Drawing Attention, Dulwich Picture Gallery | reviews, news & interviews
Drawing Attention, Dulwich Picture Gallery
Drawing Attention, Dulwich Picture Gallery
Works on paper from Rembrandt to Pollock
Thursday, 22 October 2009

Schiele's Portrait of a Girl: stretching to the very limit the pared-down language of decisive line and white space.Courtesy of Dulwich Picture Gallery
The first thing to say about Drawing Attention is that its title decidedly undersells the scope of this compelling and unpredictable exhibition, which spans five centuries and includes 100 works from the Art Gallery of Ontario’s collection. Most of us might define a drawing as some kind of monochromatic sketch, either produced by the artist as preparatory work for a finished painting, or to capture some ephemeral moment. The drawing represents artists, paradoxically, at their most casual and yet most focused, transcribing what is seen with intense concentration, yet often rendering it with just a few deft strokes of pen or charcoal. The drawing, effectively, is the artist’s signature recast as an image.
The first thing to say about Drawing Attention is that its title decidedly undersells the scope of this compelling and unpredictable exhibition, which spans five centuries and includes 100 works from the Art Gallery of Ontario’s collection. Most of us might define a drawing as some kind of monochromatic sketch, either produced by the artist as preparatory work for a finished painting, or to capture some ephemeral moment. The drawing represents artists, paradoxically, at their most casual and yet most focused, transcribing what is seen with intense concentration, yet often rendering it with just a few deft strokes of pen or charcoal. The drawing, effectively, is the artist’s signature recast as an image.
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