MoMA Attempts to Define 'Drawing'

"Last month, Christian Rattemeyer, the Harvey S. Shipley Miller Associate Curator of Drawings and organizer of the sprawling Compass in Hand exhibition at MoMA in NYC, convened an evening symposium on the role of drawing in contemporary art. That this subject remains a popular discussion topic was evidenced by hundreds of artists, scholars, curators, and patrons who assembled to listen to panelists Isabelle Dervaux, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Drawings at The Morgan Library & Museum, Carter Foster, Curator of Drawings at The Whitney Museum of American Art, and artists Gareth James and Charline von Heyl, lend their scholarly and technical expertise on the matter.

     After ruminating on the intellectual and philosophical implications of drawing as artistic practice in their respective presentations, one audience member raised what was perhaps the most salient point of the evening: Why the need to define drawing? And to what end?

The struggle to ascertain the significance of the drawn mark in order to arrive at a fundamental definition of drawing – one that is more inclusive than a mere set of material and technical procedures – has fueled intellectual debate for decades. In fact, one of The Drawing Center’s founding tenets was to challenge the conceptual and material boundaries of drawing in order to up end conventional notions about the discipline.

     While the MoMA symposium did not produce a clear definition of drawing that is specific to the present generation of artists, scholars, and curators, it did reveal a certain anxiety among artists and scholars to delineate what drawing means now."

-Stephanie Schumann, Editor 12.18.09 (original post)