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Prof Georg Gartner, Vienna University of Technology
Title TBC: On drawing as a way of mapping
Prof Gartner is presented by the Design Research Institute, RMIT University

Prof Stephen Farthing, University of the Arts London
“A Taxonomy of Drawing: Palin and the Bear”
Prof Farthing is presented by University of the Arts London

Godwin Bradbeer, RMIT University, and Prof Mark Minchinton, RMIT University
“Drawing In – The Perception and Conception of the Human Subject”
Mr Bradbeer and Prof Minchinton are presented by RMIT University

** Stay tuned: two more keynote speakers to be announced very soon! **

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES

Prof Georg Gartner

Prof Georg Gartner is a Full Professor for Cartography at the Vienna University of Technology. He holds graduate qualifications in Geography and Cartography from the University of Vienna and received his Ph.D. and his Habilitation from the Vienna University of Technology. He was awarded a Fulbright grant to the University of Nebraska at Omaha in 1997 and a research visiting fellowship to the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in 2000, to South China Normal University in 2006 and to the University of Nottingham in 2009. He serves as Vice-President of the International Cartographic Association. He is Dean for Academic Affairs for Geodesy and Geoinformation at Vienna University of Technology. He is responsible organizer of the International Symposia on Location Based Services & TeleCartography and Editor of the Book Series “Lecture Notes on Geoinformation and Cartography” by Springer and Editor of the Journal on LBS by Taylor & Francis.

Prof Stephen Farthing

Prof Stephen Farthing studied at St Martin’s, London from 1969 to 1973 before taking his Masters Degree at the Royal College of Art. In 1976 he received an Abbey Major Scholarship, taking him to The British School at Rome. In 1990 he was elected Ruskin Master at the Ruskin School of Fine Art . In 2000 he moved to New York to take the position of Executive Director of The New York Academy of Art. In 2004 he returned to London to take up the post of Rootstein Hopkins Research Professor in Drawing at the University of the Arts London.

Farthing has exhibited extensively since his first solo exhibition held at the Royal College of Art Gallery, London in 1977. He represented Britain at the 1989 Sao Paulo Biennale, was Artist in Residence at the Hayward Gallery, London in 1989. then elected Royal Academician in 1998 and in 2000 made an Emeritus Fellow of St Edmund Hall, Oxford. He lives and works in New York and London where he is represented by The Purdy Hicks Gallery. http://www.stephenfarthing.com

Godwin Bradbeer

Godwin Bradbeer is Acting Discipline Leader of Drawing within the RMIT School of Art. He has a Master of Arts (1994) from RMIT University. His continuing work endeavours towards a synthesis of diverse cultural attitudes and appearances exclusively within the described physiognomy of the human subject. Despite substantial experience as a photographer and a painter his most definitive practice is most frequently in various modes of drawing, particularly an idiosyncratic adaptation of chinagraph, silver oxide, graphite and pastel dust. In a significant respect the works seek to examine the viability of hand rendered imagery in an age of electronic media. Bradbeer won the prestigious Dobell Prize for Drawing in 1998 and has been a finalist on ten occasions. Since 1977 Bradbeer has held numerous solo exhibitions in Australia, Europe and Asia, and his works are held in most of Australia’s major public collections. He is represented by James Makin Gallery in Melbourne and Annandale Galleries in Sydney. http://www.godwinbradbeer.com

This is a summary of Professor Stephen Farthing’s keynote paper, to be presented at DRAWING OUT on Wednesday 7th April.

