Drawing | Poetry<\/p>\n
The present exhibition is the second event in a biennial series created by the Jerusalem Artist\u2019s House, in collaboration with the Jerusalem Print Workshop, and Ticho House. The previous exhibition was curated by Ilan Wizgan two years ago. The purpose of the bi-annual exhibits is to present a snapshot of contemporary drawing in Israel. But even this preliminary definition raises a problem. As opposed to the concreteness of space, \u201ccontemporariness,\u201d a category of time, cannot be defined. There is no definite \u201cnow.\u201d In our fast-paced reality, are drawings from the year 2000 still \u201ccontemporary\u201d? Is Moshe Kupferman (whose work is featured in the exhibition) \u201ccontemporary\u201d? Is Yosl Bergner (also exhibited) \u201ccontemporary\u201d? There are no simple answers because there is no definite quantity which can be called \u201ccontemporary time.\u201d Even those who reject the validity of the Nietzschean (so called \u201cpostmodern\u201d) aphorism \u2013 \u201cthere are no facts, only interpretations\u201d \u2013 in respect to reality in general, can certainly accept it in relation to the amorphous concept of time. There is no \u201cnow,\u201d only its interpretations. The word \u201ccontemporary\u201d \u2013 seemingly value-free, denoting a fact, is no more than a way for people to give a designation to what is important in their eyes. \u201cContemporary art\u201d is a code, whose goal is always to keep other kinds of art out of bounds.
\nThe adjective \u201ccontemporary\u201d attempts to convert a private evaluation into a physical \u201cfact,\u201d anchored in \u201cnatural\u201d time. But time works in a much more complicated fashion, than what can be implied in the na\u00efve notion of \u201ccontemporary art,\u201d which is tantamount to saying \u201cworthy art,\u201d on the margins of which \u201canachronistic,\u201d and \u201cconservative\u201d trends can be found. \u201cHistorical\u201d processes can be at work \u201cnow\u201d as powerfully as phenomena that just recently cropped up on the \u201ccontemporary\u201d scene.
\nSeemingly contemporary trends often contain older elements that have undergone a transformation. Art\u2019s existence in time is unlike that of fashion items: art has a memory. Art accumulates on top of previous things. And if it tries to forget, its temporal existence becomes even more conspicuous. It is thus similar to, or representative of, the way human existence is temporal. Children and grandchildren do not erase their parents. In mysterious ways they contain them, without being their exact copies. Art too works this way.<\/p>\n
This exhibition does not pretend to offer a panoramic view of the state of the art of Israeli drawing at the end of 2004. Its purpose is to present one of many possible views of \u201cthe Israeli present\u201d in drawing. I will leave to others to attempt and characterize this interpretation of the present, but it clearly is not a reflection of what is considered the mainstream of Israeli art. The exhibition is being shown not in Tel Aviv, but in Jerusalem, which is to say, in the \u201cperiphery\u201d. The venue lends it a certain character, a certain spirit. If it is difficult to imagine this exhibit in Tel-Aviv, our purpose has been achieved.<\/p>\n
A Few Lines about Drawing and Poetry<\/p>\n
The Exhibition
\nWhat is Drawing?<\/p>\n
The Exhibition<\/p>\n
Drawing \u201cNow\u201dThe present exhibition is the second event in a biennial series created by the Jerusalem Artist\u2019s House, in collaboration with the Jerusalem Print Workshop, and Ticho House. The previous exhibition was curated by Ilan Wizgan two years ago. The purpose of the bi-annual exhibits is to present a snapshot of contemporary drawing in Israel. But even this preliminary definition raises a problem. As opposed to the concreteness of space, \u201ccontemporariness,\u201d a category of time, cannot be defined. There is no definite \u201cnow.\u201d In our fast-paced reality, are drawings from the year 2000 still \u201ccontemporary\u201d? Is Moshe Kupferman (whose work is featured in the exhibition) \u201ccontemporary\u201d? Is Yosl Bergner (also exhibited) \u201ccontemporary\u201d? There are no simple answers because there is no definite quantity which can be called \u201ccontemporary time.\u201d Even those who reject the validity of the Nietzschean (so called \u201cpostmodern\u201d) aphorism \u2013 \u201cthere are no facts, only interpretations\u201d \u2013 in respect to reality in general, can certainly accept it in relation to the amorphous concept of time. There is no \u201cnow,\u201d only its interpretations. The word \u201ccontemporary\u201d \u2013 seemingly value-free, denoting a fact, is no more than a way for people to give a designation to what is important in their eyes. \u201cContemporary art\u201d is a code, whose goal is always to keep other kinds of art out of bounds.
