Note: those of us who had read Philip’s book Drawing (1969) also thronged the Hayward Gallery to see the Tantra exhibition. [1]
Rawson quote: ‘Other peoples have other graphic habits’ [2]
Rawson quote: ‘And then, of course, there is the drawing of peoples who have no script tradition in our sense at all’. [3]
Note: in which case, the directional stress of each line exhibits a remarkable freedom of touch.
Note: much is carried over from handwriting habits.
Note: so, invite discussion on the conceptual distinction between drawing and writing.
References:
[1] Rawson, P. 1969. Drawing: the appreciation of the arts 3, London: Oxford University Press, pp 85-87.
[2] Ibid, p. 86. This is linked to different ways of reading inscribed surfaces – rectangular pages, unwound scrolls, and so on. For example, Rawson discusses the distinct quality of Islamic drawings, the way they follow Persian script from the top right corner of a page to the lower left. Conversely, in China, Korea, and Japan everything hangs from its topmost contour because people write downwards in vertical columns. ‘This approach is responsible’, he says, for the ‘ethereal “floating” effect that we can feel in so much Far Eastern drawing’.
[3] Ibid, p. 87.