Drawing the Line

In middle school, when art class was still a viable part of the curriculum for kids,  we followed along with a  teacher as she drew upon a large pad of newsprint set on an easel. She clutched a black felt marker between her thumb and the palm of her hand at a unique angle -- not because she was demonstrating a secret way to draw, but because she had severe scoliosis that warped her body and twisted her fingers so that only one hand was usable while the other wrist came to rest on her hip. The image of this less-than-5-foot-tall, elderly and acerbic woman standing at the easel was spectacular and scary for me as a sixth grader.

When Mrs. Burton drew the  weathered planks of a shack, the shingles on a roof or the bricks in a wall, I learned about the essence of a thing. It was, she told us, The Line that mattered, and we should never neglect it. I am certain she used source material, because what I did NOT learn in Mrs. Burton's class was how to conjure things to draw merely from my imagination. She taught us to see line everywhere. When Mrs. Burton drew the trunk of a tree and, even more thrillingly, its leaves, I also learned it was the absence of Line that revealed just as much visual information as its presence.

Lines, drawn with an Ebony pencil, jet black - extra smooth.

Process, Cont.

Chicago artist Jeff London contributes this statement, by New Yorker cartoonist Harry Bliss, to our discussion on different approaches to drawing. I would label this "content over representation: 

"What I try to convey in my panels is a human truth. Rarely do I begin with a caption or idea. I begin by drawing something -- anything, say, a couple watching TV. Maybe there's a dog on the floor and the couple is arguing -- pretty common, right? Next, I try to imagine a narrative which led up to this 'frame.' Perhaps, even a narrative beyond what I've drawn. What are these two people fighting about? Politics? Love? Sex? Children? A Mother-in-law? What is the motivation for their actions? In short, what's the story behind the drawing? Investigating the characters both before the drawn panel and after will fuel potential for dialogue. One or both of these narratives will inform a caption. If this doesn't work, I get my girlfriend, Sofi to write a caption -- she's very good."

Dead Writer Digression

I had a bet going once about who would eventually be responsible for what J.D. Salinger would think the most serious of transgressions: The unauthorized production of a blockbuster movie based on his book "The Catcher in the Rye." Jerry Lewis and Steven Spielberg have already tried. The man without a genre - James Cameron - is probably salivating over Salinger's death last night. Perhaps there is a distant cousin who is going to pull a Widow Seuss-like move and cash in on the hermetic writer's work. Maybe we will see Holden Caulfield greeting cards soon ("I hear you hurt like hell. Get well and stuff.") Gross.

Here's a story from The Onion about Salinger's sensibilities as a literary artist. 

Polke on Drawing

Sigmar Polke has said he relies on drawing "to fix an idea."


"Mostly drawings are things I make for myself — I do them in sketchbooks... They are mental experiments — private inner thoughts when I'm not sure what will come out." 

"Why Can't I Stop Smoking?" 1964

66 15/16" x 47 7/16", dispersion and charcoal on canvas

These last two images are very large works on paper (gouache and acrylic) that Polke created during the 1970s, when he was a part of a satiric movement in Germany called "Capitalist Realism." Many of these drawings are like overlapped transparencies on spot color fields, and are a commentary on consumerism, politics in postwar Europe, and conventions in artmaking (because art is always about art, but I repeat myself). David Salle capitalized on this technique in many of his classic paintings:

Sigmar Polke

"Untitled: 2001-06," Artificial resin on  polyester fiber, 53 3/4 x 46 inches

"An artist often identified with the willful opacity of American postmodernists like David Salle and Julian Schnabel." - Art in America on Sigmar Polke, April 1999

John Baldessari once referred to German artist Sigmar Polke as an "artist's artist," because of Polke's instigation in so many postmodern miracles of art. Said Baldessari, "Any one move can provide a career for a lesser artist." Born in 1941, Polke's visual language is full of references to the news, both current and past; popular culture; science, art history (because all art is about making art) and the malleable fable, as well as his mavericky use of materials.

h: 86.6 x w: 181.1 in acrylic on fabric, 1983 

But what about Polke's drawings? We'll take a closer look tomorrow.

Layering with David Salle

David Salle draws on pornography, kitsch, and even other art in his work, overlaying these images in deliberately different styles to call attention to his various reference points. When I was enrolled at SVA in the early 1980s, Salle was a sought-after studio painting instructor and I could not get a spot in his class. "Painting" had been declared dead by the art world, but Salle was continuing to make it important by drawing over his paintings with new indices of meaning.

Kay Tuttle's Approach

There are many approaches to drawing.

One can go at it in an effort to record something observed, and base the quality of the results upon how closely the drawing resembles the thing being rendered. Another approach may be to explore materials -- trying pencil and then charcoal and maybe watercolor, et al, with or without a visual reference point to prompt the artist. Drawing like this can be spontaneous and quixotic, or have a basis in something very formal. Of course, drawing can be narrative or schematic. Both are representational, and both rely on visual storytelling symbology.

The list goes on, and every approach validates drawing as a form of art. Overall, these methods are probably taken for granted by the wide world, so that when a really interesting approach appears, it stands out in stark relief.

