Those who love drawings

Back on 3st May, I wrote about how I felt sad for people who simply by-passed a drawing on a wall in favour of a painting and thus missed the intimate and fascinating dialogue that is possible with such works.

Very soon afterwards, I read Souren Melikian's article, "An Inspiring Case of Schizophrenia" in the June issue of Art + Auction. I should first say that over the years of reading this magazine, I have become a huge admirer of Mr. Melikian and his deep, encyclopedic knowledge of so many branches of art and antiques, from his main love, 16th century Persian literature and Iranian art, to old master paintings and drawings. This particular article, sub-titled "Paintings and drawings belong to different worlds. So do the collectors who seek them out", dealt essentially with the same attitudes towards drawings as I had been writing about earlier. Souren Melikian was writing about the March Salon du Dessin, in Paris, where an atmosphere of rapt, close attention is the norm on the gallery stands, totally different from the "bustle and boom" of other art fairs. He went on to describe some of the interesting and beautiful drawings to be seen, some of which had been discovered to be studies for later paintings after considerable connoisseurship and sleuthing.

"Great works on paper do not lend themselves to hype, nor can they be summed up in the sound bites that are so dear to the media and auction houses alike." Not only that, Melikian continued, they do not command the same prices, especially if the drawings cannot be linked to a painting. As most artists know, drawings are private works, often done to express thoughts and feelings without regard to the public arena. Often too, mediocre painters can produce dazzlingly wonderful drawings, even though the market place has difficulty in accepting such works. It takes someone who loves drawings for themselves and has developed a deep knowledge of them to appreciate such buying opportunities.

An interesting point made about drawings historically by Melikian is that they often herald, by many decades or even centuries, new artistic trends in painting. One example he cites is of 16th century drawings by the Genoan artist, Luca Cambiaso, who reduced human figures to simple geometrical figures in a way that could - or should - have led to a Cubist movement in Italy in the 1500s.

The Visitation, c. 1580,
pen & brown ink brown wash on paper, Luca Cambiaso (Image courtesy of the Art Gallery of South Australia)

Other artists he referred to include Victor Hugo, who was a pioneer in abstract art in the 1850 and 1860s with his amazingly atmospheric black ink drawings, many done while he sought political asylum from Napoleon's Second Empire in Jersey and later Guernsey in the Channel Islands. Another artist who could already be termed an Abstract Expressionist in his drawings of 1855 was the Spanish artist, Eugenio Lucas Velazquez, who signed himself Eugenio Lucas. A minor painter, his arresting drawings in black ink or pencil could easily be read as abstract works, a century ahead of his peers.

Eugenio Lucas, Madrid 1817–1870 Madrid,Priest Declaiming, ca. 1850, Black chalk and brown wash (Image courtesy of the Morgan Library, New York)

As Souren Melikian underlined, it takes faith in one's own eye and a knowledge of drawings, old or contemporary, to allow one to enter this quiet and rewarding world that runs parallel to that of paintings. When one does, the delights, surprises and rewards do not fail.

Tuning into Drawings

A remark that was made by Andrew Lambirth in the Spectator magazine in mid-April has stayed with me. Writing about a recent exhibit at Tate Modern, Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective, he wrote, "One of the chief pleasures and revelations of this show is the drawings. The five works here, including 'Study for the Liver in the Cock's Comb', are rich enough to merit a couple of hours' study, and yet most people only glance at them en route to the paintings." (my emphasis).

The Plough and the Song, 1947, Arshile Gorky. (Image courtesy of Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College.)

These cursory glances at drawings en route to paintings in exhibitions make me sad. For many a long year, particularly in the United States, the average person has somehow retained the impression that drawings are very much a second class affair, unworthy of much attention and still less worth acquisition. Since drawing as a medium fell out of fashion during the time when abstract art reigned supreme, it is somewhat understandable. Yet drawing permits a depth of understanding, appreciation and - yes - delight in a viewer willing to pause and really look.

Drawings seldom are as commanding as a painting; their presence is more discreet, more intimate. Yet a drawing is not only a pathway to understanding the artist's paintings, it is also a porthole allowing one to see the artist's inner workings and concerns in the most direct and unadorned fashion. Drawing also allows such an enormous variety of approaches and methods that it makes painting - in oil, acrylic, watercolour, encaustic or egg tempera - seem positively staid. Take Gorky's drawings, with their extraordinary inventiveness of form and use of colour - many of them were the result of numerous repetitions and permutations based on drawings done in the fields and meadows of Virginia on his in-laws' farm. At the other extreme is the delicacy of a silverpoint drawing done by someone such as Koo Schadler, who works in classical media today.

