THE TRAJECTORY OF ART

The entire trajectory of modernism, it turns out, is nothing more than revealing what cannot be seen.

“One of the greatest innovations in twentieth-century drawings involves the degree to which they make visible things that cannot be seen – states of mind, ideas and processes.”  p.21

This quote is taken from Garrels’ Drawing From the Modern. So, in his view, a depiction of what cannot be seen is centered around ideas and processes.  For example, we see the process of the application of lines and tones in a de Kooning drawing.  Pollock reveals, or makes manifest, process in his gestural drawings: we see the direct result of the application of the dripped paint lines to the paper.

A few pages ago, we looked at the Cubist utilization of time to show what cannot be seen.  The Futurists wanted to show the unseen.  The list is endless.  This desire to reveal what cannot be seen is what makes modernism modern.

So much of this classic modernist trajectory applies directly to Transparent Drawing.  We also are focused on the truthful demonstration of ideas.  We also are interested in the authenticity of the idea and the truth of the concept.  We are not interested in the representational depiction of three-dimensional space.   We are certainly not interested in artistic imitation.

“Notions such as authenticity, or psychological truth, or conviction replaced criteria based upon mimetic representation of the real world or the imitation of nature.”  p.21

If the modernists were interested in truth and non mimetic representation, then why did they not draw transparent forms on their papers?  With all of the unbelievable creative   force of these people, why were they content to address these concepts flatly?  The answer might center around their rejection of the depiction of three dimensional space.  I guess if you want to forget the Renaissance depiction of space, then you work, as they did, flatly on the paper.

My drawing above is a meditation on, what if de Kooning, for example worked transparently.  I used one of his study drawings titled Seated Woman, and did a basic transparent form construction.

In the context of this discussion, I can’t tell if Transparent Drawing is at a pole of modernism or if TD falls in the middle of the modernist drawing continuum.  To a large degree, our purposes are completely utilitarian.  So while the modernist drawers were revealing emotion as they rejected mimetic representation, we are simply interested in the very workmanlike understanding of how things work;  how things resolve in three dimensions.  So I guess Transparent Drawing might be considered a missed step in the trajectory of modernist drawing.

1.  Garrels, Gary.  Drawing from the Modern 1945-1975.  The Museum of Modern Art:  New York.  2005.