The hard won image

Wollheim suggests that art is a form of life, if so what makes it's heart beat? One sort of drawing is that which seeks to recapture the essence of the contact with another human being. The result of this encounter is one you could argue according to Wollheim, that is another form of life. If so, how do we read this life? How do we separate out those encounters that deaden the experience from those that embody it?
Drawings that record the struggle of the encounter always seem to offer to myself a more rewarding experience. So I thought it worthwhile looking at a few artists that still work in the traditional field of perceptual observation and that use the human figure as their core subject.

Ginny Grayson 'No conclusions drawn: self portrait'

Ginny Grayson states that she slowly feels her way through the forms that she perceives, comparing her approach to a surgical process. She says this reflects the difficulty of pinning down reality or identity, and states that she often finds the ghostly residue or erasure preferable to the actual drawing. Grayson’s method involves numerous corrections using eraser and gesso, and by adding paper to areas worn thin by overworking. The worn and fragile surface of 'No conclusions drawn: self portrait' attests to the difficulties generated by her investigative process. The right panel of the diptych contains photographs showing earlier stages, lost as an inevitable part of her method, while date stamps on the drawing are intended as an ironic comment on the absurdity of trying to draw what one perceives.
See

Grayson sums up the problem of a perceptual encounter as being something virtually impossible, however in trying to record the event the image gradually evolves and as a viewer you can trace back the encounter by reliving the various stages of the drawing. I'm not so sure she needs to also give us the stages of its making by including the photographs but perhaps in this age dominated by the photographic image, new audiences need to be reassured by the photographic record. The grid of her looking is for me the main entry point into this work together with the way the drawing intensifies as it reaches the figure. The way the stomach gets blacker and blacker as she discovers where her weight lies, (I don't mean poundage, just visual focus) draws me to an off centre intensity. It's as if the drawing moves from a first of all 'it's not what it is but where it is' encounter, gradually into a second stage whereby she discovers what it is by looking for where it is. The marks and traces of looking change as she encounters her own image, outside of the figure they assert the underlying geometry of relationships, but once the figure is entrapped it begins to generate a new energy of internal dynamics, but an energy that is loosed into the surrounding space by the way the left arm in particular is broken by the rubber and therefore cut back into the space behind her, whist also being pulled into the growing mass of the body. It is the unravelling of the process that reveals the life of the looking and at this point this is what for me gives the drawing life. Notice how the long straight of the table in the foreground is broken several times. If the line had no interruptions it would flatten the foreground space, but as it is, the broken line allows the eyes to inhabit both the established foreground space and also travel back into the rest of the image's spaces. As you look into the space behind the table a rhythmic play of partly revealed rectangles begins, rectangles that are partly a response to things seen, (edges of boards, canvases etc) and partly a response to the imagined grid of looking. A grid she has either developed from the use of perhaps a plumb-line or a horizontally and vertically held pencil measure, a grid that in the process of the actual drawing has a history in the way she has come to do the looking. As someone who has drawn for a long time I now no longer use my aids to measurement such as plumb-lines and verticals and horizontals, it's as if that grid is locked into my head and I 'see' angles and relationships as if the physical checks were still there and it may well be a similar situation with Grayson when she draws, not that it really matters. What does matter is that in order to try to capture the ephemeral nature of looking, an artist needs something to hang on to. All is chaos until something is brought into the situation to stabilise it.

Ginny Grayson

It's interesting to compare one of Ginny Grayson's head drawings with one of Frank Auerbach's.

Frank Auerbach

Auerbach is looking for something else here. The grid you feel is not there, he is searching for the monumentality of the encounter. Looking I suspect now as much at the drawing as at the image. In comparison with Auerbach's drawing, the 'space lines' that suggest perhaps a collar that Grayson uses to create a space for the bottom half of the drawing to exist in, feel almost mannered. Grayson is still in an intellectual control of the drawing, while Auerbach after a long time of searching for something has just at some point had to stop working, you get the sense that he is always feeling for the image, rather than trying to arrive at a 'look' or preconceived idea of a resolution. The drawing has almost disintegrated under his searching for some sort of reality. Black marks seep into the solid of the body but this time ooze into the space behind rather that slit the space open. Both artists use the frame of the drawing to give their sitters a strong presence, Grayson in particular pushes the mass of the head out into our space, whilst Auerbach's head appears to be wanting to knock its solidity against its frame. These drawings reward close and slow looking, both artists have given us a rewarding experience based on an encounter with another human being. I'm personally more drawn to the Auerback image, in the end because it is more awkward, more difficult, but Grayson's image can be equally rewarding, as it has a strong grasp of how dark light reversal can be used to heighten an awareness of form. The facial modelling is much more subtle than Auerbach's and suggestive of individual character, Auerbach's suggestive of a more universal encounter with a human being, rather than with a particular person.

