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This practice-based investigation offers an understanding of the role of the body in drawing. The research proposes that drawing is not only connected to movement but can be located in a larger inquiry into the performative nature of human activity. Analysis of artworks produced in the late 1960s and early 1970s provide a context and operative means to explore duration, expenditure of energy, measurement and time, in relation to practices of performance and drawing. The examination of these artists’ works is provided to inform an investigation of physical processes of drawing through performance practice. My inquiry also Ieads to an encounter with Merleau-Ponty’s concept of the body as a primary means of understanding our relationship to the world, in particular the ‘flesh’ as a porous interface that dissolves the boundary between subject and object. This underpins an analysis of performance-based practice that also seeks to investigate the act of drawing and embodiment. The aim of the research is to investigate how the body as an instrument can be explored through malleable qualities of drawing. This includes a process of adopting Euclid’s definition of the line as a model to explore linear properties beyond conventional mark making. Comparative analysis of works by Carolee Schneemann and Matthew Barney provide material that has been a key influence upon the research process. These works have influenced the trajectory of my performance art in the exploration of resistance, tension, measures of energy and endurance. My consequent practice interrogated how the body moves through space; using (myself) the runner to articulate a form of drawing that tested the body’s physical limits. A moment of transformation and change occurred when I began to articulate ‘running as drawing’. Vital to this, was an understanding of using ‘breath’ and the discipline of marathon training to introduce how the physical act of running can be a viable form of drawing.

What happens when we draw? How do we transform the visible into lines, and how does drawing the lines transform our perception? The research explores these questions through analysis of physical behaviour in observational drawing, specifically the communication between eye and hand in time and space. By connecting new scientific models of expert drawing behaviour with enactive perception theory (Noë 2004), observational drawing practice and pedagogy, the thesis concludes that drawing is both an action and a form of perception, finely-tuned for detail by the coupling of the movements of the eye with those of the hand. One draws for perception, not from perception. The contribution of the thesis is the development of an enactive observational drawing method, based on the orchestration of eye and hand. While observational drawing is often viewed as more to do with looking with the eye than moving the body, this novel method teaches students to attend to coordination and timing, and its perceptual role. Students learn to draw by learning the dance of the eye and the hand, by developing rhythm. The thesis positions observational drawing as a dynamic embodied engagement with the world; ‘drawing with life’ or ‘drawing life’, rather than drawing from life. The drawing method is defined as presentation (distinct from representation) recognising that perception is transformed by the action of drawing and entailing that it cannot be re-presented, given that it only exists as it emerges. Perception is understood to happen within the movements of drawing. Drawing is described as a two-way conversation between eye and hand, whereby the eye learns from the hand, and develops a slower ‘hand-like’ way of looking, that enables drawing. The drawing method teaches students to move the eye in a slower more detailed way, scanning an object, to allow a fine-grained presentation. The project explores the use and potential of drawing in this way as a research tool, and develops methods for future study of the articulation of the body for observational drawing, and of the complex relationship between perception and action. The conclusion reached is that drawing requires orchestrated movements of eye and hand, and that due to the reflexive nature of drawing, with the action of the hand elucidating vision and in turn influencing the behaviour of the eye, drawing is itself a perceptual process. One perceives from drawing, rather than draws from perception.