\nThe adjective \u201ccontemporary\u201d attempts to convert a private evaluation into a physical \u201cfact,\u201d anchored in \u201cnatural\u201d time. But time works in a much more complicated fashion, than what can be implied in the na\u00efve notion of \u201ccontemporary art,\u201d which is tantamount to saying \u201cworthy art,\u201d on the margins of which \u201canachronistic,\u201d and \u201cconservative\u201d trends can be found. \u201cHistorical\u201d processes can be at work \u201cnow\u201d as powerfully as phenomena that just recently cropped up on the \u201ccontemporary\u201d scene.
\nSeemingly contemporary trends often contain older elements that have undergone a transformation. Art\u2019s existence in time is unlike that of fashion items: art has a memory. Art accumulates on top of previous things. And if it tries to forget, its temporal existence becomes even more conspicuous. It is thus similar to, or representative of, the way human existence is temporal. Children and grandchildren do not erase their parents. In mysterious ways they contain them, without being their exact copies. Art too works this way.This exhibition does not pretend to offer a panoramic view of the state of the art of Israeli drawing at the end of 2004. Its purpose is to present one of many possible views of \u201cthe Israeli present\u201d in drawing. I will leave to others to attempt and characterize this interpretation of the present, but it clearly is not a reflection of what is considered the mainstream of Israeli art. The exhibition is being shown not in Tel Aviv, but in Jerusalem, which is to say, in the \u201cperiphery\u201d. The venue lends it a certain character, a certain spirit. If it is difficult to imagine this exhibit in Tel-Aviv, our purpose has been achieved.One might describe the exhibit as having a \u201ctraditional\u201d air, and be content with the definition. But the word \u201ctradition\u201d is also used in a way that requires clarification. In the Israeli art world \u201ctraditional\u201d is a euphemism for \u201cbenighted,\u201d or \u201creactionary.\u201d This is true also when the term is used in relation to Israeli society. Someone \u201ctraditional\u201d is neither \u201creligious\u201d nor \u201csecular,\u201d i.e. someone who elected to be tepid, rather than cold or hot. \u201cTraditional\u201d is a derogatory word used to describe someone who drives a car to synagogue on the Sabbath (in violation of Orthodox observance) on the way to a soccer match (another violation). Similarly, in the context of the art world the term \u201ctraditional\u201d is reserved for an artist who no longer can function like the Old Masters, but who also refuses to play the \u201ccontemporary\u201d game, the taken-for-granted fashions of the art world.But, in truth, there is no \u201cuntraditional art.\u201d There is the Raphaelite tradition, a Rembrandt tradition, a C\u00e9zanne tradition, but also a Duchamp tradition and a Rauschenberg tradition. In Israel today, artists in the tradition of Duchamp (for argument\u2019s sake) are not considered \u201ctraditional\u201d, and they tend, derisively for the most part, to label artists from other traditions as \u201ctraditional\u201d (when they are in a benign mood). But in fact, what we have here are two different traditions in competition with one another, not a faded \u201ctradition of the past\u201d facing a vibrant \u201ccontemporary art.\u201d The hegemonic tradition at a given historical moment will designate its own proximate environment as \u201ccontemporary art\u201d and its competitors as producing \u201ctraditional\u201d \u2013 hence, \u201cbackward\u201d art.The reason is simple: the competition is primarily a competition over resources. Competition over collectors and their money, over prestige and honors, over students, over exhibition space, over governmental funding for art schools. The wars are religious wars. And there is no reason to assume that Religion B is more just than Religion A, simply because it came later. Any Jew knows that.
