Drawing Art History - Group exhibition
*Photographies taken at The Getty Research Institut in L.A
Drawing Art History
What types of thinking are facilitated by image-making? How can drawing, essentially an act of perception that takes place within the operative human body, contribute to the production of scientific knowledge? What do images communicate, beyond written language? In this exhibition, the interplay of vision and cognition is examined through drawings made by art historians, from the academic recognition of the discipline in the 19th century, to this very day.
A fact that has often been ignored is that many art historians, among them some of the most recognized figures in the field, have used drawing to study art in all its forms. Jakob Burckhardt, Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, Aby Warburg, Meyer Schapiro, Leo Steinberg, Clement Greenberg, Hubert Damisch, and others – all turned to the graphic instrument to observe, understand, and explain painting, architecture, or sculpture. This practice is still used today, as can be seen in the works of Dario Gamboni featured in the exhibition. The exhibition also displays for the first time newly discovered drawings by the founder of art history in Israel, Moshe Barasch.
This exhibition sets out to evaluate the role that drawing plays in the emergence, production, and transmission of a specific type of knowledge about art objects. While this practice received little attention, countless drawings by art historians are kept in art institutes, universities, foundations, or private collections. Regardless of these scholars’ methodology – connoisseurship, formalism, iconology, or semiotics – drawing proves to be an incomparably effective instrument for perceiving, recording, archiving, thinking, analyzing, experimenting, and conceptualizing works of art. In this exhibition, the history of art is redrawn through images, ones that respond to the very challenges posed to the eye and the mind by artists.
Contemporary responses: Nicolas Aiello and Hila Laviv
Curators: Prof. Jérémie Koering and Dr. Tamar Mayer
Assistant Curator: Darya Aloufy
Drawing Art History
What types of thinking are facilitated by image-making? How can drawing, essentially an act of perception that takes place within the operative human body, contribute to the production of scientific knowledge? What do images communicate, beyond written language? In this exhibition, the interplay of vision and cognition is examined through drawings made by art historians, from the academic recognition of the discipline in the 19th century, to this very day.
A fact that has often been ignored is that many art historians, among them some of the most recognized figures in the field, have used drawing to study art in all its forms. Jakob Burckhardt, Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, Aby Warburg, Meyer Schapiro, Leo Steinberg, Clement Greenberg, Hubert Damisch, and others – all turned to the graphic instrument to observe, understand, and explain painting, architecture, or sculpture. This practice is still used today, as can be seen in the works of Dario Gamboni featured in the exhibition. The exhibition also displays for the first time newly discovered drawings by the founder of art history in Israel, Moshe Barasch.
This exhibition sets out to evaluate the role that drawing plays in the emergence, production, and transmission of a specific type of knowledge about art objects. While this practice received little attention, countless drawings by art historians are kept in art institutes, universities, foundations, or private collections. Regardless of these scholars’ methodology – connoisseurship, formalism, iconology, or semiotics – drawing proves to be an incomparably effective instrument for perceiving, recording, archiving, thinking, analyzing, experimenting, and conceptualizing works of art. In this exhibition, the history of art is redrawn through images, ones that respond to the very challenges posed to the eye and the mind by artists.
Contemporary responses: Nicolas Aiello and Hila Laviv
Curators: Prof. Jérémie Koering and Dr. Tamar Mayer
Assistant Curator: Darya Aloufy