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2015. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Drawing, as a discipline within in the Visual Arts domain of knowledge is the focus of this dissertation. Herein I pose the question: What happens between my mind, body (hand), and the drawing (as product) that appears on paper while I draw? Drawing as experience is primary to my practice and to my understanding of the varying processes that drawing encompasses. I relate and investigate these processes to understand my art making as a means of research. In the dissertation I reflect on my own drawing and on the work of the American artist Richard Serra, in particular his installation entitled Black is the drawing (1977). In my discussions of both my own and Serraʼs work I focus on the core devices that orchestrate the materiality of drawing, namely ʻblanknessʼ, automatic flow and the coming together of intention, gesture and act. The theoretical framework in which I investigate these core devices is mainly provided by the Chilean biologist, philosopher, and neuroscientist Francisco Varela and his notions of human perception, productive action, and creativity or invention. These theories of Varela I employ to frame and develop discussion in the dissertation. Further concepts that come to the fore in my discussions of drawing as experience, as derived from Varela and the French philosopher Jacques Derridaʼs writings, include signature, individuation, or characteristic mark making. Individuation of the mark in relation to self-reflexive methodology in art making as research practice is primary to the development of my discussions. Additional concepts that are key to the dissertation and that flow from selfreflexivity, are self-discovery and self-generating productivity and the notion of self-as-being that the drawing process can bring about and affirm. I argue in the dissertation that the drawings I generate stem from an automatic productivity that is enabled by the simultaneity of intention, gesture and act. I attempt to explain my understanding of the ʻblindʼ aspect of the drawing process, relying in this regard heavily on the thinking of Derrida. I align my interpretation of his expositions on this phenomenon with the thinking of Varela. Varela accordingly provides clarity on the circularity and unifying function of human perception. The unification of antimonies such as body and mind, inside and outside, and self and life-world, I find, lie at the core of my drawing, which functions as unifying interface. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Teken, as dissipline binne die Visuele Kuns domein van kennis, is die fokus van hierdie dissertasie. Hierin rig ek die volgende vraag: Wat gebeur tussen die verstand, die liggaam (hand), en die tekening (as produk) wat voorkom op die papier wanneer ek teken? Teken as ervaring is sentraal tot my praktyk en tot my begrip van die verskeie prosesse wat teken behels. Ek herlei en ondersoek hierdie prosesse om my kuns te verstaan as ʼn navorsingswyse. In hierdie dissertase reflekteer ek op my eie tekenwerk en op die werk van die Amerikaanse kunstenaar Richard Serra, in besonder sy installasie getiteld Black is the drawing (1977). In my bespreking van beide my eie en van Serra se werk fokus ek op die kern strategieë wat die materialiteit van tekenwerk orkestreer, naamlik ʻblanknessʼ, outomatiese vloei en die samekoms van intensie, gebaar en daad. Die teoretiese raamwerk waarbinne ek hierdie kernstrategieë ondersoek word hoofsaaklik voorsien deur die Chileense bioloog, filosoof en neurowetenskaplike Francisco Varela en sy idees van menslike persepsie, produktiewe handeling, en kreatiwiteit of ontwerp. Ek gebruik hierdie teorieë van Varela om my besprekinge in hierdie dissertasie te omraam. Verdere konsepte wat na vore kom in my besprekinge oor tekening as ervaring, soos ontneem van Varela en die Franse filosoof Jacques Derrida se skryfwerk, sluit in “kenteken[ing]” [signature], individuasie, of kenmerkende merkery. Individuasie of die teken in verhouding tot self-refleksiewe metodologie in art making as navorsingspraktyk is kern tot die ontwikkeling van my gesprek. Additionele konsepte in die dissertasie wat die tekeninge wat ek genereer stam vanuit ʼn outomatiese produktiwiteit wat gelyktydigheid van intensie, gebaar, en handeling. Ek poog om my begrip van die “blinde” aspek van die proses te verklaar, deur staat te maak op die denke van Derrida. Ek bring my interpretasie van hierdie eksposisies op hierdie fenomeen in verband met die idees van Varela. Varela belig beutelings die sirkulere en samebinded funksie van menslike persepsie. Die versoening van teenstrydighede soos die liggaam en vertand, die innerlike en uiterlike, die self en die leefwêreld, ervaar ek, lê in die kern van my tekenkuns, wat funksioneer as ʼn versoenende koppelvlak.

The notion of a sculptural type of drawing is often summarily included in critical literature. These references tend to be brief and regularly contradict one another. Furthermore, drawings made by Tuscan sculptors of the sixteenth century are often neglected altogether. This thesis investigates the notion of a sculptural type of drawing and attempts to understand more clearly the appearance and purpose of drawings made by sixteenth-century sculptors working in central Italy. In order to understand this notion, the history of drawings for sculpture and the literature related to them should be examined. Individual artists from whom a number of drawings survive must be studied separately before being related to one another as a group. This investigation utilizes several methodologies: the early history of drawings for sculpture is recreated from information contained in contemporary written documents and contracts; the literature related to the characterization of inherently sculptural qualities is reevaluated against the surviving visual material; the attributions made to lesser-known sixteenth-century sculptors are scrutinized; and, finally, the drawings executed by sculptors are placed in the broader context of sixteenth-century draughtsmanship. This investigation reveals that some drawings exhibit a functional approach that explores the challenges of preparing a three-dimensional work of art. Such an approach is, however, not unique to sculptors, whose drawings employ an approach that cannot be separated from those by painters. These similarities are significant because they reveal several misunderstandings concerning graphic characteristics often understood to be inherently sculptural, and a history of incorrect attributions based on these assumptions. / Thesis (Master, Art History) -- Queen's University, 2013-09-28 21:18:45.79