\nTraces II exhibits the work of many artists that could be called \u201ctraditional.\u201d What they have in common is their effort to forge an image, their struggle with an object (be it a landscape, a portrait, an object \u2013 imaginary or real), and their hesitation between different artistic choices: what is \u201cthe past\u201d in art, and what is \u201cthe present\u201d? And, as a result, what is \u201cthe future\u201d? When Boris Lekar draws an elephant, transporting us to prehistoric cave drawings, where on the time grid does he belong?<\/p>\n
\u201cDrawing answers questions with questions,\u201d writes Joshua Neustein. To be fashionable is to know the answer to the question: \u201cwhat is the right way to be.\u201d The\u221a works exhibited here don\u2019t display such confidence.<\/p>\n
The EncounterTraces II adds an additional dimension to the model proposed by the first exhibition. Besides being a visual art exhibition, it hosts another art: poetry. The reason for joining the two will be explained below. I merely wish to explain now, briefly, how the encounter was orchestrated. I approached sixteen poets and asked them to choose any works from the exhibit they wished to address. The resulting poems are not an \u201cekphrasis\u201d (\u201ca verbal representation of a visual representation\u201d). The work of the poets featured here, without exception, was inspired by the visual works they chose, but not as a direct representation of them. The relationship between the visual and the written has been often perceived (since the time of Leonardo da Vinci) as one of competition. The competition often is reflected in the fact that a poet chooses to represent only a tiny portion of a painting, to \u201cdistort\u201d the visual, or \u201cadd\u201d details that are not visible on the surface, etc. In fact, the mere act of speech about the visual representation is always \u201ccompetitive,\u201d because it activates an \u201cincommensurate\u201d mode for relating to the object. These poems have chosen to turn their back to \u201cwhat is seen,\u201d and not to compete with vision \u2013 a contest that Leonardo knew would always be won by the visual \u2013 in order to say what \u201cis to be said.\u201dAyana Lekach turns Audrey Bergner\u2019s seashells into humans; Sivan Beskin enters Meir Appelfeld\u2019s houses and perceives events and objects in them which were not drawn; Tomer Lichtash locks Sidon Rothenberg\u2019s figures inside a prison that \u201cis not there\u201d; Yochai Oppenheimer writes a family scenario, and in doing so \u201csteals\u201d the suicide from Kafka\u2019s story \u201cthe Judgment\u201d which Yosl Bergner has interpreted, transferring it into a different family context. Asher Schechter places a monologue in the mouth of a self portrait of Uzi Katzav, appropriating the painter\u2019s \u201cself\u201d; Alex Ben-Ari turns Rachel Weinberger\u2019s drawings into private family pictures. We should try to understand the gap, the poet\u2019s anchoring point in the drawing, to see what she or he has taken from it, what he or she has \u201cnot seen\u201d in it. The poem remains a poem \u2013 the drawing, a drawing. But between them something else is created, something transparent and resonant, an additional crack through which the observer can enter.In addition, we launched a \u201csymmetrical-opposite\u201d project, at the Jerusalem Print Workshop, in collaboration with the Workshop\u2019s director Arik Kilemnik. The poems written for the exhibit at the Jerusalem Artists House were given to Arik, who handed them to four print artists. Here, the artists responded to the poems, not the poets to the artists. The result, at the Jerusalem Print Workshop is a sort of miniaturized mirror images of the central exhibit at the Artists House, creating an additional layer of dialogue where the \u201cdistortion\u201d and \u201ccompetition\u201d can be read in obverse, from the artists\u2019 point of view, this time. In addition Timna Seligman from the Israel Museum, Jerusalem curated an exhibition of Aviva Uri\u2019s drawings at Ticho House.
