The glossary or array I'm dealing with at the moment [tire, tirer, tiroir, tirage [draw, to draw, drawer, drawing]] leads to that of the trait, it induces, precisely, duction, and even the "ductus," the idiomatic trait by which one recognizes a draftsman even before he signs his name [it is this "ductus" I won't manage to talk about here].
Jacques Derrida 1
That nothing could be constituted as pure interiority or self-identity, that this purity was always already invaded by an outside, indeed, could itself only be constituted thourgh the very introjection of that outside, was the argument mounted to scuttle the supposed autonomy of the aesthetic experience, or the possible purity of an artistic medium, or the presumed seperateness of a given intellectual discipline. The self-identical was revealed as, and thus dissolved into, the self-different.
Rosalind Krauss 2
What is the array of drawing, that alterity might predicated of it? That drawing is always already an array, a multiplicity of practices. Drawing qua category of medium is not reducible to a singularity of practice, constituting the proper of drawing, entailing an essence such that one might employ that essence as a fundamentum divisionis distinguishing drawing from not-drawing. Rather, self-different-ness constitutes drawing as an always already making other, grounded in the founding distinction of equiprimordial ground and mark. Yet for all of that, one supposes that one knows what drawing is, knows a drawing when one sees a drawing.
To thus regard drawing is already to treat drawing as an object, as a noun denoting an object of a certain sort, or the class of such objects, sharing certain characteristics which establish drawing as such within a yet larger field of practices. The object we denote with the term drawing is the nominal trace, the alterity of drawing denoted by a verb, being the means by which visual thought most immediately finds concrete articulate two-dimensional form. Most immediately, but not without mediation.
A medium consists not simply in the material cause of an artwork, but in the set of conventions and practices that can be deployed in the facture of the work. This set of conventions subsists both in their sedimentations in past practices within artworks, and is yet open, in the sense that new conventions can be invented, thematized and deployed. Whether sedimented or invented, the conventions of a medium are always already differentiated. Within the facture of an artwork, deployment of the conventions of an always already differentiated medium consists in the sequence of choices by which the work comes to be as it is, and not otherwise.
An analogical inference follows: drawing is specific, as art is generic, and one is no more likely to posit an adequate and transcendentally ahistorical essence of drawing than of art, such that a definiens follows that will suffice for all instantiations. That is tantamount to saying that one knows what drawing is-or has been-but one does not know everything that drawing might be. Differentiation within the notion of drawing obtains both diachronically and synchronically so that one might propose, as Morris Weitz proposed for art, that the term drawing is an open concept predicated on resemblances rather than common properties. 3 If such differentiation, such alterity, obtains for drawing, then one does not know what drawing is, in itself qua essentia, but every drawing may be regarded as a tentative, but not exhaustive, proposition of what drawing includes.
That is to say that the term 'drawing' has no fixed or fixable horizon limiting a priori its application, and consequently any such application cannot in principle be final, with the corollary that its application in any instance is contingent on a decision that the deployment of the concept in the given situation is correct. To say that the deployment of the term drawing in a given instance is correct, or not, is to elicit the basis of one's judgment, or one's preconception.
Thus Theo Stanley's four works: chromogenic photographic prints from hand-drawn negatives, their ostensible material cause might seem to obviate their classification as drawings. To do so entails limiting the material cause of artworks to their ultimate presentational concrete embodiment; insofar as doing so obviates attending to a crucial aspect of facture this move is inadequate to account for how the works are as they are. It is more adequate to regard the relation of chromogenic print to hand-drawn negative as analogous to the relation between antecedent source image and drawing, as in Stephen Lapthisophon's works.
Stephen Lapthisophon's 26 Rue du Départ references André Kertész's photograph, Chez Mondrian, of the vase on a table at the base of the stairs in Mondrian's studio, and a second Kertész photograph of Mondrian's glasses on a table; the title refers to Mondrian's address during most of his period in Paris. 4 Lapthisophon's What's Wrong With A Cowboy in Hamburg? references a scene from the Wim Wenders film Der Amerikanische Freund, and resonant with the first paragraph of Richard Huelsenbeck's Dada Almanach. 5 Lapthisophon thematizes the archive of the canon and of mass culture, quoting and referencing fragments as synecdochaic of the whole, which are nonetheless, for all of that, lived experience sufficiently cathected to become the stuff of memory and at the same time, reconstituted as works with remarkable freshness and economy.
