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  • Foundation course drawing: Jane Tormey

  • (An exhibition and catalogue was organised to coincide with the 'Drawing Across Boundaries' Symposium held at LUSAD, September 1998.)

    'Drawing has become one of the principle elements of a new language and ...it operates in a variety of guises, conservative as well as revolutionary.' 'In current practice the fragment is itself a mode, and reproduction and photography its primary agencies. Dual readings are a continuing theme, along with sensation, scale, space and most prominently the collage aesthetic, the power of language, the sign, and allegory in unexpected places.' (1)

    Foundation courses were invited to submit comment in response to questions which aimed to identify the current status of drawing activity and the thinking that supports it. To accompany and illustrate response, courses submitted students' drawings to form a representative exhibition of activity to demonstrate ideology. It was an opportunity to gather evidence and to co-ordinate thought and attitudes to drawing.

    The project was motivated by a concern that drawing, and the presumption within art and design education that it provides an elemental and core experience, is often referred to obliquely without being addressed directly. I was particularly interested in the value and role given to drawing and how educational ideologies related to the realities of practice. I was fascinated with a number of obvious but apparently contradictory facts:

    *The persistent reverence for drawing, the most primitive of technologies, despite the rapid development of ever more seductive and new technologies.

    *The apparent anxiety to maintain this ambiguous 'centre', this unifying principle which validates practice and education with little reference to the massive expansion in contemporary drawing applications.

    *That in all the recent debate there seemed little articulation of how drawing methods may be relevant, or to the nature of activity and why it was important.

    This in turn prompted numerous questions: Was the use of drawing being sufficiently readdressed in terms of its relevance? Were there centres that identified other technologies or philosophies as superseding the activity of drawing? What was judgement of drawing or conviction about the role of drawing in education based on and how was this maintained? What were the commonly held beliefs and were there any contradictions? What exactly were the values put upon drawing by educators and students? Was it being valued by convention rather than by current thinking? To what extent was drawing promoted in a meaningful and contemporary way for what it can provide in terms of function and experience? Was there a drive to affirm the direct, immediate and primal over the increasingly indirect and complex? Was there a silent revolution happening in terms of the sort of drawing engendered?

    The submitted texts vehemently affirmed the importance and relevance of drawing. No 'dissidents' responded, although it is possible that all non respondents represent a more contentious point of view. Comment revealed the most frequently held implicit values of drawing as being: central, underpinning and essential, the ultimate transferable skill, the primary skill, a necessary and basic tool, the process of translation, the means of visual thinking, the means of analytical learning, the means of communication, the means to invent and experiment, the means to improve perceptions, visual awareness and manual skills and as such demonstrates that drawing is valued fundamentally for its providing the most accessible route to these requisites. It is variously and lyrically described as: the key, the purest, the engine, a mechanism, a vehicle, exciting, rigorous, revelatory, challenging, magical, alchemy, heretical, a joy, special, primal. In addition, it was clear that 'drawing' and its interpretation has become 'an infinitely broad activity'.

    Although rarely mentioned specifically, there were some implicit references to the expectation of 'life drawing' and two overt declarations of it being of prime importance. There were questions as to whether the presence of life drawing in folios 'is ever given more than a cursory glance' or whether it was ever reassessed as to why it was necessary or indeed relevant. It appears to be applauded and looked for but largely ignored. I suspect that 'life drawing' is expected and perpetuated for its symbolic representation of a sustained level of rigour and concentration that suggests the students' ability to apply this effort to whatever discipline they aspire to. Its appearance beyond it being there is perhaps of no essential interest.

    The debate illustrated a wider issue regarding the need to balance activity which is designed to provide real learning through the process of drawing, with the kind of drawing activity that is likely to generate more obvious and visible skill acquisition because the methods are recognisable. Mention was made of conventional and unconventional drawing. I guess that 'conventional' here refers to such methods that represent recognisable and conventional modes of teaching.

    It was suggested that life drawing is relevant; 'when appropriate' and this theme of appropriateness occurred consistently. Several contributors mentioned the need to ensure the students' understanding of the purposes and functions of drawing and of their needing to acquire a language and an ability to select according to intention and differentiation. Conventions are seen as methods and, as such, as required skills. Once acquired, students should be encouraged to eliminate and dismiss them as appropriate. However it is seen as a responsibility to furnish students with 'the tools of the trade' and to enable them to achieve 'levels of accomplishment commensurate with the students level of ambition or ability'. Generally, emphasis was given to the need for drawing to be at all times relevant to the individuals development.

    The validity of the notion of 'visual language and literacy' has recently been questioned: 'Reservation has to do with implications inherent in the term itself. One of these is that 'literacy implies a neutral, non ideological stance - a set of people who will impart knowledge to those who don't have it... implies a generalisable competence, a set of principles that can be applied to all visual phenomena.' ( 2 )

    'By going too far with linguistic model one ends up distorting visual representation and neglecting what is unique about it.' ( 3 )

    'The transmission of technical skills within the art schools is part of a wider framework of beliefs in which something often termed - uncritically- 'visual language', holds a central and I would say, pernicious position. This belief in the existence of visual language is a major tenet of contemporary education' 'The promotion ...of the existence of a means of communication above and beyond words is misleading, not least because it encourages the student to consider themselves party to an extra special way of expressing' (4 )

    Suchin argues that the term itself is contradictory; that there is a reluctance to criticise 'this most prevalent myth of a purely visual mode of expression'. The implication of there being a common syntax across contextual boundaries, or of the existence of any kind of objectivity, is disputed as being unsustainable. Decoding depends on a 'learned familiarity with the conventions of, and the deviations from, established patterns of expression' and he advocates more debate 'in which the making of visual works should be seen as but a part of a broader understanding of how humans communicate.' This debate points to a concern, relating to the consequences of diminishing course length; that of perhaps not sufficiently articulating and discussing the nature of convention and language; or of not continually questioning our own presumptions about what 'is true' or what are priorities.

