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Lines of Discovery: 225 Years of American Drawings
251 pages; over 223 illustrations in full color
Lines of Discovery: 225 Years of American Drawings follows the evolution of American drawings from Colonial times to the present day, at the same time showcasing the richness and diversity of American drawing. With ninety-seven artists treated in depth with full-page spreads and accompanying essays, and an additional 126 works represented in figures, this is an enlightening survey of the changing styles, subjects and influence of the American drawing. Side by side with names from the accepted canon are many artists of merit whose work is less well known yet still significant. This is a comprehensive resource for art lovers and print collectors alike. Though a crucial tool since the Renaissance (and prior), drawing itself, even those with flawless draftsmanship, were considered mere preparatory sketches for a final work, a cheap means by which to work out problems of composition or figure study before committing them to the more permanent medium such as oil painting. Though drawings began to be made as independent works in the 1700s, and collectors also began to collect drawings as art around this time, it is only in the present century that the drawing has received pride of place as an art form in its own right. Collections such as the holdings in the Columbus Museum, Columbus, Georgia, from which the drawings in Lines of Discovery are gathered, are receiving greater attention due to increased interest in drawing's closeness to the artist and to artistic process. Drawing furthermore is and remains one of the easiest areas in which to found a collection, due to size, intimacy, and affordability of many fine drawing works. The term 'drawing' as used today covers a spectrum of materials, generally with the commonality of being works on paper. The works in Lines of Discovery thus compass a wide variety of media including delicate seacoast watercolors, formal academic pastel figures, rambunctious pen and ink abstractions, and meticulous realism, fine as a photograph, in charcoal and graphite.
As social history, and as history of the evolution of American art, these drawings by American artists show that taking them as a body of work is both illuminating and worthy of respect. Divided into five chapters, Lines of Discovery organizes the drawings chronologically, beginning with the earliest in the pre-Colonial and Colonial eras. This chapter, "From European Traditions to the Emergence of a New and United Country", opens not with the flat, stylized naivete of American primitivism as one might expect if familiar with American painting, but with the very accomplished European influence of American artists who lived or studied abroad. Some, as in the case of pre-Revolutionary Bostonian, John Singleton Copley (1738-1815), and early Pennsylvanian Quaker, Benjamin West (1738-1820), were not only accomplished artists but became celebrated luminaries of the European art scene as well. Male Nude (charcoal, chalk and pastel over reed pen and ink on wove paper: 24-1/2 x 17-7/8 in.: 1784) by West clearly shows the academic influence guiding the artist's exquisite skill in handling of volume and colored pastel in this flawless rendition of an older male nude turned away from the viewer to show a three-quarter view of his muscular back and legs. Other artists of this period made the transition in reverse, finding America more congenial than Europe, and bringing their talents with them. Charles Balthazar Julien Févret de Saint-Memin (1770-1852) spent from 1793-1814 in the United States as a political refugee from France. Saint-Memin employed his talents as a draftsman to improve upon the black-and-white silhouette profile then popular as a portrait, by filling in actual features upon the sitter's projected outline. Results such as Portrait of Thomas Hillen (pencil, charcoal and chalk on prepared laid paper: 19 x 14 in.: 1804) illustrate Saint-Memin's capacity to capture personality and likeness with economy of means: wrinkles around the eyes, a mole on the sitter's cheek, and a hint of jowls just beginning to crease the jawline are all brought out in a few strokes of charcoal on the beige paper, and combine with the bright, spirited eye of Hillen to suggest a firm and personable character.