Ginny Grayson

The two drawings above are also date stamped, the printed dates playing off against the marks that determine the space within which each head sits again coalescing around the areas of perceptual focus. Each drawing begins to set up its own vibration patterns, reminding us that we are all at a microscopic level simply a vibrating mass of atoms and electrons.

The portrait drawings of Ann Gale fit into this same category, but there are subtle differences.

Ann Gale

The frame of looking is established right from the start A drawn rectangle surrounding the image is used to establish almost a weaving frame support. The mass gradually emerges from the space, each horizontal or vertical finding line trying to literally pin down the image. Secondary marks attempt to find their way onto the surface of the figure, bending out of the rigid mesh of woven grid lines. A totally different rhythm is established, even though the perceptual problem is similar. The looking is much more fragile and tentative, the marks less substantial and less energetic than those used by Grayson in the two portraits above.

The framing of space and the finding of that frame are most clearly seen in Gale's most famous artistic predecessor, Giacometti.

Giacometti

Giacometti's drawings often use a space frame to locate the image, but the frame itself is often re-established several times as he seeks to find the space that his figures exist in. The image photographed in its presentation frame, has in particular had several drawn frames established as the drawing has evolved, to the extent that they now operate more like a doorway into the space. Again the figure appears as if it is pinned into the space, this time thin paint is used  to erase the lines of looking rather than erasers. However in both Gale's work and Giacometti's it is the story of the finding that lives on in these images.

All of these artists have an artistic forefather in Cezanne, his attempts to put together his 'petite sensations' were always struggles to grasp what he was seeing rather than attempts to depict a subject and he pioneered a way of drawing and painting that left open to the viewer the various changes and differences that take place when you look at something over time. 

Cezanne

See also:

Uncertain certainty

Andrew Lister

Life drawing

Eye tracking drawing technology

Drawing and Time

Drawing like its cousins in communication, verbal and written languages, operates in time and each type of drawing could be said to inhabit a particular tense. Drawing’s paradox is that at its best it operates in the present tense, it creates an experience of nowness of presentness and yet it is often a study of the past, or more accurately the pastness of the present, whilst it also attempts to construct a presentness of the past.

Drawing is what I do as an art practice. Every time I make a drawing I am aware of the decision to make it, the decision to approach it in a certain way and an experience of making the drawing. Each is conceptually, emotionally and physically different and each aspect slips from beneath my understanding as I try to focus on it. The more I draw the less I understand how it works. I’ll try and explain.

John Berger points to three distinct types of drawing; the study and question of the visible, the communication of ideas and the capturing of memory.  He observes that each type of drawing speaks in a different tense and that the viewer will respond with a different capacity of imagination to each approach. Berger by setting out these differences suggests that all drawings can be in some way timed. My own experience of drawing is that like all languages you use a very specific mode, such as description, when you are explaining to someone else what something looks like and yet the same language can at another time be used within a different mode of address, such as poetry, where what perhaps started as descriptive text, now reconfigures itself to suggest metaphoric associations or a changed rhythm of delivery. We use language very differently when having an informal chat in the pub, to having to deliver a speech at a formal occasion. 

Drawings I do in response to direct observation are very different to one's done from memory, it's the encounter with the world that counts. However the encounter with what’s out there for the drawer is an enigma. On the one hand you are recording an observation, you are recording that observation within a certain period of time and you have a sensibility that attunes you to certain things. On the other hand you are forced to abstract, you are not mimicking nature or creating an illusion of the real, you are developing a trace of the mind’s eye as it decides what is of interest and what is not. Each mark made, even though it is made in response to something seen, is though itself immediately an active shaper of what is being shaped. If for example a particular type or character of mark is used to represent a point in space, or an edge to an object, it will itself then activate the imagined space of the surface on which you draw. In response to these decisions, the next mark you make is going to be stronger or weaker, higher or lower, of a different directional nature, has a family of resemblance or difference; you can’t avoid the fact that previous marks are going to dictate future marks’ position and nature. Therefore at some point in the process of looking, the objective regard for what is out there becomes suffused within a subjective response to the process of a drawing’s becoming. It is as Yates explained, ‘I made it out of a mouthful of air’, it happened as it arrived. The sentence I used to explain something in that hurried conversation on the bus just came to me, even so, it still communicated something, one word seemed to trip out another and I speak so often that I no longer have to think about it.

But this is still an encounter. You look down at what you have drawn and up at what you are drawing. Questions are asked. Have I managed to capture anything of the nature of this experience? If so, what is it? It may be very abstract, the nature of the space or rhythm of perceptual encounter. It may be to record a particular shape or set of associations discovered. If it is going to be a drawing you continue with, the process needs a focus. Not all drawings find this focus at the time and it may only be some time later that you notice where the drawing could take itself.

