ARTH 262 Aspects of the History of Drawing: The Performative Line

ARTH 262 Aspects of the History of Drawing: The Performative Line

• M & W 12:15-14:45
• EV-1-615
• Instructor: Andrew Forster

This course is a study of wild drawing in regulated space. A video game generates a rational geometric play-space. The performative line that our player-imagination ‘draws' through that space is a fugitive, subverting and bending the rules of space. So is the skateboarder’s or parcour runner’s imagined trajectory through the geometry of the city. Representation of space through linear perspective drawing (Renaissance perspective) is the drawn version of Euclid’s geometric space (later codified and made calculable by Descartes and concretized by the camera). The course examines how this coherent coordinate space has both influenced drawing and how drawing in turn has proposed to escape its bounds ­‐ to perform space differently. Drawing is taken to be any practice that explores the performance of space, including visual mark-making and dance. Student-written components will work from the assigned texts and also try to articulate our experience of the experimental space of specific artworks. Evaluation will be based on essay submissions and other written material but also will allow creative responses to the subject matter (like drawing).