YOUR DRAWING IS A HAMMER

Our drawings are hammers. A hammer is a tool. Think of a hammer: is there anything that you don’t understand about it? If I asked you to draw a hammer, you would do it without any hesitation. But if I asked you to draw the Mona Lisa, you would hesitate.

To help expand this understanding, I want to bring in the thoughts of George Kubler in their book The Shape of Time. Kubler asks us to imagine a continuum, with the polarities of pure art on one end, and pure utility on the other. Or, imagine a continuum with a hammer on one end and the Mona Lisa on the other. Let’s call it the Tool Art Continuum.

There are many things to say about Kubler’s book, which I hope to get to at some point. But I want to limit, for now, our focus by considering these word pair dualities as we consider this continuum:

In this thought experiment, a pure work of art, i.e, the Mona Lisa, is completely useless. And a hammer is solely useful. When the form that you draw on your paper has the utility of a hammer, we are assured that we are not involved in any art. We are in a Transparent Drawing mindset when our sole purpose is to generate and analyze holistic form. This allows us to forget about terms such as beauty, feeling, and expression. This is why what we draw is not art, and we are not artists. Our drawings are hammers.

I’ve reached the point where I can’t use the term “art” anymore. What we do in these pages is beyond art. Or is it better to say that what we do is on a parallel path with art? What we call the artistic mindset has held back Western Thought for way too long. Once you rid yourself of the term art, you will find great freedom and powerful creativity as you generate and analyze form.

From now on, think of your transparent drawing with the necessity of a hammer. Instead of thinking of expression, think of the relationships of the holistic form. Keep drawing out on the Tool Art Continuum.