Prof David Solkin and Dr Katie Scott

course description


Drawing forms the underside of all visual representation throughout the early modern period.  In response to the circumstances of Enlightenment and Empire, the activity of draughtsmanship acquired new values and new purposes, which defined it as the very foundation of the work of art.

 

Starting from a close analysis of eighteenth-century French and British drawings in London collections, this course will explore the spaces in which these objects were produced and took on meaning:   the studio, the academy, the exhibition, the library; London, Paris, Rome, and the ‘other’ beyond.

 

We shall be especially concerned with the ways in which drawing as a courtly and often playful art was, on the one hand, transformed into an instrument for the pursuit of knowledge and national power and, on the other, promoted as the medium which most directly externalises the ideas and emotions of the artist.

 

Central to our investigation will be a consideration of the techniques of  mapping, anatomising, surveying, tabulating and correcting, as they relate to observation and the production and circulation of knowledge; we shall be no less concerned, however, with doodling, blotting, and sketching as vehicles for expressing states of mind and for giving inner visions concrete form.

 

Focusing on these various techniques of visualisation will allow us to test the principal hypothesis of this course:  that notwithstanding the conventional context for its inculcation -  the art academy  - and the elite space of its appreciation – the gentleman’s cabinet – eighteenth-century drawing constituted an avant-garde of representation, leading art in new directions and toward a modern regime of visuality.




language and other requirements


Standard entry requirements.  In addition a reading knowledge of French is normally expected.