Lari Gibbons charcoal drawings Still Green I and Still Green II are convincing as observational drawings, though the motif reiterated in the title extends what might otherwise be regarded as an exercise into quite another domain of elegiac connotation and literary reference. The cut branches of oak leaves are evocative of temporality, of the time of growth required for their growth, of their transience as alive on the tree from which they were cut, and of the permanence of their inviability as cut and dead branches and leaves-"which never again will bear leaf or put forth shoots," as Homer puts it. 6 In juxtaposing Still Green I and Still Green II, one has the opportunity-indeed, the necessity-of comparing the two works. Attentive close comparison is necessary in regarding the variation of gesture within the form of the motifs of the two drawings, as well as variation in light source and development of value: to belabor the obvious, every difference in form is a difference in content, however close to identity a cursory regard might mislead one to conclude their content is, difference obtains. In contrast to the elegiac tone of Still Green I and Still Green II, Dwelling III is nothing if not of the nascent hopefulness of protention: a bird house, two birds, and a luminously distal horizon.
The horizon and atmospheric envelope in Robert Anderson's Out There and Last Light entails another, quite different employment of luminosity. The enclosing interior foreground of Out There, filled with heaped skeletal remains and overgrown with vegetation is a dark echo of Romanticism evocative of Caspar David Freidrich. One might compare the space of Last Light, with mountains like cypress knees emerging from the luminously palpable atmosphere of a foggy swamp, with the landscape space of John Martin's Manfred on the Jungfrau, 1837.7 Anderson's magisterial confidence and control of the instrument is evident in the modulation of value producing the sense of luminosity in the works, even as that luminosity evokes the antithesis of hopefulness in Gibbons Dwelling III.
Hugh Merrill, in The depiction of conflict may be regarded appropriate at this point, places the ruin of a massive structure, circular in plan, in a void of space. It is difficult not to read this depiction of ruined architecture as the fragmentary remains of the containment vessel of a nuclear reactor, especially with the Bohr-model conventional representation of an atom as nucleus surrounded with electron orbits, at its center. Merrill's Useful but misleading device, extraordinarily also may be read as a sceptical view of technology: suggesting a tower of Babel, stacked blocks in which the placement of the blocks begins in coursed layers and ends at the summit in seemingly random placement form an image of instability. The tower figure, in two-point perspective, is central in the field, and of approximately the same size but of less visual weight than the dark mass with runs of ink below it. The placement of this looser application of ink lower in the composition as well as its visual weight conduces to reading it as proximal, with the pen and ink tower above somewhat more distal. The various smaller elements are read as occupying positions in space determined by the relative size, value contrast with the ground, density and hue.
The space in James Watral's A New Element and Untitled, of indeterminate depth, is produced primarily through the overlap of shapes, with a limited use of value to suggest volume within the individual shapes. The surface of Watral's two drawings is made more active with linear dark marks and light erasures which, in apparent detachment from the larger shapes, float between the image plane and the larger shapes and to function as a repoussoir, forcing the larger elements back in space even as the small scale of these marks reverses the spatial effect expected of diminution of scale.
The webs of Sally Warren's drawings are curvilinear skeins of meandering lines arrayed across the field of the drawings. Variation in line quality and weight are minimal; space is implied primarily by overlap and change of hue and value. Rather than functioning as a description of a tangible referent, line in Warren's drawings is abstract, intuitive, neither ostensibly gestural calligraphy nor line qua language, but a trace of the process of their facture. Warren's gouache drawings have an antecedent in Brice Marden's Cold Mountain works from the 1990s, but what is most similar is the inimitability of mark, and the disconcealment of the process of facture in the work.
The emphatic contour of Vanessa Paschakarnis' Angel I delineates the solid form, cutting it from the ground, while the structural lines within the form indicate the disposition of masses in its volume. Similarly, the dark mass of Shields for Humans 5 is opened by the indication of volume effected by the interior linear elements. The large scale of Paschakarnis' works contributes to their sense of presence, as does the means of presentation, in which the sheet is attached to laminated plywood in a steel angle frame, resting on the floor and leaning against the wall. Thus being an object detached from the wall and in the viewer's space rather than an image on a support paralleling the wall plane, Angel I and Shields for Humans 5 move toward sculpture.
Like the colossal Head of Constantine at the Capitoline Museum, and the figures in the Altar of Zeus at Pergamum in the State Museums, Berlin, Brown Head and Black Head by James Sullivan dwarf the viewer. The affect of Sullivan's paired drawings is not merely a function of their scale, but of their felt presence, in no small part due to their being heads. A head, as a fragment of the figure, is a synecdoche for the whole. As a head, one necessarily attends to the face as site of expression. As such, the head is particularly associated with the interiority of the subject-oneself, and projected to others-metaphorized as spatial. That Sullivan's drawings are paired is relevant here, in several respects. First, as paired drawings, the drawings are not together as the elements of a diptych, but rather as discrete works placed together. Second, a consequence of placing these works together is the attention one gives to what is different and what is alike in the two drawings: one attends to each of the works, but also to the relation between the two works. Apart from the obvious and superficial (though of course significant) differences of hue and more subtle differences of light and form, a similarity of quiet presence obtains in each of the drawings. One might well infer the model (whether actual existent or ideal possible) is the same in both drawings, and thus attend to the shifts of mark and form and gesture and expression in the two works.