Prof Farthing is presented by University of the Arts London

Images 1 & 2: Grimshaw Architects: Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, Troy, New York State
Drawing by Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, Book 57, pages 70-71, 25 June 2001

Image 3: Grimshaw Architects: Ludwig Erhard Haus, Berlin
Drawing by Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, Book 32, pages 74-75, 5 October 1993

The landmark article Truth + Beauty, by Mullins [1], questioned why the beauty of mathematical equations had not been harnessed more widely as a form of contemporary art. He was having a show in London at the time, of photographs of typeset equations from many branches of mathematics and physics. Mullins outlined in his article an intriguing approach: he not only photographed typeset equations, but used a beguiling wall text to spin a narrative around his images, enough to bring the viewer in to take a closer look. I would call this approach, one of bringing a narrative resonance to communicate with the viewer, possibly from different standpoints, but all with the endpoint of bringing in an audience. Can we place the general ‘gestural’ concept of ‘drawing’ as one of bringing out a narrative resonance to that which is ‘written’?

In compiling his new 2008 book Formulas for Now, Hans Ulrich Obrist [2] invited artists, writers, architects, mathematicians and scientists each to contribute an equation for the twenty-first century. The resulting book with an equation per page is a spectacular readable array with a hardcover trapping of pink binding against 1950’s-green covers. Respondents took many approaches, from the humorous to the deadpan formulaic. The contributor’s name appears at the top of their page, similar in function to named wall texts in museum exhibitions. This work really catalogues how contemporary minds think—‘and is testament to the vital role that formulas play in contemporary culture’, [2]. The depicted equations are treated as visual ‘design’ objects. Some of these equation objects surprise: Gerhard Richter provides a page from his Atlas containing diagrams reminiscent of graph theory; Tacita Dean’s working method text equation is written chaos / chance = process, while more mathematically, Benoît Mandelbrot gives his landmark iterative equation z → z² + c that is used to generate the fractal Mandelbrot Set.

In his quest for mathematical beauty that is art, Mullins [1] noted that ‘A piece of mathematics must give some important or original insight to be beautiful’. He quotes the example of Euler’s famous formula:

which links together some of the major symbols of mathematics and complex number theory. Mullins suggests that an equation such as this is visually more powerful than geometric figures and models so often associated with beauty and mathematical art by the general public. Thus, it is the equation that is art, rather than a model of it. On a more geometric scale, for example, the mathematical representation of complex numbers in the plane is more artful than an image of the plane itself. But how is the bridge between mathematics and art crossed? I would suggest that the key lies in how the equations are represented.

Transcendence

The abstract thinking that configures Euler’s equation seems to be given an encouraging push along in Obrist [2] by virtue of the fact that it is handwritten, and has Mandelbrot’s signature appended. Suddenly there is a narrative guiding our thinking, and capturing our interest: did Mandelbrot really write this in this hand? There is an intrigue around viewing the handwritten notes of a mastermind. The final handwritten image, as a piece of art, has transcended its original mathematical role in this context. The white handwriting on the dark ‘blackboard’ page seems quite resonant of the viewer’s own schoolroom histories.

The notion of ‘transcendence’ seems key to understanding why other types of texts, markings, lines and scribbles have the capacity to intrigue and move people, even though their original function is not based on logical deduction. The potential take-up of images or text by contemporary culture is not based around logical reasoning and deduction (as is exhibited by the pictorial role of equations), but rather by a resonance with a subculture. Transcendent images and text communicate to subcultures. Successful images get in there, are threshed about, and are taken up and used. Perhaps this is why the highly resonant, but entirely illogical and scribbled, residue texts, installations, films and acts by Joseph Beuys have infiltrated twentieth century art history (a subculture), forced their way to the top, and remained there, still highly influential. The related term ‘trace’, which Ingold [3] describes as ‘any enduring mark left in or on a solid surface by a continuous movement’ seems to give appropriate visual narrative resonance for the viewer. For example, a standard musical score is simply a text of notes on staves that show the performer which notes to play. After a violin score has been annotated by the performing violinist, as illustrated by Ingold [3], it seems to be a document of performance carrying ‘bowings and markings’. This equation is art.

