Are ‘traditional’ Drawing approaches merely an antidote to the digital world, or are original and authentic drawn responses more important than ever?

Southern, Jack (2016) Are ‘traditional’ Drawing approaches merely an antidote to the digital world, or are original and authentic drawn responses more important than ever? In: AAH2017. Association of Art Historians, London. (In Press)

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Abstract

This paper will discuss the relevance of Drawing and Drawing education today, through examining our complex relationship to notions of originality and authenticity, in the context of the volume and velocity by which we experience digital imagery in contemporary western culture. We increasingly record and communicate our lived experience through multiple digital means, disseminated with speed and ease through the global and virtual networks we participate in daily. It seems important to extend the critique introduced by Altermodernism (2009), of how artists operate within the numerous realities of this globalised culture, to look specifically at our relationship to images and image making, in order to contexualise and understand the currency of Drawing today. In a 2010 ICA debate , Mark Lecky suggests that Artists no longer need to generate new and original imagery. Instead they can ‘be led to’ visualise and communicate their ideas through appropriating from multiple sources at the touch of a button, attributed to his somewhat perverse notion of ‘letting culture use you as an instrument’. Characteristics of the ‘traditional’ drawing process, prioritise an original and autographic response to the world through time spent in focused, uninterrupted and unmediated concentration. Do these values seek to simply provide a creative antidote to the cognitive and behavioral conditioning of the multi- faceted contemporary world which Lecky refers to? Or, on the contrary, is Drawing central to an idea that the Artists’ role in generating original imagery is now more important than ever, within the increasing stream of appropriated and homogenised imagery we experience digitally? Crucial to the discussion in this paper will be the extension of ideas presented by Margarita Gluzberg in Digital Draw (2016), in which she suggests the need for a re-evaluation of the way we discuss and define terms such as ‘traditional’ and ‘contemporary’, ‘digital and analogue’ in our understanding of the complexity, plurality and fluidity of drawing practice today. Paper presented at The Association of Art Historians 2017 Annual Conference & Book Fair, Loughborough University 6-8 April, 2017

Item Type:	Book Section
Additional Information:	Paper presented at the AAH2016 Annual Conference and Art Book Fair 7 – 9 April 2016 Conference paper reproduced and distributed with the permission of the Association of Art Historians.
Related URLs:	Organisation
Subjects:	N Fine Arts > NC Drawing Design Illustration N Fine Arts > NE Print media T Technology > TR Photography
Divisions:	Schools and Research Institutes > School of Creative Arts
Research Priority Areas:	Culture, Continuity, and Transformation Creative Practice and Theory
Depositing User:	Jack Southern
Date Deposited:	24 May 2017 09:36
Last Modified:	31 Aug 2023 09:23
URI:	https://eprints.glos.ac.uk/id/eprint/4629

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