The Draftsman's contract. The Art of Drawing in Philosophy and Artistic Practice 3800-KR23-S-OG

The status of drawing in art history, philosophy, and artistic practice is often ambivalent. As a consequence, discussions about the definition of drawing and its location in a cultural context are still alive. During the seminar we will look at various artistic practices that use drawing, we will analyze them from the perspective of art history
and philosophy. The subject of our interest will also be the material context related to the draftsman's workshop. We will look at the process of drawing autonomy in Renaissance art, in the hierarchy of arts. We will examine its status as a tool for educating artists. In this context, we will also be interested in the relationship between looking and drawing, the correlation between the act of drawing and eye training. We will contrast it with a spontaneous, expressive or automatic drawing. We will be interested in drawing as a basic pictorial act, as an ontological gesture marking the border between existence and non-existence, as an image of an idea. We will also discuss the particular ambivalence of drawing, which is neither just a medium nor just a message. We will discuss the issues of workshop practice and the issues of authorship of a drawing work. We will analyze the relationship between drawing and memory.
We will analyze the following categories: sketch, study, project, autonomous work, contour, diagram, gesture. We will also be interested in calligraphic and micrographic drawing.
A detailed syllabus will be provided to seminar participants at the first meeting.
Some of the classes using original works of art will take place in the Print Room of the University of Warsaw Library