The thesis argues that a particular aesthetic theory (Esthetics), is implied by Peirce's Semeiotic, and that they have both been clarified when tested from the perspective of a visual art practice involving sketchbooks. This research also constructs and lays out the first 'user friendly' guide to Semeiotically analyse any object, be it emotional, material or conceptual. Findings were generated by comparing Peirce's sporadic writings on esthetics with his more complete Semeiotic, assessing them in situations making artworks, proposing and exhibiting them in public spaces, and analysing meanings of sketchbooks from UK public collections. It was found that in theory: - Peirce's Esthetic power develops from oscillating between the powers to 'form' and 'express' (generalise and specify), while accepting the limits to both powers, revealed by such an oscillation alongside self and hetero criticism. -this entails appreciating what is most or least up to us, enabling the most effect where one is most free and limiting frustration where least free. -a Peircean Esthetic power can be learnt; however it requires that the learner properly wishes to be directed to that goal (EP2:48). Implications for the visual arts through practice: - artists could contribute to all of Peirce's non-native sciences, (Esthetics, Ethics and Logic), as their appreciation of 'feelings' is well trained, if they can also 'formalise'. -art has a part role in natural education (and possibly institutional education) by developing an Esthetic power that Peirce claims could 'humanise and free' the individual (free in a Peircean sense, which may seem like very little freedom to some) (EP2: 147-148). In the conclusion, a summary of these uncovered implications is set against some problems raised by the complexity of the Semeiotic, and the immeasurability of Esthetic progress. Set against that critique is a positive assessment of the effects of the research on the sketchbook practice.

This research seeks to identify drawing as an alternative exemplar for investigating memory and temporal presence, while determining its potential as a performative tool for negotiation and transformation, throught the line, fold and repetition. The aim is to position drawing in the dynamics of movement, using the journey as a trope and the physical act of repeating the line to evoke memory and disrupt concepts of linear, orderly time. The investigation, driven by my ongoing practice and concerns of dislocation and exile, was inspired and informed by Gilles Deleuze's notion of 'becoming' as a fluid in-between. His reading of memory through Henri Bergson (habit and pure) and Marcel Proust(voluntary and involuntary), provided the context for examining drawing's memorial potency along a past-present-future continuum. Deleuze's ontology provided a reflective and reflecive methodology for addressing my own work alongside artists who share similar concerns. My practice focused on not what the line is but what it can do or be, where drawing is predicated on touch and derived from thought and memory, rather than appearance or observation. Inside the studio and outdoors in the landscape, moving between familiar yet changed places. I marked the paradoxical experience of time, its flows and ruptures. The resulting body of drawings and photographic records offer the principal outcome of this inquiry. The research findings present drawing as a fluid multiplicity that shifts between the haptic and optic, visible and invisible, control and chance, notation and photography, studio and street, with one often constituting the other. The condition of 'seeing' is not a prerequisite; drawing exists with and without seeing. It resides in a gap between, where time itself unfolds and things are forgotten as well as remembered, liminal and open-ended. This thesis proposes a new theoretical understanding of drawing as generative of memory and a process of continual negotiation and temporal becoming.