The first mark, equiprimordially establishing mark as mark and ground as ground, constitutes the arche of drawing. Each mark, every mark, any mark, on a ground has consequence in cutting the space of the ground, and opening the plane of the ground to a suggestion of recession or procession, shifting actual flatness to its other as illusory depth. Drawing in its most basic aspect of facture entails differentiation, dehiscence, alterity. One might urge that this fundamental othering is the proper of drawing. To do so does not suffice to establish a fundamentum divisionis distinguish drawing as such from other media, for with an appropriate adjustment of terms to account for differences in material cause one might equally urge that differentiation, dehiscence, alterity obtain as the proper of any other medium. As well as of one's life as being-in-the-world.
Robert Dale Anderson is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, where he is director of drawing classes. Trained at a printmaker, and receiving the Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts from Long Beach State University, Anderson has made drawing his central practice. Anderson's recent exhibitions include: Post 65: Yet More Art for Marfa, 2004; Red Hot Dot, Women and Their Work, 2004; Five x Seven x X, Jones Center for the Arts, Austin, 2004; Mark Making, Schneider Museum of Art, Southern Oregon University, 2004; Lightshow, Clocktower Art Space, New York, 2003.
Lari R. Gibbons is Assistant Professor at the School of Visual Arts, the University of North Texas, where she is coordinator of the core drawing program. Lari Gibbons' recent solo exhibitions include: Chadron State College, Nebraska, 2005; Barrett Art Center, Poughkeepsie, New York, 2003; Rosewood Art Center, Kettering, Ohio, 2001; Tennessee Technological University, 1999; Museum of Nebraska Art, Kearney, 1998. Gibbons received the Master of Fine Arts from University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and the Bachelor of Arts from Grinnell College, with additional coursework in life drawing a relief and relief printmaking from the University of Iowa.
Stephen Lapthisophon is a Chicago artist, and is Visiting Professor at the University of Texas at Dallas and a UTD-Southside Artists Residency recipient for the Spring 2005 semester. Known for his work in sound installation, with recent work at the College of DuPage and a forthcoming installation at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, Lapthisophon's works on paper are a visual correlative of his sound works. Lapthisophon received Bachelor of Fine Arts from The University of Texas at Austin and the Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, with subsequent graduate study at Northwestern University.
Hugh Merrill is Professor of Printmaking at Kansas City Art Institute. Hugh Merrill's extensive professional activities include recent exhibitions at: American Print Alliance 2001; Weber State University; Boston Printmakers 2000; Joslyn Art Museum, 2000; Buena Vista University, 1999; University of Sydney, 1999. Merrill received the Bachelor of Fine Arts from Maryland Institute, College of Art, and the Master of Fine Arts from Yale University.
Vanessa Paschakarnis is Assistant Professor of Art at Meadows School of the Arts, Division of Art, Southern Methodist University. Originally from Germany, she lived and worked for the past 7 years in Canada, and, since 2002, she has twice worked for extended periods on large-scale sculpture in Pietrasanta, Italy. Her recent solo exhibitions include: Room for Sculpture, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, 2004; Studio 21, Halifax, 2004; Sculpture and Drawing, Fredericton, Nova Scotia, 2000; Ten Black Forms, Acadia University, 2000; Sculpture, Anna Leonowens Gallery, Halifax, 2000; Installation in A Water Basin, KHB Berlin-Weissensee, 1997. Paschakarnis received a Master of Fine Arts from Nova Scotia College of Art & Design, and a Master of Fine Arts in sculpture / Diplom Freie Kunst / Bildaurei, Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weissensee, with additional study at Akademie für bildende Kunste, Stuttgart, and Kunstakademie Dusseldorf.
Theo Stanley is an artist working in New York. His recent exhibitions include half actual, half potential, Mountain View College, 2004. Theo Stanley received the Bachelor of Fine Arts and the Master of Fine Arts from Southern Methodist University.
James W. Sullivan is Professor of Art and Chairman, Division of Art, Meadows School of the Arts, Southern Methodist University. Sullivan's record of international professional activity includes exhibitions at the Meadows Museum, Museum Moderner Kunst, Stiftung Wörlen, Passau, Germany; Art Museum of South Texas; Galerie Muhlenbusch, Dusseldorf; Amerika Haus, Berlin; Raw Space/Arc Gallery, Chicago; Haus Am Waldsee, Berlin. Sullivan received the Master of Fine Arts from California State University, Long Beach, and the Bachelor of Arts from Yale University.
Sally Warren is a Dallas artist, exhibiting One Year Drawing at Mountain View College 2004. Warren received the Master of Fine Arts from Southern Methodist University.
James Watral is Professor of Art at Eastfield College. Known for his work in ceramics exhibitied at Dallas Visual Art Center and Gerald Peters Gallery, Watral actively draws as a correlative practice. Watral received the Master of Fine Arts from Tulane University and the Bachelor of Fine Arts from Cleveland Institute of Art.