DRAWING AT THE BOUNDARY OF ART

What does it mean to draw at the boundary of art? Nearest I can tell, it means to draw transparently. For when you do that, you are accessing form. And when you inscribe form, you are no longer approaching art.

For art, as we have said many times in these pages, is concerned solely with the surface. Arrange your shapes across the paper. Smear you oil across the canvas. Be as clever as you can. Look into yourself. And do your best to arrange those shapes in an interesting way. Oh, and while you are at it, arrange those shapes in ways that have never been done before.

This was some of my internal dialogue as I drew the drawing at the top. For as I was putting down my lines, I started to get the feeling that I was starting to get a little bit artsy. The lines were depositing themselves across the paper in a more or less all over arrangement. As lines of one color crossed lines of another color, they started to flatten, given that I was putting lines over wet lines. Is this what it feels like to be an Abstract Expressionist?

I generated my drawing by a Form Combine of three of the robed animals as shown on the photo I took in Dublin. I drew with an ink dipped stick.

But not to fear! The lines that I was depositing were in fact knowledge of form. I was not identifying shape. After the recording of three forms, I then used the wet spots on the lines for the tones of the forms that I knowledged. Alas, there was indeed form in those lines! And the tones knowledge at least one set of forms that arise out of the lines.

So it was definitely a close call. For a second there, Transparent Drawing just about collapsed. I averted art by a hair’s breadth.

As we have stated before, what a cultural loss representation is. Even DeKooning, as we have seen, was content to deposit a series of shapes across either the paper or the canvas. Where, oh where would we be if a DeKooning (Bill or Elaine) had symbolized form, instead of shape?

If you need any reminding, below is a screen shot of the Google Image return when you type in Abstract Expressionist. Look at any and all of those. This is nothing but shapes arranged across the canvas! Shapes! Nothing but shapes? Why didn’t any of them have any interest in holistic form!!