    Certainly on Foundation courses, the existence of visual language is upheld; seen more in terms of a 'bank' of knowledge, image, mark and understanding; perhaps qualified and explained as being within the context of a 'personal language', which is valued for its immediacy and directness. It is implicitly because of the subjective nature of the 'language', demonstrated most obviously by drawing, that it is valued.

    We were reminded that drawing is the one 'language' that students at the outset of their course are the most familiar with, that they may have a certain degree of confidence in this area and that drawing practice can reinforce this confidence. It was suggested that drawing is 'the ultimate transferable skill' and encourages the ability to adapt. It provides the progression from research, through analysis and speculation to solution. It progresses visual thinking.

    Why does the reverence persist ?
    After scrutiny of the submitted texts, it appears to be as a direct result of its essential attribute as a thinking function rather than as a result of its potentiality of appearance or as artefact. There were some suggestions that the role of drawing has been reassessed; that the emphasis has moved away from observation and toward exploration ; and that, for it 'to remain a viable activity', it should be used as a means of investigation rather than as the practice of a craft. Certainly, the requirement of a 'cognitive interaction' with the subject matter, challenging what is being observed, was highlighted as being necessary to the transition from observed studies as an end result to the more functional generation of drawing based on visual thinking. One could say, that for 'visual specialists', thinking is seen as being inseparable from drawing. Bruce Archer recently spoke ( 5 ) about 'sketching' and it being linked to the development of the individual's capacity for creative and rational thought generally. In the sense that sketching and its intentional vagueness is analogous with abstract argument, vital to intellectual development, he advocates its inclusion in the school curriculum as a necessary training of the mind. He says that drawing, for the purposes of representation and expression, is already sufficiently encouraged whereas drawing as a training in thinking was not. Once we enter full time specialist education at Foundation level, comment from staff appears to uphold this view; that drawing is valued primarily for its necessitating conceptual skills, divergent thinking and analysis; secondly for its expressive uses and perhaps only lastly for representational. In the past, technical skill for representational purposes may have been separated from cognitive understanding, but it would seem less so now.

    Reactions have followed reactions in art and design education - academic rigour, observation without subjectivity, expression without observation, exploration without craft. They all have in common some sort of manifesto; an extremity which is inevitably followed by dilution. Deviations from conventions in their turn establish new conventions and in their turn motivate new reactions. Attitudes to the teaching of drawing illustrates this perfectly.

    In 1964 de Sausmarez pointed to 'stylistic vacuity' and in 1981 Thistlewood to the ' developing process being adapted to uninformed use'

    'The difficulty usually arises from the fact that there has been failure to think critically about the nature of these courses, failure to save them from the awful fate of becoming blinkers in which young talents trot docilely to a certain stylistic vacuity, and failure to ensure that they establish effective bridgeheads for contacting and influencing the more specialised provinces of creative activity ' ( 6 )
    Speaking about the legacy of Hudson, Hamilton and Passmore:'Influences of the Developing Process' and its ramifications are still profound in Britain, though they are now indirect. As an approach to art teaching, though, its chief drawback was always the ease with which it could be adapted to uninformed use; and there exists a large body of application in which little is known of supporting theory and which is characterised above all, by aims to create images which are isolated from everyday life. It seems to be time again for a radical reassessment, though now, as distinct from the 50's, there are helpful precedents.' ( 7 )

    The revolutionary attitudes, initiated in the 50's, promoted recognition of both the intellect and expression under the unifying principle of the 'developing process of creativity'. We have absorbed this premise of a developing process, of which drawing forms a part. We have assimilated and discarded the more extreme aspects of both conventional preoccupations with drawing and the principle of individual creative development at any expense; have expediently established priorities and moved towards appropriateness of method and approach to suit purpose and intention. There is then a move away from the veneration of drawing as an end in itself. It seems we have not lost sight of primal motivations for drawing, recognise its authority as the most immediate and efficient expression of ideas and are determined to assert an integration, rather than a distinction, within visual education and practice. Having relinquished its more formal associations, we are striving perhaps, to assimilate drawing with more contemporary processes and applications. What has been confirmed, is the introduction of methods, skills and conventions by means of deliberated and programmed experimentation concerned with grammar, both 'conservative and revolutionary'. We appear to have reached a particularly sober and eclectic chapter.

    1. Bernice Rose 1992, 'Allegories of Modernism: Contemporary Drawing', p.10, p.49, MOMA, New York.
    2. Karen Raney 1996, 'Framing Visual and Verbal Experience', Round Midnight Papers 2, AN Publications, Sunderland.
    3. 1997, 'Visual Literacy: Issues and Debates' , p.21, Middlesex University and Arts Council of England.
    4. Peter Suchin 1996, 'Literacy, Criticism and Fine Art', Round Midnight Papers 2, AN Publications.
    5. Bruce Archer 1997, 'Drawing as a Tool for Designers', Conference papers, 'The Future of Drawing in Design', University of Huddersfield.
    6. Maurice de Sausmarez 1964, 'Basic Design: The Dynamics of Visual Form', p.14, Herbert Press, London. 7. David Thistlewood 1981, ' A Continuing Process: The New Creativity in British Art Education 1955-65', p.44, Institute of Contemporary Arts., London. 1

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