Drawing: The Enactive Evolution of the Practitioner - Softcover

Paolozzi Cain, Patricia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1841503258 ISBN 13: 9781841503257

Verlag: Intellect Books, 2010

Inhaltsangabe

In an era which has seen many forms of artistic creation becoming digitized, the practice of drawing, in the traditional sense, has remained constant. However, many publications about the relationship between drawing and thinking rely on discipline-dependent distinctions to discuss the activity's function. Drawing: The Enactive Evolution of the Practitioner redefines drawing more holistically as an enactive phenomenon, and makes connections between a variety of disciplines in order to find out how drawing helps us understand the world. Instead of the finite event of producing an artefact, drawing is a process and an end in itself, through which the practitioner might gain self-awareness.By synthesizing enactive thinking and the practice of drawing, this volume provides valuable insights into the creative mind, and will appeal to scholars and practitioners alike.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Patricia Cain is an artist and honorary research fellow of the Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute, University of Glasgow.

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Drawing

The Enactive Evolution of the Practitioner

By Patricia Cain

Intellect Ltd

Copyright © 2010 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-84150-325-7

Contents

List of Figures, 
Figure Credits, 
Acknowledgements, 
Introduction, 
PART I: Theorising about Thinking and Drawing: The Limitations of Theory-led Research to the Practitioner, 
Chapter 1: About Thinking and Drawing - The Process Rather than the Artefact, 
Chapter 2: Moving from Theory to Practice - The Methodological Problem, 
Chapter 3: The Relevance of Enactive Cognition to the Practice of Drawing, 
Chapter 4: Accessing Enactive Knowledge Through the Lived Experience of the Practitioner, 
PART II: The First Phase of Methodology - Using the Experience of Others as Subject: The Limitations of a Third Person Methodology, 
Chapter 5: Experiential Accounts of the Activity of Drawing by Others - Marion Milner and Frederick Franck, 
Chapter 6: Interviewing Drawing Practitioners about How They Think, 
Chapter 7: Making the Decision to Use Drawing to Investigate Thinking: Methodological Issues, 
PART III: The Second Phase of Methodology - Using My Own Experience as the Subject of a First Person Enquiry: About the Nature and Form of Knowledge that Emerges from the Experience of Drawing, 
Chapter 8: Can I Embody Another Artist's Thinking Process by Copying His Drawing? - Familiarisation with the Method of Copying, 
Chapter 9: The Case Studies of Richard Talbot and Oliver Zwink, 
Chapter 10: Four Narratives About the Experience of Re-enacting Talbot's Drawing Glass, 
Chapter 11: Observations about the Method of Enactive Copying, 
Chapter 12: Where Does One go from Here?, 
Bibliography, 

CHAPTER 1

About Thinking and Drawing – The Process Rather than the Artefact

The supreme misfortune is when theory outstrips Performance.

Leonardo da Vinci

How do I think as I draw?

The question that motivated this investigation was a question I asked myself as a practitioner. Although I could not necessarily articulate it at the time, a major part of what sparked my interest lay in finding out how this question could be answered. All I knew to start with was that it was important to ensure that my findings would be meaningful to what occurred in practice, because approaching the activity of drawing through abstract theory often appeared hollow when it came to the real thing.

Putting these initial ideas into words, I initially recorded my aim as being to investigate 'the role of drawing in the creative process and its relationship to thinking'. My interests were however more generally concerned with:

• Drawing as a thinking process.

• Conscious and unconscious aspects of the process.

• The notion that thinking might not just involve knowing with the head, but thinking through the body.

The most obvious way of tackling these issues might have been to head to the studio, but before I could do this I came face to face with perhaps two of the most substantial issues facing anyone setting out on a path like this. The first was 'how is research through practice done?' and the second was 'what distinguishes art research from simply being 'art'?'

I could not assume that I would find answers to these questions by isolating myself in the studio. It became evident that I would have to do some theoretical ground-work to discover how the drawing/thinking relationship had been accounted for by others, and the means by which this had been accomplished. Without being fully aware of the basis for its use, simply choosing drawing as a method of investigation would not necessarily provide a deeper understanding of the situation.

Why drawing?

Drawing as a medium through which to investigate creative thinking is pertinent because of the immediacy of the activity – there is little in the medium that intervenes between the artist and the marks that are made. I read that, 'drawings are seen as a unique form of access to the thoughts of the people who make them. Indeed they are simply treated as thoughts' (Wigley in De Zegher & Wigley 2001: 29).

There appears to be a consensus amongst commentators that 'drawing turns the creative mind to expose its workings' (Hill 1966: 4). Some define the activity as a cognitive tool to facilitate and assimilate information (Tversky 1999). Others interpret drawing more personally as being akin to the conflict between signature and outcome of intelligence (Godfrey 1980; Chhatralia in Kingston 2003). Yet others emphasise how drawing plays a developmental role in the process of thinking through 'an interplay between the functions of seeing and knowing' (Rawson 1979: 7). Whilst many of these were the views of practitioners, they were still in effect the opinions of others. I was left wondering how I might have some understanding of these findings for myself, and began by reviewing a number of contemporary theoretical assumptions about the drawing/thinking relationship.

Style and thinking

Perhaps the most easily assumed visual connection between drawing and thinking is the possibility that a drawing's style can reveal the nature of the thinking processes that made it. In other words, style is analogous to mode of thinking and, by extension, its purpose (Thompson 1969).

It is often assumed that cool or analytical drawings which are linear, hard-edged and precise in their mark-making are the outcome of pre-determined and conventional cognitive processes (Rawson 1969; Thompson 1969). For instance, the plan (Fig. 3a) section and elevation drawings used in the architectural process rely on their ability to operate like a language that is understood by a wide range of disciplines. Warm or intuitive drawings on the other hand suggest informal, gestural and experimental attitudes to mark-making (Fig. 3d). They appear to involve processes with no a priori or forward-thinking cognitive strategy, where aims are revealed only on completion of the drawing (Perry 1992).

These assumptions have been challenged on the basis that their use very much depends upon the social and cultural context in which drawing is used (Robbins 1994). I also noticed how a variety of practitioners often use drawing styles out of context; in fact, some practitioners actively play with these assumptions. I investigated the grey area in which architects such as Kiesler (Fig. 3c) rely on a range of non-technical drawing conventions for conceptual architectural projects, and where artists such as Paterson (Fig. 3b) explore technical drawing conventions more traditionally associated with architectural drawings to make social comments. In these examples I found that style was simply a variable that could be manipulated to various expressive effects.

In addition to this, the notion that style is analogous to thinking implies that a practitioner knows in advance what he or she is doing and can choose to use a particular style accordingly. However, this idea fails to take into account how, in practice, ideas often appear to emerge as the activity progresses. I began to question whether it was actually possible to carry out a totally pre-determined drawing without the process of making it changing one's plans as one went along. Could it be the case that the act of making would always interfere to change one's intentional or logical reasoning?

Moreover, simply identifying a type of thinking by reference to a visual style does...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Intellect Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2010
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1841503258
• ISBN 13: 9781841503257
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 296
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland