Michelangelo wrote:
Drawing constitutes the fountainhead and substance of painting and sculpture and architecture... and is the root of all sciences. Let him who has attained the possession of this be assured that he possesses a great treasure.
Is this still true?
Lately, drawing seems beleaguered by new technologies that changed our artistic priorities, shortened our attention span, devalued our skills, and drowned us in billions of images all barking for our attention. To view these images we now depend on search terms for the efficient extraction and curation of information; the days of Mussorgsky's leisurely stroll contemplating Pictures at an Exhibition are over.
Even worse, artificial intelligence suggests that the future role of the artist may be to create prompts that will be embodied digitally.
Nevertheless, keep in mind that art has been adapting to technology for a long time. 100 years ago, when animation changed the job description of an artist, it's inspiring to see how human creativity responded.
For thousands of years, artists had been staging drawings to lead the eye around a stationary image. Now they were working with the 4th dimension, time. The artists at Disney needed to apply traditional qualities, such as balance, proportion and composition to the movement of a camera instead.
I love the following combination of drawing and engineering that mapped the movement of Pluto in Mickey's Kangaroo (1935). It's a good example of Michelangelo's point that drawing is the root of all sciences."
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| "Drawing is thinking." -- Fred Ludekens |
In the following example from Snow White, Disney artists move the camera from the evil queen walking away to a close up of the lock on the dungeon door behind her.
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| This is not the way a conventional pencil drawing would be staged for a magazine illustration, but it's just as creative, and well suited for its new purpose. |
These are amazing. The queen running down the staircase is a masterpiece; why not compose a narrative painting like this?
ReplyDeleteMotto: There is no art without a sensibility, which includes handwriting as a manifestation of it. The signature of somebody's soul needs to be singing from within the thing. Or else it is hollow.
I agree with Kev. These are awesome.
ReplyDeleteDrawings may not necessarily always have been static. About a decade ago, researchers suggested that cave paintings like those in Lascaux are better understood as primitive forms of animation: the flickering light of the torches (then the only available light source), the chosen colors and possibly even grooves scratched on the walls may have been artfully used to create the illusion of movement.
ReplyDeleteOther examples of progress becoming a useful tool especially in animation was the adoption of Xerox to transfer the artists’s original drawings to cels and later the use of computers to animate and create more dynamic animation and movement.
ReplyDeleteKev Ferrara-- I don't disagree, but I think there's an additional challenge to applying that sensibility to a new medium. No one had ever made a serious animated feature film before Snow White, with scary scenes like the witch in a dungeon. Especially with the first two Snow White drawings, the artist had to sing that song in a different key, thinking about how the image would twist and turn as the witch descended.
ReplyDeleteMORAN-- yes, awesome indeed.
Gianmaria Caschetto-- Years ago I had the privilege of visiting Lascaux and Altamira in connection with the Center for Research into the Anthropological Foundations of Technology, and it changed my life. As part of that visit, we considered what possessed Cro-magnon ancestors to crawl a mile into caves filled with wild animals to paint one particular spot. There was a theory that certain shapes or outcroppings resembled animals, such as a horse or a wooly mammoth, and that in the flickering light of a pine torch, it almost looked as if the stone was moving. That was one possible explanation, although I thought our speculations about the motivations of artists 30,000 years ago were as speculative and as mystical as the original artists' animistic paintings. They were a springboard for rewarding philosophical speculation, but hardly science. I later went on to become the lead attorney on International Committee for the Preservation of Lascaux.
Movieac-- Yes, I remember Disney artists saying they could never have produced 101 Dalmations with all those spotted puppies until Xerox was invented.
Wow David, I didn't know about your role in the committee for the Preservation of Lascaux. Everything about our prehistoric ancestors fascinates me to no end. I suppose the fact that we can only speculate and hypothize about their customs and intentions is part of what draws me (no pun intended) to the subject. Jumping foreward to Disney. Although in 1937 animation was no longer in its 'infancy' the leap foreward represented by Snow White was staggering, considering no more than a decade earlier all animated characters were black and white rubbery figures made out of basic balls and tubes. And within a few years some young animators will display an amazing affinity and a complete mastery of the craft. I'd like you to cover some day the grat Milt Kahl who immodestly (but correctly) said about himself: "I was born for this medium".
ReplyDeleteEven after all these generations of the painted ox having become a magical rune, the rune having become the aleph, the aleph having become the letter A, and the letter A having become little more than one dead metaphor among many, a foundational corpse in the always growing pile of death that is the immense living script and language of the day,
ReplyDeletesome of the cave beings still paint oxen on their walls.
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Postmodern Anonymouse
"There was a theory that certain shapes or outcroppings resembled animals, such as a horse or a woolly mammoth, and that in the flickering light of a pine torch, it almost looked as if the stone was moving. That was one possible explanation, although I thought our speculations about the motivations of artists 30,000 years ago were as speculative and as mystical as the original artists' animistic paintings."
ReplyDeleteI grew up in a family that had put on fun spook shows and makeshift haunted houses for each other for several generations in decrepit barns, dank basements, and in the woods at night. My older cousins were always trying to scare me and my brother until we got old enough to do our own scaring. And if we weren't trying to spook each other with fake ghost stories, costumes, and creepy staged events, we were telling each other true adventure stories where we (or someone we knew) almost died. My brother drew dinosaurs. I drew monsters. The quality of drawing wasn't so important as how expressionistic the scariness.
I guess what I'm saying is; these French cavemen sound normal to me.
These are wonderful David, a real treat to behold, and thank you so much for rooting them out and posting your article.
ReplyDeleteAll three of the departing Queen are, as has been already said above, masterpieces. I also very much admire the first drawing.
I empathise with your optimism regarding the creative will of us humans to endure whatever problems that such a will applied to technology puts in its way. But comparing the original Snow White with the mean-spirited DEI concoction we have soon coming our way reminds me of the demise of Disney over the last ten to fifteen years into the wretched talent-starved and morally bankrupt propaganda factory of Californian ideology that it now is, and shows how easily that creative impulse can be smothered.
"Even after all these generations....the cave beings still paint oxen on their walls"
ReplyDeleteThe thirteen year-old girl finished her fan-fiction with what she thought was 'profundity'. This is where positive affirmation in the classroom gets you....
i love the amazing designs and creativity.
ReplyDelete