There are - happily - more and more exhibitions of drawings, master drawings for the most part. The public which appreciates drawings is a minority, but a very appreciative and passionate one. Ideally, the task of every artist today is to convey to their supporters and collectors how important drawing is in the artistic process, whether it is a working drawing or a finished one which stands alone. If a viewer understands that a drawing is an "open sesame" to understanding that artist and his or her work, then the whole artistic experience is enriched.

That a drawing merits more than a glance - that's the goal! For each artist and then for each viewer.

Sharing a Love of Drawing

One of my private delights in life is constantly finding links and a serendipitous "circularity" in life. I have just had a delicious example of such a coincidence.

When I was flying back from Spain this week, I used the trip as time to catch up on reading various magazines. In a number of the Spectator magazine, I noticed an advertisement for a guided tour by Curator Hugo Chapman for Spectator readers of an exhibit at the British Museum. The exhibition is entitled "Fra Angelico to Leonardo. Italian Renaissance Drawing" and features about one hundred master drawings from the British Museum collection and that of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. I kept the magazine page to check out the British Museum website when I got home.

Today, I open up my e-mail for the first time, and what should I find but a delightful message from my friend and blog-follower in the United Kingdom, Marion Brown, alerting me to the same exhibition and its marvels. A wonderful coincidence. One that also makes me wish I could hop over to London to see it before the exhibition closes on 25th July.

Leonardo da Vinci, Studies of the Infant Christ and a cat, c. 1478-81.  Photo: TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM

Even browsing the BM website makes me realise that the drawing medium I love so much, silverpoint, is key to such an exhibition. The changing attitude to drawings, the role they began to play in artists' working methods and the intimate links back to classical time in Greece and Rome are apparently demonstrated by Hugo Chapman's choice of works to display. The characteristics of paper, too, are brought out in Dr. Chapman's blog, in that the drawings, when they arrived from Florence, needed to "rest" and acclimatise to their new environment. Since paper is a living organism, it adapts and changes when it is moved. Any artist who works on paper finds this out, almost the hard way, when a finished work suddenly develops undulations, for instance, even under glazing. Given time, the work will adapt to the new conditions and revert to its normal appearance.

Thank you, Marion, for telling me about this exhibition. It is interesting to watch how many more museums are mounting master drawing exhibitions, many of which are featuring silverpoint more prominently. The power exercised by drawings is eloquent. The directness and honesty of this medium - or media, given that there are pen and inks, metalpoints, chalks and later graphites - allow today's museum visitors almost to feel as if the artist is working in front of them, trying out ideas, peering closely at the human body, altering and correcting things. The span of centuries means nothing as one looks at a drawing; its voice is singular and commanding, eloquent of the artist's vision.

If you are lucky enough to be in London, I suspect this exhibition will be well worth a visit. Failing that, the catalogue, Fra Angelico to Leonardo. Italian Renaissance Drawings", would be a lovely possession, I know. Now to order it.

Silverpoint and graphite drawings from Sapelo

It is interesting how a beautiful place like Sapelo Island inspires one to do so many different types of art. Now that I have been able to look again at the work I produced last weekend on the Island as Artist-in-Residence, I realise that I managed to produce some very different pieces, ranging all over the place in subject matter and in approach.

Long after the Storm, silverpoint, Jeannine Cook artist

It reminds me how one responds to places and situations in such varied ways. There seems, certainly in my case, to be some unspoken dialogue that goes on subliminally between what one's eyes are seeing and what one instinctively senses could become a drawing or a painting. It is almost beyond cogent thought. You just "know" that that will be a subject worth trying to tackle. It usually ends up humbling one, resulting in a somewhat different result that one visualised... in essence, the subject dictates the whole process. Scouting for possible subject matter is always initially instinctive. Only after one has decided that there is something there to be explored does one try to analyse what exact medium to use and how to go about actually physically doing the artwork. Often this whole process is rapid, because when working plein air, you know that the whole thing is fleeting. Light will change, the tide will alter, the birds will fly off, people might come along to fill the empty scene or whatever.

In any case, I found so many things of fascination to try and draw or paint. These three drawings I am posting are just examples. The Cedar Tree posted above, in silverpoint, was the crown of a huge old tree that had been blown down many years ago and was lying, burnished and reduced to its core, in deep marsh grasses.

Sapelo Dunes was an early morning silverpoint study of the different parts of the dunes facing the restless waves that aided the wind to shape these dunes. Holding the sand against these forces, the sea oats cling tenaciously, their roots amazingly long and lying exposed at the eroded face of the dunes.

