objects with a life of their own. At first, they are complex traces of human cognition or motor activities, preceding the application of ink or chalk on paper. But even after the hand of artists have stopped modifying the drawings, many changes continue to take place. Some of these changes are the obvious and sometimes brusque result of human intervention, such as reworking, restoring, cutting, ripping or bleaching. Others are less obvious or harder to trace but comparably significant. These concern various processes of metamorphosis due to chemical processes within the materials themselves, combined with environmental factors such as exposure to light or humidity. All of these processes are part of what one could call the material biography of a drawing.

Interventions :

• Birgit REISSLAND - Turning the page. Rembrandt's drawing supports

• Christoph ORTH, Carsten WINTERMANN - Close Reading. New Interdisciplinary Research on Drawings by Caspar David Friedrich

• Charlotte HEALY, Margaret Holben ELLIS - Traces of Transformation in the Drawings of Willem de Kooning

• Anne GOODYEAR - Jim Dine, Portraiture, and The Metaphorical Materiality of Drawing