\nWhat is Drawing?<\/p>\n
The history of art theory in the West is replete with answers to this question. Charles Le Brun (1672) thought that \u201cdesign imitates everything that is real, whereas colour represents the accidental.\u201d Vasari (1568) defined drawing as the visible expression and declaration of the concept in the spirit of the artist.\u201d Cennini (1437) made a distinction between \u201cdrawing\u201d as an internal idea, and drawing \u201con paper.\u201d Leonardo thought of drawing as an instrument of scientific investigation. Rawson gave a formal definition: \u201cDrawing I take to mean: that element in a work of art which is independent of colour or actual three-dimensional space, the underlying conceptual structure which may be indicated by tone alone.\u201d Zuccari (1607) identified drawing with the Platonic \u201cidea\u201d of an object; Max Liebermann, some 300 years later, defined drawing as \u201cthe art of omission\u201d; Paul Klee saw drawing as an opportunity for \u201cpsychic improvisation\u201d. C\u00e9zanne, who inaugurates \u201cour\u201d era in art said: \u201cDrawing and painting are no longer different factors. When you paint you draw; the greater the harmony of the colors, the more accurate the drawing becomes\u2026when the color appears in all its richness, the form also reaches fullness.\u201dWhat, then, is drawing? In an age when it\u2019s hard to tell the difference between \u201cpainting\u201d and \u201cdrawing in color,\u201d it may be best to speak of the \u201cdrawing element,\u201d or the \u201cdrawing essence\u201d of an art work. \u201cDrawing progresses from the stable to the chaotic,\u201d Neustein writes. As far as appearances go, this assertion is unfounded. After all, there are many drawings which exhibit an opposite movement, a striving for the stable and disciplined, toward the realist \u201cpictorial\u201d effect. But it seems that Neustein does not mean to describe drawing, but to describe rather what I choose here to term the drawerly (as a neologistic counterpart to \u201cpainterly\u201d), which may be defined as the element within an art work that progresses from the stable to the chaotic.\u201dDrawing\u201d according to this approach, does not focus on the materiality of the art work (surface, medium) but rather its spiritual essence. Such a definition, can, metaphorically speak of the \u201cdrawerly\u201d element in the novel, the \u201cdrawerly\u201d element in a symphony, and the \u201cdrawerly\u201d element in a dance. By the same token one can speak of a \u201cnon-drawerly\u201d drawing, that is, a painterly drawing.Menashe Kadishman wrote: drawing is the desire to understand the form behind the form. Here too, it is best to take the word \u201cdrawing\u201d metaphorically. We may say that the art work which attempts to understand the form behind the form is an art work that has internalized \u201cdrawerly\u201d values, or a \u201cdrawerly\u201d art work. Thus for example, Kafka\u2019s and Joyce\u2019s novels will be novels, to employ the metaphorical usage, with strong \u201cdrawerly\u201d elements, both because of their progress from the stable to the chaotic, and also because of their unresolved preoccupation with their own form. Much of Jazz music could be defined, metaphorically, as \u201cdrawerly\u201d music. On the other hand many classic academic drawings are not \u201cdrawerly\u201d but rather \u201cphotographic\u201d in their intention.
\nDrawing NowIn speaking of the \u201cdrawerly element\u201d in art there is the danger of completely obfuscating the obvious. Indeed, in much of writing about art today, the next step has already been taken. One doesn\u2019t talk about the \u201cdrawerly element\u201d in art, but rather different types of artistic activity are spoken of as \u201cdrawing\u201d \u2013 without the caveat about its metaphorical usage. The word \u201cdrawing\u201d currently carries a great many different meanings. The distance between D\u00fcrer\u2019s drawings to those of Rembrandt, and later Georges Seurat (great draftsmen of the 16th, 17th and 19th centuries respectively) is, by any account, large. However, a \u201cfamilial\u201d relation between them can still be discerned. One can speak about Seurat and Rembrandt in the same breath. The tail-end of this breath will still allow one to speak of works from roughly the end of the same era (Seurat\u2019s of course), such as Cy Twombly or Jasper Jones (mid 20th century), who still worked on a two-dimensional surface using traditional drawing techniques, albeit while deconstructing the tradition of drawing.That distance today has manifestly increased. The term \u201cdrawing,\u201d at least in its usage within a critical discourse, includes among other things, preparatory stills for video work, blind \u201cdrawing\u201d (the artist observes the object and draws without looking at the paper, in what appears to be a theoretical exercise inspired by Derrida), improvisational theater, drawing of musical notes in graphic form, computerized animation for the movies, and more. Almost any art that includes an element of improvisation, according to this line of thought, is \u201cdrawing\u201d or a \u201csketch\u201d, and since art generally today tends to include such \u201cfree\u201d elements, \u201ceverything is drawing.