Sapelo Dunes, silverpoint, Jeannine Cook artist

The third drawing is a graphite drawing done as the sun was setting on the wide sweep of low-tide beach, the light glinting on the marvellous ridges left in the sand by the water's motion. I was racing the light and only had a very short time before darkness fell. No time for thought, just a fascination to try and make something of nature's marvellous complexity in Low Tide Tracery.

Low Tide Tracery, graphite, Jeannine Cook artist

Discovery of a wonderful draughtswoman, Sky Pape

Just recently, I read of an exhibition opening at New York's June Kelly Gallery entitled "Water Works: Surface Tension", with drawings by Sky Pape. I was intrigued and delighted: this Canadian artist, living in New York, is creating drawings that I find beautiful, sensitive and highly unusual.

Sky Pape is pushing out the boundaries of the definition of drawing in a way that marries physical - and I mean her whole body, not just arms and hands - with intellectual and true global awareness. She uses the traditional drawing media - save for silverpoint, apparently - but in totally new fashions. Her papers are from many sources, but all with environmental and societal considerations. Tibet, Nepal, Korea and Japan are some of the paper-making sources, and she views her work as "a collaboration with those distant paper-makers in Asia", as she folds, cuts, amalgamates and reverses the different types of paper to create her work.

Untitled (Image 4584), 25"h x 38-1/2"w, water and Sumi ink on handmade kozo paper, 2010

Her mark-making media range from graphite to coloured pencil to ink - humble, traditional and simple media, but she uses them in very different fashion. For instance, she blows ink through tubes and funnels onto these handmade Asian papers that she has spread on the floor. Building on her belief that drawing is at the centre of any art, she is combining a physical expressiveness with a recognition that the paper is part of the creative dialogue, and it too symbolises nature in all its manifestations. The minimalist and elegant drawings that result from these unusual approaches are evocative, and satisfying - even seen in digital form. How much more worthwhile they must be to see in person, one can only imagine.

Having had the fun of studying many of her drawings on her website, I am not at all surprised that she will be spending March this year in Bellagio, Italy, on a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. There are many many wonderful draughtsmen working today, but I am always thrilled to find an artist who is not only pushing out the boundaries of drawing media but going so in an uplifting fashion that makes me go "Ah!" with pleasure and interest.

"Untitled (5467)," water and Sumi ink on handmade kozo paper, 25 x 30-1/2 inches

See what you all think of Sky Pape.

Louis Agassiz Fuertes

Many years ago, when we first moved to coastal Georgia, I had the delight of seeing an exhibition at Savannah's Telfair Museum of Art about Louis Agassiz Fuertes. Not being born in this country, I am always catching up on matters American, and this wonderful naturalist-artist was one such discovery.

I was reminded of his paintings and quick, skillful pencil drawings when I read of an exhibition which has just opened at the New York State Museum. Born in 1874, Louis Agassiz Fuertes was soon recognised as a very skillful artist, and his short life (he was killed in a car accident in 1927) was devoted to recording birds through North America. Cornell University, his alma mater, has a wonderful collection of his work.

Belted Kingfisher Megaceryle Alcyon by Louis Agassiz Fuertes

This leading bird artist of his day was a dedicated artist who tramped through woods and vales to record birds in the wild, as well as using specimens back in the studio for his detailed paintings. He knew how to capture the essential character of each bird. His knowledge of habitat for each bird species was also superb. His work made him one of the important pioneers, following in Audubon's footsteps, for environmental awareness. We all owe him a huge debt of gratitude as his work made people aware of the need to protect birds and their habitat.

A pair of passenger pigeons (accompanied by a second work _, (Image courtesy of Askart.com)

Look out for Louis Agassiz Fuertes' paintings and drawings - they are a huge delight.

The Honesty of Drawing

I found a quote by Sandy Davidson about drawing that I find interesting. She said, "Drawing is intimate and reveals exactly where we are, and in a culture that isn't comfortable with that, it frightens many. You just cannot cheat when you draw."

Considering that drawing, in its many forms, has enjoyed an amazing resurgence in popularity and interest these past few years, that statement begins to make one wonder: Are we as a society becoming more accepting of others' differences, of other tastes and cultures? Has tolerance begun to seep in at the edges of this complex world we live in, particularly in the United States?

Disperson, Julie Mehretu, 2002

If drawing, indeed a truthful and sometimes brutally direct medium, is being more widely understood, then it is holding up mirrors of ourselves to us and our fellow citizens that we can find more to our liking. Perhaps a note of hope at a time when society seems as riven as ever by divergencies of politics, ethics, beliefs.

Back to drawing - hooray!

