Life Drawing and Figure Art

The Practice and Science of Drawing – Introduction

Comment Written by Figure Drawing on June 22, 2009 – 2:05 pm

What, then, will serve as a working definition? There must be something about feeling, the expression of that individuality the secret of which everyone carries in himself; the expression of that ego that perceives and is moved by the phenomena of life around us. And, on the other hand, something about the ordering of its expression.

But who knows of words that can convey a just idea of such subtle matter? If one says “Art is the rhythmic expression of Life, or emotional consciousness, or feeling,” all are inadequate. Perhaps the “rhythmic expression of life” would be the more perfect definition. But the word “life” is so much more associated with eating and drinking in the popular mind, than with the spirit or force or whatever you care to call it, that exists behind consciousness  and is the animating factor of our whole being, that it will hardly serve a useful purpose. So that, perhaps, for a rough, practical definition that will at least point away from the mechanical performances that so often pass for art, “the Rhythmic expression of Feeling” will do: for by Rhythm is meant that ordering of the materials of art (form and colour, in the case of painting) so as to bring them into relationship with our innate sense of harmony which gives them their expressive power. Without this relationship we have no direct means of making the sensuous material of art awaken an answering echo in others. The boy shouting at the top of his voice, making a horrible noise, was not an artist because his expression was inadequate—was not related to the underlying sense of harmony that would have given it expressive power.

Plate III. STUDY FOR "APRIL" In red chalk on toned paper.

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