Studies in 19th-Century Art (450-0-1)

Topic

Drawing: Theories, Practices, Materials

Instructors

Thadeus Dowad

Meeting Info

Kresge 4354 Art Hist. Sem. Rm.: Tues 2:00PM - 4:50PM

Overview of class

Giorgio Vasari famously dubbed drawing the "father of the arts." Yet the pencil's powers have never belonged solely to the artist. Its union of gesture and concept, line and sign, hand and mind, has also made drawing indispensable to the scientist, the philosopher, the writer, and the technocrat. Traversing disciplinary contexts from history and psychology to semiotics, art history, and the history of science, this graduate seminar explores drawing along three interrelated axes. First, it examines theories of drawing both past and present, from early modern notions of disegno and les arts du dessin to postmodern theories of the trace. We will consider how drawing has been understood to mediate between the inner worlds of thought and imagination and the external world of observable phenomena. Second, it explores specific practices of drawing from the late medieval to the modern period (including sketches, doodles, and diagrams), asking how drawing intervened in various fields of art-making and knowledge, with special attention paid to its role in colonialism, to drawing education in state- and empire-building, and to its relationship with writing. Finally, the seminar turns to the materials of drawing—paper, graphite, ink, and others—and the impact of the draftsperson's tools on both the practice and the conceptualization of drawing across time.