This research provides an example of art practice employed within a metaethical framework by addressing Simone Weil's ethical notion of attention. In this thesis, 'metaethics' is defined as a second order inquiry into first order questions of normative ethics, more specifically, an inquiry into the metaphysical and epistemological premises of Weil's discourse on the ethical value of attention. On one hand, I demonstrate how Weil's notion of attention can expand the scope of art so as to include metaethics. On the other hand, I use art to widen the current knowledge of Weilian attention. The research projects described and analysed in this thesis are predicated on a method which I designate 'critical practical analogy'; this is an analogy which includes art practical operations for the purpose of critical investigation. This method subsumes both theoretical and practical inquiries. I used two analogies: – Normative analogy compares (a) the dualistic relation that Weil postulates between agent and reality in her discourse on attention to (b) the relation that I postulate between my agency through observational drawing and the object of observation. The analogy operates by using Weil's assertions on attention normatively in observational drawing. – Imaginal analogy compares (a) Weil's use of tautology and contradiction in her arguments for ethical attention to (b) tautology and contradiction considered as argument forms. The analogy operates by giving aesthetic presence to these forms, i.e. by turning them into images through artworks. The analogies obtained the following outcomes: – The normative projects afford a practical knowledge of Weilian attention by interpreting it as an ethical practice of detachment. The projects also demonstrate that, notwithstanding Weil's transcendent view of truth, such a practice of detachment is compatible with a subjective notion of truth. – By capitalising on the non-propositional mode of representation which is typical of visual art, the imaginal projects engender a scepticism which favours dialogue and values questions as positive research results. The outcomes indicate the following implications for visual arts practice: – The outcomes of the normative projects demonstrate how contemporary artists who regard notions of universal truth with scepticism need not necessarily disavow ethical intentions in their practice. – Due to its propositional character, theoretical metaethics can reach an impasse from which it can only point discursively to the limits of language. The outcomes of the imaginal projects evidence that art can move beyond these limits non-propositionally. The use of critical practical analogy also indicates a methodological implication for art practical, interdisciplinary research. Critical practical analogy could provide artists with both a heuristic research tool and a template for articulating a discursive representation of art practice which both acknowledges the non-linearity and indirectness of practice-led research and the need for interdisciplinary intelligibility.

This thesis is an investigation into performance-based drawing and its relation to ‘multiplicity’, as explored through a philosophical tradition of thought. By leading my research through this practice, where I use bodily gesture to engage a mark-system exploring ‘the point’, I ask how thought in drawing could be imperative to its event (of thinking and making). I examine the proposition that by making physical performance the question of thinking in its event can be critically investigated under a trace that indicates thought as multiplicity. I argue that ‘the point’ is a unique, conceptual mark that emphasizes bodily appearance; and that this mark engages physicality through properties of mediation, dislocation and obstruction. These properties are demonstrated throughout my practice as ‘post-phenomenological’, that is the irreducibility of bodily presence and indexical imprints to ‘thought’. In my practice I construct performances using marks associable with notation, such as periods [ . ], brackets [ ( ) ], or ellipses [ … ]. These notational marks structure the space in which a dislocated form of bodily gesture occurs – as in standing, turning, or pointing – which is mediated by weight and restriction. While my thesis closely examines my practice I look at artists – such as Paul Harrison and John Wood, and Trisha Brown – who explore indexical mark-­‐making, task-­‐based actions and digital video. I therefore examine how I use gesture to investigate a non-­‐representational trace, which challenges drawing through conventions of line-making and embodied movement, or inscription. Throughout my thesis I examine post-­‐structural debates around ‘multiplicity’, a philosophical notion of thought posited as a radical question. I evaluate ‘multiplicity’ 3 through Alain Badiou’s critique of Gilles Deleuze’s vitalist proposition (that thought is engaged materially through movement) and thus consider that thought/multiplicity is void-­‐like and obstructive. I articulate Jean-­‐Luc Nancy’s notion of ‘exscription’, that gesture is dislocated from inscriptional marking; this dislocated gesture being unable to engage with thought under phenomenologies of presence. Finally, I consider Maurice Blanchot’s argument that the trace as such – as distinct from the imprint of a line – is impossible to both represent and materially depict as ‘presence’. My research aims to reconsider conventions of performance-­‐drawing, placing greater emphasis on bodily gesture and a conceptual trace that interrupts embodiments by either imprint or physical presence. Overall, I propose a new approach to mark-­‐ making under a post-­‐phenomenological method, which uses a dislocated gesture to investigate an obstructive event of thought or multiplicity.

This is the written component of a practice-led Phd concerned with the space of drawing. The space that drawing is seen as being able to occupy has undergone significant changes in last ten years. In this thesis I consider the historical and theoretical background to these changes with direct reference to particular ideas and work that are both important in tracing this history and to my own practice. My discussion is centrally concerned with the efficacy of theories for drawing as they relate to practice, rather than as pure descriptions of practice. I begin by addressing the particular character of writing about drawing identifying some of the possible misunderstandings of this writing that may arise for the practitioner. I then trace significant changes in theoretical and material ideas of space in the last one hundred years that have contributed to the new space of drawing. I discuss how contemporary drawing installation reflects this reconfigured space and ways in which it might expand upon it. The key ideas of this study are then turned towards my chosen technique of collage. In the final chapters I describe and reflect upon the theoretical implications of the practice of this research.