Cezanne

In this drawing of trees by Cezanne, you feel that what he is really looking at is his experience of the space between the trees. Each mark is a tentative grasp of what he is searching for rather than a depiction of a tree. The drawing doesn't have a conclusion, it simply seems to be waiting for another decision, the space arriving as you yourself begin to read Cezanne's attempt to realise his experience. In this way this small drawing always appears to be 'in the now'. 

So what’s there when you stop, when you ‘finish’ an observed drawing? Sometimes the decisions of looking are balanced so delicately in relation to the physical decisions of the drawing, that the result in some ways forces you to stay there forever.  The enigma of the looking can be frozen in a material encounter, which you are forced to unpick in the present tense. It is a present tense in the sense that the observer is forced to re-create the moments of looking, the palimpsest of the drawings surface presenting traces of action as a diagram of simultaneity for the observer’s eyes.  However if I had to nail down this sort of drawing into a type of tense it would be something that suggested that a finished action has an influence on the present, thus it would have to be the present perfect progressive.

Some drawings are long term encounters with the physicality of the making of a drawing itself. There is no observation of something else, what is observed is what is encountered as the drawing evolves. Artists that use systems and follow ordered processes often work in this area, something I have never really done, I’m too scatty and easily bored, but when done well I’m aware it can be a very powerful engine for the production of work.  Systems are often used in order to visualize the transformation of materials over time. If you look at the work of an artist like Katie Lewis, you will see her engaged with documenting and recording her actions as well as the actual doing and making. When you encounter the work it is finished, documented and recorded. So although the actions in making the drawings reflect a considerable amount of time and effort, it is as if we are putting an emphasis on the final result, which in the English language would be the present perfect simple.  Lewis states,

“I invent and implement systems in order to visualize the transformation of materials over time. I compile data such as physical sensations in the body, the number of steps taken each day, or the manner individuals traverse through a landscape. I devise methods of data visualization using limited materials such as paper, thread, sewing pins, or graphite. The process of physical repetition within a system transforms the materials into intricate visual accumulations. Pins amass on the wall into clusters or swarms, thread weaves into a chaotic web, graphite numbers layer into a black mass, and punctured holes overlap until a surface can no longer hold itself together.”

She regards all the various approaches to drawing as methods of data visualisation. Whether using sewing, pins or drawing with graphite, she is visualising data and this is something I have touched on before Lewis operating at the much more physical end of the data visualisation spectrum.

450 Days. pins, pencil; 234″ x 108″ x 1.5″

730 Days. pins, pencil; 56″ x 292″ x 1.5″

In Lewis's drawings time is embedded in her titles as they are part of the recording mechanisms used. 

Drawing from observation or responding to an ongoing data collecting process is very different to visualising what’s in the mind’s eye. Working drawings that set out a scene or plot an idea are about the dreaming of ideas and dealing with visions and future what ifs. This is about action that might take place, the conditional simple tense. Plans and diagrams may be seen as belonging to the future tense as they are indications of what could be built, but drawings of visions, those realisations of images that just arrive out of their own making, these are about becoming. The future simple tense is about decisions made for the future. There is a distinct difference however between those images that project an idea of the future, for instance one of Christo’s drawings for wrapping the Reichstag and a drawing that is a result of its own becoming, something that has risen out of the process of seeing an image in the marks, which could be seen as a spontaneous decision, part of the future simple tense.

Cristo

Christo: drawings for wrapping the Reichstag

Picasso: Sketchbook page

Christo's drawings for the wrapping of the Reichstag include plans and positions on maps. They are a clear vision of a possible future, whilst Picasso's sketchbook page is a drawing discovering itself. There are no plans here, simply a hand responding to what is going on, each set of marks implying a new image; the spontaneous future simple tense. However as a drawing like this evolves, it can go through the same set of decisions as a drawing from life. If for example a particular type or character of mark is used to represent an idea, or an emerging image, it will itself then activate the imagined space of the surface on which you draw. In response to these decisions, exactly as is the case in drawing from life, the next mark you make is going to be stronger or weaker, higher or lower, of a different directional nature, has a family of resemblance or difference; you can’t avoid the fact that previous marks are going to dictate future marks’ position and nature. Therefore at some point in the process of invention it becomes inseparable from the process of a drawing’s becoming.

