The Invisibility of Drawing

Conversations are a fluid, permeable and mobile environment, that is, a loosely structured environment that progresses according to an itinerary. Professional conversations are slightly more structured, but still permeable and mobile. The elements of form, the specific terminology that each discipline brings into the conversation determines the boundaries and identity of such environments or territories and because such territories move and mingle with others, the notions of derive and milieu come to mind.

The terminology of new disciplines many times emerges as the unforeseeable outcome of the wanderings, combinations and re-combinations of their respective linguistic structures (elements of form). Such form emerges also, as words that are used specifically in that area (discipline-specific), through the build-up of such terminology over time, and through usage, developing into a core of terms that is sufficient to generate its own internal dynamics and consistency in interdisciplinary discussions with other 'mature' fields of knowledge. These interdisciplinary crossovers require the sharing of appropriate words to name the objects of discussion, a common background and terminology, in other words, an identity that is acknowledged by both parties and a common currency through which to deploy that identify. As Ludwig Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations put it, in order to discuss something first we must name it, and this is precisely the difficulty faced by drawing today in terms of language: the existing terminology is used to describe its content, but not its essential nature as a medium.

Until recently, from a linguistic point of view, drawing has been invisible, living vicariously in the shadow of mother disciplines like architecture and even design, its theoretical development stunted by a lack of an adequate meta-language to deal with its full complexity as an independent medium. In this, Drawing exemplifies similar problems that are faced by emerging technologies in that theoretical discussions of such emerging disciplines often require translation and recourse to analogy, figurative speaking and terms borrowed from other related fields to deal with unnamed (or un-nameable) complexities in processes of hypothetical discussion and semantic design.

Although recent developments in areas such as animation and video games have given time-based drawing a status of its own as an emerging field within the visual arts, the medium in general still lacks the specificity of vocabulary that would advance the theoretical discussion and development that is currently possible and foreseeable in other fields. Having said that, a vast number of technical drawing-related terms emerge every year from hundreds and hundreds of new fields of research. Also, there is a growing number of publications referring to various aspects of drawing, but this terminology has historically been either poetic and unspecific or disperse in the multiple fields in which drawing manifests itself and, moreover, generally responding to the role of drawing in such mediums, rather than refer to the medium in its own right.

This lack of what one might refer to as consumer awareness puts fine arts drawing at a disadvantage in relation to drawing coming from other fields such as design and architecture. Its unspecific, changing and subjective profile prevents drawing from relating to other disciplines on an equal standing, causing it to be absorbed into a secondary role in the development and objective discussion of those other disciplines.

Terminology determines the focus of the discussion and also opens up possible avenues of development of the conversation. If our discussion of drawing were to involve terms from say, the field of dance and choreography, we would most likely consider dimensions such as movement, rhythm, performance, bodily expression, gestures, etc. The use of such terminology would also favor a discussion focused on the making of the drawing, rather than on the drawing as an object or image. Words from the field of architecture would serve to emphasize aspects such as space, circulation, direction, habitation, etc. For its part, the terminology of theatre might facilitate a discussion of drawing in terms of the signifying interaction of similarly expressive practitioners from other fields.

This is the invisibility of drawing. As a mirror-surface, drawing reflects everything, but at the same time, just like a mirror, it contains nothing, it is a vehicle, an avenue through which information circulates but because contexts change, because reality changes, the possible meanings of the drawn line never remain the same. For this reason any formal or material condition of drawing is actually an anchor in time, a superficial blemish that disturbs the purity of its reflection, even in its discussion. The perfect expression of this reflectivity is the vision of the artist before its attempted representation, which flows like a river. The drawing flows in the mind carried by the vehicle of our memory and its form is determined by our imperfect capacity to recall and envision assisted albeit imperfectly, by its physical and material condition. In our media-dominated reality, drawing’s visibility as a medium comes from the terminology used for its theoretical discussion and analysis and it is, by nature, a polysemic medium, which doesn’t help very much.