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

• Instructor: Andrew Forster

This course is about how we have come to understand and represent space through drawing. We look at examples of contemporary and historical ‘space-making practices’ which we call drawing. This includes looking at the history of linear perspective (aka Renaissance perspective or coordinate space), the apparatus of the camera, and 3-d rendering in digital graphics. Artist’s drawing practices can (accidentally or deliberately) subvert such dominant concepts of space. So the course is also about drawing as a fundamentally experimental practice, a fugitive performative practice. We will think about how Western conceptions of space are not universal ways of seeing and understanding space. All cultures may mark things like space, surrounding, or belonging differently. Cultural resistance to embedded ways of knowing may begin with understanding the specifics ways different people and peoples internalize an idea of ‘here’ and ‘there,’ of ‘home,’ of ‘surround’ and their power over it or integration with it. Different drawing practices propose and embody different ways of thinking, experiencing and representing space. The course will contribute to the development of observation skills in relation to the world as you experience it through drawing… also writing skills that enable you to describe the complexity of your own experience and a history of ideas about spatial representation.