Early American drawing was infused but not eclipsed by its European heritage. Artists quickly found inspiration in native subjects, including landscape features of romantic grandeur, realistic coastal views and seascapes, and local botanical subjects. As the century progressed, these vast, unspoiled New World landscapes yielded to the pressures of modern urbanization, the immense migration of souls to the cities, and the hitherto unknown, mass concentrations of population therein. "American Renaissance and Cosmopolitan Outlook" covers the transitional period from 1870 to the 1920s, with urban realism mingling with drawings nostalgic for a diminishing respect for academic tradition. American drawings documented the Yankee vigor, the early social concerns, and the beauties or perils of the modern city. "Progressive and Avant-Garde Artists" and "Regionalism, Socialism, and American Visions" touch on differing aspects of the fertile period between 1900-1950, "Progressive and Avant-Garde Artists" treating those influences when the native product, now well established, received a fresh infusion of vision and energy by East European artists seeking refuge in the west. Not mentioned in the text, but an interesting side note, is how many of these Europeans we simply claim as Americans, without acknowledging their overseas origins. "Regionalism, Socialism, and American Visions" shows artists finding inspiration in America's problems and pleasures on its native soil. As contrasting visions here one may compare two pictures from the same decade: the caustic commentary of Paul Cadmus's (1904-1999) Venus and Adonis (pen and ink on wove paper: 8 x 8 in.: 1936), in which Cadmus uses the Classical reference to illustrate tennis celebrity Fred Perry thrusting aside his clinging wife; and the homespun appeal of Thomas Hart Benton's (1889-1975) guitar player, Wilbur Leverett, Galena, Missouri (ink, sepia wash, and pencil on buff-colored wove paper: 11-11/16 x 9 in.: ca. 1931), a simple, documentary drawing of a young rural musician with his instrument, sketched in Benton's signature style.
The post-World-War-II era heralded the mindsets we now have today as artists turned away from such criticisms and comforts. "Postwar Modernism and a Resurgence in Realism", the broadest grouping, brings the collected works from the 1950s to the present day (the most recent is from 2003). Two distinct threads trace themselves through the drawings, abstraction, and surprisingly, a reawakened interest in figurative realism. In the abstract explorations of artists such as Burgoyne Diller (1906-1965), Milton Avery (1893-1965), Robert Motherwell (1915-1991), Norman Bluhm (1921-1999) and Jay DeFeo (1929-1989), forms twist, splatter, swathe in broad strokes across the page, or blur into semi-organic shapes. Interleaving them in piquant contrast are figurative drawings, generally studies of the human body. Where the figurative realists of the prior half of the century turned their gaze outward to serve as witnesses and recorders of social problems and the urban denizens around them, these contemporary artists reflect a more self-searching, introspective viewpoint, using the figure as departure point for showing its abstractions, reflecting interpersonal relationships, or probing the body's form as representative of personality and character. Drawings by Nancy Grossman (1940- ), Jack Beal (1931- ), William Beckman (1942- ), and Steven Assael (1957- ), all show the figure as alive, well, and still with something relevant to express. Both the ninety-seven drawings that are the book's main focus and the 126 drawings included as figures are fully annotated with size, medium, dates and provenance. Footnotes, a full index, and a comprehensive listing of general texts on American drawings, as well as those referring to individual artists, enhance this volume as a superior reference. Full-color illustrations make Lines of Discovery a good visual study. The pleasure is added to by the short essays which accompany each of the ninety-seven primary works. Written by seventeen contributing authors from a variety of accredited galleries and museums, good editing keeps these consistent while also providing a variety of viewpoints and lively writing styles. This is an excellent reference for print collectors, noteworthy in that it includes not only those oft-named individuals one is most likely to need to look up, but many artists of merit who get short shrift elsewhere. Lines of Discovery: 225 Years of American Drawings is a wide-ranging study of important American artists from Colonial times to the present, showing the infusion of its European heritage as well as the vitality of the native product -- a compendium of reflections on the American scene and the diverse accomplishments of its artists, from moody sea-coasts and gaslit bars to the broad contrasting strokes of abstraction and a renewed postmodern appreciation of the figure. The related exhibition, Lines of Discovery: 225 Years of American Drawings, will tour on the following schedule: June 17 - August 27, 2006, Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, OK; September 23 - December 31, 2006, Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo, MI; January 26 - April 22, 2007, Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, AK. --Katherine R. Lieber Katherine R. Lieber has edited ArtScope.net's Visual Arts reviews since 1998. Ms. Lieber is Editor and Associate Producer for ArtScope.net.
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