DRAWING; SOME CONSEQUENCES Prelude Throughout my life I have often found myself making connections between seemingly unrelated experiences; for example, events that I am experiencing in the present often come together with experiences from my past, and I find that it is through their coming together that meaning is revealed about experience. Often the understanding I gain in those moments deepens my understanding of those experiences I have had and continue to have concerning being an Australian, and I have found that the distance gained through living away from Australia helps me to see the connections more clearly. In 1997 I came to New York with the goal of understanding more deeply and absorbing firsthand the ideas that had fuelled the burst of creativity and output here in the 50’s and 60’s by artists who have become known collectively as the New York School. I have been fortunate to meet and study with artists who were in the main intimately connected to or a part of the New York School. Initially I absorbed what was being taught, however after some time I came to a point where I felt that what I had learnt was inhibiting my quest to feel ‘at one’ with the drawing. I did not know what feeling ‘at one’ with my drawing meant, however I did know that I wanted to feel it and I knew that I didn’t. I also sensed that what I was searching for was evading me because of the process by which I was drawing. I therefore began to question the process I was using to make work, examining it to clarify what it is that I am seeing and looking for when I engage a space through the act of drawing. In order to question the activities I perform when drawing I have attempted to observe and document what I experience while drawing and to consider how those activities serve me, setting out new methodologies if necessary. Initially I worked in a traditional ‘life drawing’ situation from various models over a number of years, always drawing from exactly the same position in the studio so that I could become familiar with the space in order to observe subtle nuances as they arose over time. In attempting to articulate observations of the experiences I have while I draw I shall endeavor to put those observations into context. Points of reference will be established by looking at relevant artists’ writings, statements and, most importantly, works. At the beginning of the 21st century, when technology and the internet have made all imagery easily accessible , to use drawing as a means to engage with the world in order to find images that come out of the experience of that engagement might be considered onerous and labor intensive. However I have always thought the act of drawing to be an intermediary between me and the world, through which I am able to experience the world more deeply. In fact I have found drawing and painting to be the only activities through which I am able to have certain experiences in life, the acts of drawing and painting revealing those experiences. Perhaps this is why human beings have always drawn. As the New York artist Keith Haring once said; “…Drawing is still basically the same as it has been since prehistoric times. It brings together man and the world. It lives through magic.”1 1 Haring, K. "Keith Haring Quotes." Retrieved 17th December, 2009, from http://www.artquotes.net/masters/haring-keith-quotes.htm. Some observations concerning erasure A large part of my previous drawing process was erasure. Erasure had become a way to get certain strengths into my work, mostly by finding and delineating shapes and planes. After some time of working this way I became aware of a growing sense that the process was dominating the drawing, and I was no longer sure about what I was gaining from it, so I decided to look closely at the act of erasure to get a sense of why artists erased and how erasure had served them and their work. Rauschenberg Image 28. Erased De Kooning Drawing 1953 Erasure has and is an important part of many artists’ drawing process. For instance, erasure was controversially put to use by Robert Rauschenberg in 1957 when he erased a drawing by Willem De Kooning. Rauschenberg states that his motives for erasing the De Kooning came out of his “love for drawing” and his quest “to figure out a way to bring drawing into the all Whites”.2 He writes that; I kept making drawings myself and erasing them and they just looked like an erased Rauschenberg, it was nothing. So I figured out that it had to begin as art. So I thought it’s got to be a De Kooning then if it’s going to be an important piece. 3 At the time the art critic Leo Steinberg was perplexed by what Rauschenberg’s motives for committing an act that, as Steinberg acknowledges, is often viewed as a “neo Dada gesture”. When, in an effort to unearth Rauschenberg’s deeper intentions Steinberg confronted him, Steinberg’s suspicions of oedipal motivations were only partly acquitted. Steinberg concluded that; He was expelling from the art of painting what for 500 years had been its soul; and he wanted De Kooning’s consent - implicitly a benediction - to speed him on. He was staging a ritual of supersession that required two parties. As if he could clear the field honorably only with the master’s acquiescence and so lay the grounds for new 2 Rose, B. (1987). Rauschenberg New York, Vintage Books. Rauschenberg referred to the white paintings that he was making in the late 50’s as the “all whites” 3 Ibid. “You see how ridiculously you have to think in order to make this work. And so I bought a bottle of Jack Daniels and went up and knocked on his door, and praying the whole time that he wouldn’t be home, and then that would be the work. But he was home, and after a few awkward moments I told him what I had in mind, and he said that he understood me, but that he wasn’t for it. And I was hoping then that he would refuse and that would be the work. And he couldn’t have made me more uncomfortable. He took the painting that he was working on off the easel, I don’t even know if he was doing this consciously, and he went over and put it against the already closed door. But I was noticing things like that. And he said, Okay, I want it to be something I’ll miss. …and I want to give you something really difficult to erase, and I thought, thank God.” Robert Rauschenberg art.…Rauschenberg’s logic makes sense only on the level of metaphor, as a symbolic gesture to mark a personal rite of passage. And perhaps more than that.4 Rauschenberg stated that he erased the De Kooning drawing in an effort to bring drawing into his all white paintings, erasure being a powerful mode of drawing. However Steinberg concluded in effect the opposite, surmising his intention to remove drawing from all art (a sort of grand all- encompassing gesture of erasure or removal if you like). Erasure has been used historically as a means of removing unwanted marks (with the aim of perfecting the work, in pursuit of larger artistic goals), and in this context Rauschenberg’s act seems less in the service of larger artistic goals (he stated he wanted to bring drawing into his all whites) and more concerned with satisfying his own Oedipal needs. Matisse, Auerbach and Giacometti The 20th Century saw many artists use erasure to bring into their work something that could be attained in no other way. Three artists that I have looked at closely in relation to this are Matisse, Auerbach and Giacometti. All have used erasure to pursue their ambitious artistic goals. Elderfield observes of Matisse’s work between 1913 and 1917 that; Matisse pursues his perennial aim of uncovering the “essential qualities” of things beneath their ephemeral, external appearances….he radically decomposes the very structure of things in order to uncover their essence, and the symbols that result are more ruthless in their simplification than ever before.5 4 Steinberg, L. (2000). Encounters with Rauschenberg. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press. P. 21 5 Elderfield, J. (1993). Henri Matisse. New York, The Museum of Modern Art. p.237 This quest was advanced by Matisse in his drawings of the late 1930s, again with the help of erasure. Roy Oxlade, an English artist and art writer, sees in Matisse’s Reclining Nude seen from the back an uncovering of the essential qualities which lie beneath the appearances of things, reminiscent of the essential qualities evident in Paleolithic art; Matisse himself, in the Verdet interview, links his drawing to that of certain cave drawings. Nowhere is the connection clearer than in his 1938 charcoal drawing Reclining Nude Seen from the Back. Overdrawn, again and again, the figure shifting across the paper, the drawing links across the years to the cave mammoths at Rouffingnac.6 Image 29. Matisse Reclining Nude seen from the back 1938 Matisse would rework and erase in charcoal in order to arrive at an image that was essential, primordial, and universal. Though he sought imagery without the decorative quality of Matisse, the English artist Frank Auerbach relied heavily on erasure as part of his search for imagery.