How nice it is finally to get back to drawing after travels and the imbroglio of daily life! Life drawing is a passport to sanity for me and makes me feel more centered again. That hush in the room as a dozen or so artists concentrate on drawing is like a benediction; it reminds me that there is this whole union of artists out there all over the place, quietly doing their best to create art in all sorts of versions and visions, all intense and passionate. A nice universe of which to be a part!

Time and time again, I read in the press the comment from an artist that only when he or she is actively involved in art-making is there a sense of coherence, even harmony, in that artist's world. When one is not drawing, painting or whatever the creation involves, then there is a feeling of disquiet, dislocation. It is true in my case.

As I peer at the intricacy of fingers clasped, or the play of light on muscles on an arm or across a back, time becomes meaningless, for a while. That is a good feeling. It makes me think of the quote I read the other day from Antoni Gaudi, the great Catalan Modernist architect from the later 19th and early 20th century (think of la Sagrada Familia church in Barcelona): "Everything comes from the great book of nature." Life drawing is certainly part of that enormous and endlessly fascinating tome.

Main Gate, Dragon, Antoni Gaudi, Guell Park, Barcelona

Hurray for exhibitions of Master Drawings!

It always delights me when I see that another exhibition of Master Drawings is on display, to celebrate this extraordinarily simple, yet sophisticated, diverse and direct medium.

I see that the Kunstmuseum in Basel, Switzerland, is opening a survey of 101 drawings from their huge collection in an exhibit entitled From Dürer to Gober. The earliest is apparently a 1400 silverpoint from the French/Burgundian court, where drawings of stylised, elegantly clad men and women seem almost to step from pattern books. Other silverpoints use the favourite method of the artist drawing on tinted grounds, which allows a wonderful play of highlights done in white gouache - often a perfect way to get rhythms going in the drawing and basically have some fun. On the Kunstmuseum's website's main page, the silverpoint portrait on green-turquoise ground has the most wonderful fur hat mostly done in white gouache. I can really relate to this white gouache highlighting - it is occasionally hugely satisfying to use when drawing in silverpoint!

The Heads of the Virgin and Child, by Raphael, ca. 1502, silverpoint on warm white prepared paper, 10 x 7. (Image courtesy of The Trustees of the British Museum, London

Standing Woman,1460-69, by Fra Filippino Lippi. (Image courtesy of The Trustees of the British Museum, London)

Another important Master Drawing exhibition is now also on display at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. From Renaissance to Revolution: French Drawings from the National Gallery of Art, 1500-1800. 120 drawings done by French artists and foreign artists working in France - what a feast for the eyes! Great, well-known artists, but apparently, also less-known ones, so it means that there is a richness and depth that will reward any lucky visitor to the show. I was fascinated to see that the earliest work is done about 1500 and that it is a landscape done in watercolour, of all media. "The Coronation of Solomon by the Spring of Gihon", it was done by the miniaturist Jean Poyet, who worked for Anne of Brittany, Queen of France.

I remember, not so long ago, when it was very unusual to find an exhibition of drawings, let alone Master Drawings. Now that the Drawing Center and other such institutions exist, and that both the public and artists themselves are appreciating much more the intrinsic interest and beauty of drawings, in all their diversity, there are so many more opportunities to see drawings displayed. It used to be that The Morgan and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Getty, the Louvre, the British Museum and others in European capitals were the bastions of such shows. Now, that has changed. A list in a spring 2009 issue of the Berkshire Review for the Arts is eloquent - lots of drawings on which people could feast their eyes earlier this year.

Vive le dessin!

Charles Baudelaire et le Dessin

Étant donné que je me suis lancée dans la discussion des remarques de Charles Baudelaire sur le dessin, je dois quand même les reporter également en français, puis que la beauté du langage de Baudelaire le mérite. Selon Baudelaire, "un bon dessin n'est pas une ligne dure, cruelle, despotique, immobile, enfermant une figure comme une camisole de force. Le dessin doit être comme la nature, vivant et agité – la nature nous présente une série infinie de lignes courbes, fuyantes, brisées, suivant une loi de génération impeccable, où le parallélisme est toujours indécis et sinueux, o­­ù les concavités et les convexités se correspondent et de poursuivent."

Étienne Carjat, Portrait of Charles Baudelaire, circa 1862.

En effet, j'ai repensé à ces remarques pendant que j'essayais de dessiner des paysages et nuages cette après-midi. Les nuages se formaient et se reformaient à une vitesse vertigineuse et tout changeait à chaque instant. Il fallait se concentrer sur la connexion oeil-main et ne pas penser d'une façon consciente pour arriver à faire même un croquis convenable. Baudelaire avait bien saisi l'essentiel de l'acte de dessiner quelque chose.