A few days ago I read chapter 1 of Gombrich’s The Story of Art. This book, which I bought as part of the reading list for the drawing course in 2013 (it has been removed since then), was a real surprise to me. I must admit that I never found the time to start reading until last week. I found the big volume of over 600 pages with art history from ancient times until today really intimidating.
Until I read the introduction… the book is completely different from what I expected. It is about ideas and key themes, and I found it absolutely inspiring. It very well written and very entertaining, and doesn’t overwhelm the reader with the presentation of millions of important artworks in a historical chronology. What impressed me most in the first chapter was the proposition that the beauty of a piece of art does not depend on the beauty of the subject depicted. And secondly, that the quality of a piece of art should not be judged on the correctness with which it depicts the subject. As an example, Gombrich presents Picasso’s drawing of a cockerel. It is not an accurate representation in the botanical sense, but it is very successful in depicting the agitated creature.
So I ventured to read the first chapter, which is about prehistoric and primitive art. I took away the central message that art is about ideas, not about technical skill. Otherwise, Gombrich suggests, the greatest artists would be those with the most advanced technical skills, and art history would be about the perfection of skills. Primitive art looks strange to us because it was made in an entirely different social context, serving purposes that no longer have relevancy for modern people. But then again, the magic of depictions of reality, like images or sculpture, persists to be felt. Gombrich suggests that people have a reluctancy to perform destructive acts on the photo of a loved one – as if they were doing harm to the real person. This shows how modern people are not that far away from mystical beliefs related to objects and images.
To illustrate that so-called primitive peoples developed enormous skill and craftsmanship, he includes the image of a Lintel from a Maori Chieftain’s house. This is a large wood-carved object which is placed over the door of the powerful man. I’m including here a similar object hosted in the Brooklyn Museum, New York (unfortunately not on view). What struck me with this object was that I felt a similarity between this three-dimensional object and my drawings of the celery root from different angles, where I depicted the complex interwoven celery root structure. I wasn’t able to depict the structure in a photorealistic way, so I stylized and tried to simplify. The main difference (besides the medium of course) is that I depicted the roots as a very irregular pattern, whereas the lintel depicts an almost symmetrical and quite regular, even harmonial pattern.
As an aftermath to the different angles drawings, I experimented with taking more distance to my object and made another drawing in my sketchbook. It was made from 2m distance in 8B pencil and was even more stylized, with less surface texture, which completely changes the character of the object depicted. It reminded me of paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe, with their focus on tonality and worked-out smooth shapes. In my drawing, the celery root looks more like a woodcarved object than something designed by nature.
This stylized drawing style is not something I want to perfectionize, but I found it interesting for a change. Initially I thought that my main problem with the celery root was my inability to simplify, therefore I chose the approach of increasing the distance. This reduces the amount of detail visible and forces me to focus on the main forms. The drawing shows that this kind of simplification does not add to the realism of the depiction. After reading Gombrich I could happily dismiss the criterium of accuracy, but the focus of my chosen option for part 5 is on naturalistic observation.
I don’t think this implies an obligation to submit a photorealistic drawing, but it certainly involves exploring the topic of naturalistic representation and what is meant by accuracy. The highly stylized drawing is accurate in the sense that I drew what I saw from a distance of two meters and what I was able to process. It is not accurate in the sense of trying to mimick a photography of the object. The central question for me in this part of the course is, where do I want to go with my object? I don’t know, so I will experiment. This attitude seems to fit well with this course part’s title: “Draw and experiment”.
Resources
Gombrich, E.H. (1950 / 2007) The story of Art, Phaidon
Georgia O’Keeffe (1921) Blue and Green Music, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Blue-green.jpg
Maori door lintel, image from Brooklyn Museum, New York (unfortunately the item is currently not on view, only visible online) https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/79293/Door_lintel_Pare_or_Korupe