4 - Drawing a Line and Questioning Art
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2020
Summary
Abstract
This chapter connects the long-standing literary record of a controversial artistic performance, first demonstrated in ancient Greece and consisting of drawing a form or figure by means of a single continuous line, with an exemplary group of drawings attributed to Agostino Carracci. From the beginning, this legendary feat has been understood as a virtuous demonstration of manual dexterity and artifice and has elicited a number of critical reactions, which in turn have led to alternative versions of the same drawing act. The in-depth analysis presented here of three sheets of studies by Carracci traces the circling path of the line used to contour heads in profile and scrutinizes the specific quality of improvisation exposed through this highly extraordinary but nevertheless frequently used method of drawing.
Keywords: drawing performance; continuous line; virtuosity; calligraphy
Improvisation per definition does not stem from an explicitly preconceived idea – that which is improvised is not directed towards achieving a specific performative goal and therefore cannot be measured or understood in this way. However, the ad hoc accomplishment of that which is unplanned, or literally ‘unforeseen’ (from the Latin improviso), is not without certain prerequisites, as ‘ad hoc’ would seem to imply. Improvisation necessarily depends on the skill of the artist, who possesses the required means and potential to operate intuitively. Because improvisation is only expressed in its performance, it is through the improvisational that the artist as a genuine creator visibly emerges. The more the artist clearly displays the performance's disconnection from any type of previously thought-out concept, the more his artistic brilliance shines forth. Yet in order to appreciate this achievement, the beholder must be in a position to fully comprehend improvisation as a creative process. Improvisation must therefore reveal the artist's command of communicative competence.
Within the field of fine arts, it is the visual forms whose final outcomes are left in some way indeterminate that provide space for intuition and allow the beholder to experience the processual aspect of improvisation. In the practice of sketching, as well as in alla prima painting, where the work often intentionally appears to be unfinished in order to introduce the viewer to the stages involved in its production, it is first and foremost the sureness of the stroke that seemingly guarantees its spontaneous execution.
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- Information
- Images Improvisations Sound and Silence from 1000 to 1800 , pp. 91 - 112Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2018