Page 48 - Studio International - May 1973

Within the art of drawing are many varieties of
On drawing style, technique and expression, and Philip biblical or mythological historia to illustrate a
moral adage. With the concept of invention
Rawson1 recently listed seventeen functionally the notion of drawing changed too : a drawing
different kinds of drawings; however, if one was regarded as the pure, direct reflection of the
R. H. Fuchs relates drawing directly to the working of the prima idea in the artist's mind. Here is, for
artist's mind, there are possibly only two grand example, Giorgio Vasari in the Preface to the
categories: drawing as definition and drawing as second edition of the Lives, 1568: 'From this
exploration. Of these two the latter has always knowledge [of all things in Nature] there
been held in high esteem, probably because it proceeds a certain idea or judgment, which is
was the kind of free drawing closest to the formed in the mind, and this idea to which
theoretical reasoning which lifted drawing and expression is given by the hands is called
the appreciation of drawings to a respectable drawing. It can therefore be concluded, that
and almost autonomous level. this drawing is simply a visible expression and
That theory of drawing issued from the manifestation of the idea which exists in our
classical argument about painting being the mind, and which others have formed in their
mind's and not the hand's work. A painting, mind and created in their imagination.'2
according to 16th-century theory, is a material Even though this exaltation of the imagination
realization of something more primary and did not make drawing a really independent art
possibly more important or interesting : the form, it affected drawing as an activity. The
intellectual invention. This crucial term, prima idea now had some status apart from
invention, was used almost exclusively in the finished painting or sculpture; this meant
relation to artistic imagination, which makes that drawing could more easily become a free
mannerist theory slightly different from the exploration of style and structure unprecedented
earlier 15th-century theory. There invention in the history of art. Also, it might have
related primarily to the artist's intellect and influenced public taste for drawings as art
knowledge. It was a rather matter-of-fact word, works of a particular liveliness and intimacy,
meaning the inventiveness to select the proper which has still not left our culture.

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