Another contributor to Obrist’s book of formulas is the Swiss artist Bernar Venet, who offers Related to ‘The Homology (Co-Homology) Sequence of the Pair (X,A)’, 2000. In this work, Venet carefully paints a museum wall fluorescent yellow, and then overpaints the field with precisely extracted equations from a research paper on Algebraic Topology. McEvilley [4] felt that ‘the viewer is left with the experience—delight in colours, amusement at chance resemblances and a confrontation with an essential unknowability’. This is because the audience cannot read research-level mathematics.

We have noted here that interpretation, handwriting and authorship can assist with the process of visually representing equations as art—this classical process of drawing. Indeed, to become art, an equation, like any object in the world, must be transcendent—and refer to our understandings of culture beyond its original mathematical function. Venet, for example, has specifically chosen mathematical texts to block viewer understanding of the depicted image, rather than appealing to the viewer to bring their own histories of similar texts. This narrative remains ‘confrontational’ rather than resonant, and following McEvilley’s advice we are left to delight in the colours.

Peter James Smith, October 2009
Professor Peter James Smith is Deputy Head Research & Innovation, in the School of Media & Communication at RMIT University, and a member of the DRAWING OUT Steering Committee.

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[1] J. Mullins, ‘Truth + Beauty’, New Scientist, Vol. 189 No. 2536, 2006, p.16.

[2] H. U. Obrist, Formulas for Now, Thames and Hudson: London, 2008.

[3] T. Ingold, Lines: A Brief History, Routledge: London, 2007.

[4] T. McEvilley, ‘Monochrome Math’, Art in America, April 2003, pp.108-113.

My aim in this essay is to first take a look at what I consider to be two significant points on the edge of the bigger picture of drawing, then give a feel of the size of the picture, and finally offer the reader an opportunity to disagree with a stab I’m going to make at writing a definition of drawing.

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It seems likely the story of drawing starts with scratching. Before charcoal, chalk, metal point and ink there were the fugitive linear traces left by fingernails, sticks, stones and bones that were drawn across fresh bark, flesh and the dirt. Some of these “drawings” were arbitrary others were made with a distinct sense of purpose. The earliest surviving drawings, the durable ones, are the ones that were scratched with rock into rock, not with a stick in the sand. Interestingly the first drawings are not of woolly mammoths, they came later, and the first known drawn images are linear and geometric [1].

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On the afternoon of Saturday 5 March 1836 a twenty-six-year-old Texan colonel, William Barrett Travis, executed what was probably his first and certainly his last performance drawing. Toward the end of the speech he delivered to the 180 or so remaining occupants of a besieged Spanish mission “The Alamo” Travis outlined three possible courses of action: to surrender and be executed, to fight their way out and be butchered, to defend their fort and sell their lives as dearly as possible. He then drew his sword and scratched a line in the dirt with its point. When the line was drawn he then invited those willing to stay and die with him to step across the line, as a sign of allegiance. All but one came across to his side of the line.

Drawing a line to stop or start action to define or divide space, to initiate or conclude a drama, was clearly not Travis’s own invention, history is full of drawn and crossed lines. What becomes clear though, once you stand back and consider Travis’s drawing, is how good it is. The drawing has emotional power, it is a conveyer of precise information, and it achieves its goal, but was drawn by a man with no obvious training as a draftsman. The trick of course, was Travis’s ability to mix lines and words, reduce a complex state of affairs to a single line, then find the perfect surface and instrument to draw the line with.

A year or so before Travis made what he knew would be his last drawing the Scottish scientist William Fox Talbot gave up trying to draw the landscape with what he found to be a very difficult-to-use drawing machine, the Camera Lucida, and went back to experimenting with the less portable Camera Obscura. Putting the pencil he had been using to manually capture the virtual and actual images he produced with his “cameras” to one side, he finally came up with the remarkably elegant idea of giving a sheet of paper a memory.

By positioning light-sensitive paper between the wall and the projected image, Fox Talbot enabled a paradigm shift that later became known as photography, a name derived from the Greek photos, meaning light and graphein to draw and write. His discovery resulted in the pictorially-driven aspects of drawing suddenly acquiring a very smart older brother. Photography could do what draftsmen, particularly artists and illustrators involved in verisimilitude had been struggling with for the last 30,000 years and as a result not only informed but also became a part of drawing.

