Reading Task 2

To Draw is to be Human, by Emma Dexter, from Vitamin D, Phaidon, 2005

- Drawing can be used as a global visual language when verbal communication fails.

- We draw in and on the material of the world e.g. footprints in snow, airplain trails in the sky.

- "Drawing forever describes its own making in its becoming." Therefore drawing isn't anything more than that, and in its eternal incompletion always re-enacts imperfection and incompletion.

- Recent theoretical writing concentrates on the conceptual and process-oriented nature of the medium and hence ignores a very prevalant narrative-led tendency in contemporary drawing.

- Norman Bryson; the white background acts as a reserve, a blank space, from which images emerges, this blank space being "perceptually present but conceptually absent"

- Walter Benjamin; painting and drawing links "The only instance in which colour and line coincides is in the watercolour, in which pencil outlines are visible and the paint is put on transparently."

- Drawing is a process which has become an integrated part of a multi-media practice in a variety of settings. Using pencil is not the only way to 'draw' lines e.g. Richard Long made a piece from simply walking on grass to create these lines. LAND ART

- Historically drawing was viewed as the basic skill/necessity of any artist, however, it has become so associated with planning and incompletion of all art. Only later on did drawing become the main and only medium certain artists would choose to focus their art on e.g. Raymond Pettibon, Toba Khedoori, Paul Noble.

- Now is the time of drawing; offers artists freedom. Drawing, through its loose association with personal unfettered expression, is the medium through which the past has often spoken most clearly and directly.

Part 2 Research

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