I sometimes draw from memory. This is of course about a past tense. The past perfect progressive, I had been experiencing something. However when I recall the past, it is perhaps the past progressive. I slip between tenses as I get lost in my own wanderings, knowing that what I’m really looking for are drawings that seek a universal time, I’m looking for a summery tense, a time that can host a drawing situated intelligence, where drawing was is the medium through which thought is received as concrete  expression. Drawing from memory is both a process of simplification and distortion. As always for an experienced drawer the feel of the drawing at some point takes over as you begin to 'see' things in the marks you make. Reinventing the past is something we all do, so its no surprise that drawings from memory also do this. I like the way Gianluca Gimini set up a very basic situation for people to look at, a bicycle, and then reversed the process, making bikes from the drawings people did from memory. 

Bike drawn from memory

Below is a table of tenses as used in the English language. We rarely think about tense when speaking, we just use the language. It’s only when you learn a foreign language that you are asked to stop and consider how and when you use different tenses. As you go through these different tenses you begin to feel slippage between them, (well I do) and I get a sense that time is very personal, one person's present may be another person's past, for some an imagined future is a reality for others an impossibility. 

Simple Present	A: He speaks. N: He does not speak. Q: Does he speak?	Action in the present taking place once, never or several times       Facts       Actions taking place one after another       Action set by a timetable or schedule	always, every …, never, normally, often, seldom, sometimes, usually if sentences type I (If I talk, …)
Present Progressive	A: He is speaking. N: He is not speaking. Q: Is he speaking?	Action taking place in the moment of speaking        Action taking place only for a limited period of time        Action arranged for the future	at the moment, just, just now, Listen!, Look!, now, right now
Simple Past	A: He spoke. N: He did not speak. Q: Did he speak?	Action in the past taking place once, never or several times       Actions taking place one after another       Action taking place in the middle of another action	yesterday, 2 minutes ago, in 1990, the other day, last Friday if sentence type II (If I talked, …)
Past Progressive	A: He was speaking. N: He was not speaking. Q: Was he speaking?	Action going on at a certain time in the past       Actions taking place at the same time       Action in the past that is interrupted by another action	when, while, as long as
Present Perfect Simple	A: He has spoken. N: He has not spoken. Q: Has he spoken?	Putting emphasis on the result       Action that is still going on       Action that stopped recently       Finished action that has an influence on the present       Action that has taken place once, never or several times before the moment of speaking	already, ever, just, never, not yet, so far, till now, up to now
Present Perfect Progressive	A: He has been speaking. N: He has not been speaking. Q: Has he been speaking?	Putting emphasis on the course or duration (not the result)       Action that recently stopped or is still going on       Finished action that influenced the present	all day, for 4 years, since 1993, how long?, the whole week
Past Perfect Simple	A: He had spoken. N: He had not spoken. Q: Had he spoken?	Action taking place before a certain time in the past             Putting emphasis only on the fact (not the duration)	already, just, never, not yet, once, until that day if sentence type III (If I had talked, …)
Past Perfect Progressive	A: He had been speaking. N: He had not been speaking. Q: Had he been speaking?	Action taking place before a certain time in the past             Putting emphasis on the duration or course of an action	for, since, the whole day, all day
Future I Simple	A: He will speak. N: He will not speak. Q: Will he speak?	Action in the future that cannot be influenced       Spontaneous decision       Assumption with regard to the future	in a year, next …, tomorrow If-Satz Typ I (If you ask her, she will help you.) assumption: I think, probably, perhaps
Future I Simple (going to)	A: He is going to speak. N: He is not going to speak. Q: Is he going to speak?	Decision made for the future       Conclusion with regard to the future	in one year, next week, tomorrow
Future I Progressive	A: He will be speaking. N: He will not be speaking. Q: Will he be speaking?	Action that is going on at a certain time in the future        Action that is sure to happen in the near future	in one year, next week, tomorrow
Future II Simple	A: He will have spoken. N: He will not have spoken. Q: Will he have spoken?	Action that will be finished at a certain time in the future	by Monday, in a week
Future II Progressive	A: He will have been speaking. N: He will not have been speaking. Q: Will he have been speaking?	Action taking place before a certain time in the future        Putting emphasis on the course of an action	for …, the last couple of hours, all day long
Conditional I Simple	A: He would speak. N: He would not speak. Q: Would he speak?	Action that might take place	if sentences type II (If I were you, I would go home.)
Conditional I Progressive	A: He would be speaking. N: He would not be speaking. Q: Would he be speaking?	Action that might take place        Putting emphasis on the course / duration of the action
Conditional II Simple	A: He would have spoken. N: He would not have spoken. Q: Would he have spoken?	Action that might have taken place in the past	if sentences type III (If I had seen that, I would have helped.)
Conditional II Progressive	A: He would have been speaking. N: He would not have been speaking. Q: Would he have been speaking?	Action that might have taken place in the past        Puts emphasis on the course / duration of the action

See also: 

Blind time drawing
More thoughts on drawing time
Here
Holding time in action