Stick Figures

Book excerpt: From an accomplished practitioner, curator and theorist comes Stick Figures: Drawing as a Human Practice to reset the terms for an ancient activity. D.B. Dowd embraces drawing as a process for everyone, not just artists. This beautifully designed book uses a wonderful range of visual samples to explore an elemental human capacity. The artifacts of drawing (chiefly, illustrations and cartoons) are rescued from outdated hierarchies of taste and engaged on their own theoretical and cultural terms.-Pithy, companionable and funny, Stick Figures will change the discussion about drawing, illustration, cartooning, design and printmaking.-Taxonomically clear, technologically specific and free of art-speak for general readers and humanists who work with published images.-Thoughtful, critical and precise about the damage done by fetishized aesthetics; provides new tools for engaging popular visual production in the modern era.