AN ACADEMY OF EMULATION

What Would An Academy Of Emulation Look Like?

The Reasons We Learn To Draw:

I. to see

if we can’t see, we can’t understand

II. to understand

if we don’t understand, we won’t remember

III. to remember

Memory is the mother of the Muses

The Role Of Drawing In Making Art:

I. exploration

invention is the search for form

II. invention

invention is not a priori, it is discovered through drawing

III. refinement

once we have invented, we need to refine in order to make Beauty

How Drawing For Study Influences Drawing For Invention:

I. what you draw conditions what you invent

you only draw after masters you want to emulate

II. how you draw conditions how you invent

drawing after masters shapes your hand in a similar way to theirs

III. how you invent conditions how you draw (which conditions how you invent…)

your facility in invention facilitates your learning by drawing

Masters Are As Important As Models:

I. exemplary art frames our aspirations

other artists have defined a range of possibilities, and standards of achievement

our art is understood, evaluated, and interpreted with respect to theirs

we form virtual apprentices to these past masters

II. Ceci n'est pas une pipe (this is not a pipe): a picture is not the subject, it is an object

a painting is both a depiction of something else, and a material object with its own qualities (influenced by the material itself and the artist’s hand)

painterly technique is what distinguishes the subject from the object

therefore, how you paint is just as important as what you paint

III. the greatest masters were great thinkers (as Bernini described Poussin, un grande cervelone, a great big brain)

we don’t copy them, we emulate them

therefore, we need to understand them, and therefore

they need to be understandable

The Theme Is At Least As Important As Technique:

I. we learn to paint in order to compellingly convey stories and ideas

II. the classic subjects of paintings are what sponsor and condition classical form

III. how an artist painted Dido is just as important as how he or she painted shadows

This should clarify what would distinguish an academy of emulation (a truly classical academy) from an academy of imitation, which is most if not all of the academy’s out there; schools of realism more than academies per se, they are more properly ateliers, where one learns someone’s way of painting, rather than learning to think about and understand the nature of painting. An academy of emulation is directed toward invention, an academy of imitation is directed toward documentation.

Drawing, and Drawing Well

Tangible Standards

S. Carlo ai Catinari and its Convent, Rome

Michael Graves’ editorial on drawing in the New York Times has sparked many reactions in the architecture community. I reviewed his book of drawings from his time in Rome several years ago, and over the years have given copies of his excellent essay on “The Necessity for Drawing: Tangible Speculation” to my students, since I like him am concerned not only that students don’t draw, they don’t really know what drawing is for or how it works in the design process.

But let me take this in another direction. Drawing has been in crisis longer than the advent of the computer. From the moment architects abandoned the accumulated knowledge of the classical tradition in the middle of the last century, drawing has become one of those things, to paraphrase Samuel Johnson, that is not so remarkable that it is done well, but that it is done at all. Naïve drawing, which Graves cultivated as much as Le Corbusier, Hejduk, and Krier, became a slightly disingenuous, aw shucks, I’m just sayin’ kind of performance, not wanting to be measured against real drawing achievements from the past while asserting the value of the hand in the face of an increasingly faceless, technologically-driven profession.

Fountain of Tivoli, Villa d'Este

But people like John Blatteau and Steve Bonitatibus were simultaneously revivifying classical drawing for architecture, especially wash rendering; and in the art world many artists were recovering the skills of accurate figurative drawing. Some remarkable draftsmen like Randy Melick have made themselves absolutely measurable against the finest draftsmen of the past. This has been hard won, but perhaps even harder among architects than artists since there were fewer threads of continuity across the middle of the century in architecture.

If drawing is in crisis it is certainly due to ever more sophisticated software; but it is also due to ever less able draftsmanship among the profession’s “leaders.” Let me say, though, that it is wholly within our abilities, and incumbent on us, to not only draw, but draw well. Drawing should be desirable, something worth emulating. Just drawing for its own sake won’t cut it.

Diogenes and Alexander, modello

I’m just sayin’.

all drawings on this post © David Mayernik