Page 49 - Studio International - May 1973

The change can best be measured against
earlier drawings, those of Leonardo da Vinci
for example. I think that for Leonardo drawing
was not so much a function of imagination as a
function of vision; drawing as assisting the eye.
(Writing not about art but about pedagogy
Aristotle noted that drawing was necessary to
the eye's education.) Drawing was the medium
with which to define things, and which helped
preserve a visual memory. Renaissance drawings
without the tour-de-force connotations of many
mannerist ones and mostly devoid of
ostentatious stylishness, are really definitions of
how a human hand looks, or a flower, or a
formation of rocks. Even Leonardo's amazing
visions of the end of the world are not pure
imagination but careful combinations of
collected natural data; visual definitions of
cascades of water, rainstorms and avalanches
mix into images of anticipated natural
phenomena; they have little to do with
futurological dreams.
Now I do not want to push the distinction
between definition and exploration too far that exploration is being defined. That would which is not just a difference in style. (For
without making it more precise; after all, it of course be correct, but there is a marked example the drawings of J. P. Saenredam, the
could be maintained that in a drawing which difference between a drawing of a human figure master of the church interior, are closer to the
explores compositional variations, precisely by Leonardo and, say, a sketch by Rembrandt, Leonardo drawings than to those of his

(Left) (Top left)
Armando J. J. Schoonhoven
Rainbow 1971 T 71-141971
Ink on paper Ink on paper
Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum
(Top right)
Jan Maaskant
Untitled 1971
Ink and pencil on paper
The Hague: Gemeentemuseum
Photo: Cor van Wanrooy
(Above)
Ad Dekkers
Two Drawings 197o
Ink on paper
Coll: The artist