Kay Tuttle, "Bête Noire," 2008, 6’ x 6’ Acrylic on cut plywood & wall

Denver artist Kay Tuttle has been watching her father draw things her whole life. Recently she started using these drawings as a starting point for her own work, by drawing on top of her father's imagery:

The result is an overlaying of images that tell different stories but also a story as a whole. Her dad's masculine symbology -- airplanes, tanks, ships and soldiers -- are dressed with Tuttle's flowers and patterns and bits of nature to form a new visual language:

 

"I try to treat them as found surfaces, reacting to the marks, colors, and subject matter he has chosen.  Psychologically it can be difficult as sometimes I erase or obliterate what he drew through marks and value," Tuttle says about this particular group of works on paper. She also remarks that "Thematically the drawings develop into nature versus machine."

View more of Tuttle's re-markable work at her website, www.kaytuttle.com.

Bunnies

This post is merely transitional, to use up some pictures of bunnies cluttering my desktop. The first four are of mixed media on paper by Kay Tuttle, 2006.

The last two are from an old how-to book about drawing (thanks for the scans, Danelle!)

We'll get in to Tuttle's work in more depth tomorrow.

Las Vegas Drawings

Nothing on Google, but the No. 2 search engine, You Tube, has this result for "Las Vegas Drawings:"

Learning from Las Vegas

This is the original architectural drawing of the Stardust hotel sign, born on the Vegas Strip in 1958 and razed in 2006. As a flashing neon sign, its planetary-galactic theme was beyond seductive. But even without the high voltage, its twinkling is idiomatic of the artist's style.

Who exactly conceived of this design is disputed, but here is some excellent history on it.

And here is a link to the brilliant 1972 book that discusses "The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form," (or "The Physiognomy of a Typical Casino Sign,") by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown.

Las Vegas a la Ralph Steadman

After three days in Las Vegas attending a summit at one of the big hotels, I've decided to dedicate the next few days' posts to drawing inspired by what was my dad's favorite place on earth. Above is the seminal work by Ralph Steadman for the Hunter S. Thompson novel "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." It's a wonderful example of characterization and spontaneous ink splotchiness. But I think it also exhibits some amazing draftsmanship.

Enjoy an overview of some of Steadman's work in this video: 

Steadman's ink work is so distinct, it inspired a font called "Deadman," which is downloadable here.

This video, from the Criterion Collection DVD of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, offers a glimpse into Steadman's technique, demonstrated by Steadman himself:

Something Really Ethereal:

In 1949, Picasso drew these pictures in the air with a flashlight. A Life magazine photographer documented the whole thing. I did something quite similar as a child, with those sparklers they only handed out on the Fourth of July, but nobody recorded any pictures of it.

More Historical Renderings:

Portraiture by Vic Harville of the Stephens Media Group.

Artist Dwane Powell's depiction of a U.S. conservative political figurehead in action.

Haitian History Lesson

"Battle on Santo Domingo" (detail), by Polish military painter January Suchodolski, is a remarkable image depicting the successful Haitian slave revolt against the French. Until Pat Robertson quipped that the mayhem of this week's 7.0 earthquake in Haiti was because of that revolt, I never bothered to research the topic. (Robertson, BTW, blamed Hurricane Katrina on God's anger over abortion.) The Haitian uprising Suchodolski painted established the first republic in modern times to be led by people of African descent. It kicked Napoleon's ass to the curb and helped give Jefferson the nerve to make the Louisiana Purchase.
     This painting was made to record history - a reason for art-making that peaked in the 19th century and gave way to Modernism.

Reference to Haiti

"Haiti may be something out of the past or the future... but this country has very little to do with the present." This was the observation of British sculptor John Buckley on a recent visit to the Caribbean. "Haiti is a surreal country. Everything is larger than life. Where else can you find a military dictator who doesn't send his citizens off to war to be killed, he shoots them down himself on the home front? Where else do people in a voodoo trance kiss a pig to death? Where do families see the devil strolling down the street? Where is Aids running riot?" How could Buckley know his observations were pre-apocalyptic?

Swoon Enough

One last image by Swoon for now. 

Until we check in with her again, check out this link:

www.historyofgraffitiart.com

I came across this while researching the last few days' posts. A nice guy named Frank Essink in the Netherlands provides this e-book download "Vandals and Crusaders" free of charge, and includes a "Graffiti History Course." Not sure what that is yet but I am looking forward to his next e-mail!

Swoon Me

These are great examples of Swoon's papercut technique. She makes rough drawings and then slices the images out of stacked sheets of paper, creating a sort of limited print run. The papercuts become almost translucent when absorbed into the surface on which they are plastered. They are like living organisms, the artist has said.

I like the way this image is altered by its context (above).

But what about this context (below)?

It's actually a gallery space - Deitch Projects' Art Basel Miami.

For me, the work doesn't have nearly the same power, not only because its raucousness is contrived, but because only the elite will ever see it:

Who wants to see street art in a gallery? WHO knows it's there?

Monswoon

Swoon makes big drawings of people - portraits of friends and figures she encounters on the streets in New York City. She draws these images on big planks of Linoleum or wood, and painstakingly carves out the negative spaces with carving tools and her trusty Dremel. Then she takes a giant litho roller and inks up their surfaces, and lays down big sheets of paper and walks on them to transfer the images. Sometimes the paper she uses is from Chinese newspapers, which texturizes the drawings and ladens on even more meaning.

When she has printed multiples of each image, she cuts them out and attaches them with wheat paste on exteriors around the city, mostly on the Lower East Side. Over time, the drawings begin to blend into the backgrounds and alter or take on meaning. Pidgeon poop, truck exhaust, tagging, or scars of any order become a part of these images.