The Primacy of Drawing

Book excerpt: Beginning with a consideration of traditional connoisseurship and ancient myths about the origins of drawing, Deanna Petherbridge examines the polarities of open-ended sketches and highly finished presentation drawings that constitute a drawing continuum: graphic parameters within which artists continue to experiment. She examines the `economy' of drawing, that is, its materials and techniques and qualities of line and mark, and she analyses strategies of making, composing, inventing and development through revealing juxtapositions of historical and contemporary images. The teaching of drawing across the centuries in academies has led to the production of drawing and anatomical manuals and complex theories about copying, hierarchies of genres, the centrality of the expressive body and responses to nature. Such issues even become the subject matter of graphic images or are incorporated into drawings of the act of drawing. The manner in which satire, sexuality or play are encoded in line and mark and generate compositional strategies reveals the thinking of Petherbridge as a teacher, concerned for many years to understand the hows and whys of making and visual thinking. The book is both a much-needed history of practice and a rich resource for anyone interested in drawing. --Book Jacket.