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Architecture, Fashion & Textile Design, Graphic & Industrial Design, Painting, Printmaking, and Sculpture are all disciplines that in spite of new technology have remained relatively easy to define, Drawing, on the other hand, the only subject on the curriculum common to all of the above, seems to have become increasingly resistant to definition.
It’s not that there is either anything particularly confusing about the common usage of the word, or difficult to understand about the processes and reasoning behind the activity, it’s just that peripheral words like: can and can’t, talent, giftedness and perhaps most of all “Art” have – I believe – obscured our view.

This said, I believe the history of drawing can be divided quite neatly into two. With one half represented by Colonel Travis and drawings that sit comfortably with writing, mathematics and musical notation, these are predominantly linear and conceptual. The other type represented by Fox Talbot are mostly tonal and driven by a desire to convincingly render in two dimensions things and places already visible, these are Pictorial.

Over time both histories developed tools and machines to assist their drawing processes. The Conceptual used: measuring devices, string then compasses to make circles and ellipses, straight edges, chalk lines and rulers and ended-up with computers to mediate between concept and image. The Pictorial drew around cast shadows then used mirrors and lenses to produce projected and reflected images that were traced until finally they came up with the camera.

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If you make a list of the uses of drawing, both within and beyond art and design, then introduce into the equation just a few of the approaches and conventions commonly associated with this bigger picture of drawing, it becomes clear that any sustainable definition of drawing can neither be subject- nor material-based. It’s simply no good rattling on about pencils and paper and pretending computers and cameras don’t exist. You can after all draw with anything that will make a mark on any surface that will receive one.

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With these thoughts in mind I have turned away from for some very attractive and poetic possibilities, because they are centered around the belief that art is at the heart of drawing: John Ruskin described drawing as “dirtying the paper delicately” [2], John Berger as “an autobiographical record of one’s discovery of an event seen, remembered or imagined” [3]. Unfortunately neither has taken into account the bigger picture and the silent majority of draftsmen, the ones who draw with an invisible hand: the Cartographers, the Pattern Cutters and the Precision Engineers whose common goals of consistency, accuracy and legibility have as good as nothing to do with authorship and the “autobiographical”.

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So to conclude, first a definition:

I understand drawing as the translation of multidimensional information into readable two-dimensional matter.

Then, an afterthought:

The drawings we tend to recognise as the best are I suspect, the ones that complete the above task with what mathematicians call elegance.

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Stephen Farthing, October 2009.
Stephen Farthing is Rootstein Hopkins Professor of Drawing, University of the Arts London, and Co-convenor of DRAWING OUT.

Drawing swords and cameras is an adaptation of an essay written for the catalogue of the exhibition, Drawing the World at the Museum of Art (MOA), Seoul National University November, 2009.

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[1] Rock Drawing, Blombos cave site near the South African Cape. About eight inches wide, drawn/scratched on a prepared surface of the soft ochre stone, a network of diagrammatic marks, dated to a period around 77,000 years ago.

[2] “All good drawing consists merely in dirtying the paper delicately.” From a letter to an unnamed correspondent, 30 August 1855; Works of John Ruskin (Library Edition), vol.15, p.489.

[3] John Berger, ‘Essay Life Drawing’, Berger on Drawing, Occasional Press, 2005, p.3.

Godwin Bradbeer, ‘Imago – Ex Nihilo’ 2005. Chinagraphy, pastel, graphite on paper, 17 x 13.5cm

Composite image: Drawing: Leon van Schaik, Ideogram describing the 3 year plan for Customising Space, RMIT Design Research Institute. Photograph: Malte Wagenfeld, Visualising Air, Craft Victoria Occupation, September 2008. Photographer Jacob Walker. Image courtesy RMIT Design Research Institute.