Tag: drawing

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The harder truth of the matter is that most drawings are failures and that almost all drawing is merely practice. One draws especially to learn. You learn and you learn and you learn. You are constantly making new connections in your mind. You are constantly trying to stop old connections from redirecting your pencil or from talking your drawing into a muddled death. You are concentrating in a spacialized and extraordinary way. And in the end you are drawing in order to grow within yourself.

Peter Steinhart, in “The Undressed Art; Why We Draw”
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All great Works, the Works that can hold us in their thrall indefinitely, are similarly close to what they are after. The old man’s (Titian’s) painting of dogs, one of Rothko’s late, large paintings of a coloured glow, or a Hokusai drawing of a couple fucking, are all equally close to their aim. They are as close as one can get. In theory, something could be closer (the distance is still considerable), but then there would be, could be, no image – because at a closer distance, you can no longer separate, no longer resist the colossal gravitational pull of the ‘model’ – whatever that model is, a pup, transcendent light, or the act of fucking. When you are so close that you are touching all the time, there can be no art. And when you are really far away, there’s no energy in what is made, it’s merely a ritual object, because there’s no touching at all.

(via ricdragon)

John Berger, Berger on Drawing

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A drawing of a tree shows, not a tree, but a tree-being-looked-at. … Within the instant of the sight of a tree is established a life-experience.

John Berger (via ricdragon)