\u201d Artist Lucy Gunning treats the studio space as paper, and drawing is defined vaguely as something that happens on the way to making something else. A preparatory photo-still developed quickly, is, according to this conception, a \u201cdrawing,\u201d or even a drawing \u201cconventionally defined\u201d by virtue of the fact that it produces an immediate result while using limited means, en route to the creation of another more \u201cfinished\u201d art work. The movements of the camera are not considered by Gunning very different from the movements of the pencil.\u201d This is how drawing is spoken of today. It seems as though this type of drawing is similar to what in the Renaissance was called \u201cpensiero\u201d or \u201ca sketch\u201d in contemporary terms \u2013 the first draft of an idea, and not the other, more studious, investigatory, stages of drawing (\u201cschizzo,\u201d \u201cstudio,\u201d and \u201cdisegno\u201d). Thus, \u201cdrawing\u201d is perceived of as a \u201cfree\u201d term, and its metaphorical use is looser still. This current state of affairs forms the background to this exhibit, if certainly not its logos. Traces II presents the \u201cdrawerly\u201d aspect of drawing. If everything in art is drawing, even drawing may be called drawing.Apart from the broadening of the term \u201cdrawing\u201d today, there is some obscurity about the character of contemporary drawing. In the last few years two books have come out proclaiming the \u201clast word\u201d about drawing, yet presenting opposite descriptions of the present moment. On the one hand Drawing Now (2002) presents contemporary drawing under the title \u201cdrawing as a noun,\u201d as opposed to \u201cdrawing as a verb\u201d (as Richard Serra suggested). Artists in this collection do not see drawing as a vehicle for expressing processes or action, but rather as a vehicle for presenting a finished thing. Sometimes this kind of drawing is called \u2018projective\u2019 (Yve-Alain Bois coined the term), that is, drawing that realizes ideas that were fully formed at the thought stage, and do not seek anything beyond what was already in the mind of the artist. Drawing \u201cas a noun\u201d does not search for form, but rather realizes it.
\nAs opposed to the \u201cdrawing as a noun\u201d thesis, another, equally contemporary outlook exists, which was mentioned above. What is Drawing? (2003) presents artists whose interest lies entirely in drawing \u201cas a verb,\u201d as process. The drawings of Claude Heath are a complete testimony to the undisturbed process of the drawing hand. His works are pure process. Lucy Gunning also declares: \u201cthe destination is the journey.\u201d These two different outlooks exist synchronously.The noun\/verb dichotomy, like many other slogans of this kind, seems artificial and simplistic, a theoretical sound-byte, because every drawing is both verb and noun, as long as the human brain does not output directly to a printer, and as long as there are still objects to observe. At least, any hand-made work of art, even with the most virtuosic finish (say, an oil painting by Jan van Eyck) can be deciphered upon close scrutiny, as a \u201cverb\u201d, no matter how finished its manifestation as a \u201cnoun\u201d might be. In fact, the most fascinating thing about many drawings, including those in the current exhibition, is precisely that phase between the process to the final stage of the work, which not always has been achieved. Of course, there are drawings which tend to retain in them the traces of their production process, to a lesser or greater degree, however, every drawing, having been produced in time, cannot be completely \u201cverb-less.\u201d Even a photograph, the \u201cnoun\u201d-art par excellence, conceals many verbs: where the photographer stood, how she stood with the camera, how he worked in the darkroom, what camera she chose, etc.I noted at the beginning of this chapter a few of the historical definitions of drawing. What is important to us is to examine how valid these definitions are today. Sometimes it seems as though Klee\u2019s definition is the only one which is pertinent in the eyes of artists who think about drawing. But \u201cdrawing\u201d is not only \u201cimprovisation,\u201d and not only \u201cpensiero.\u201d Drawing is not Art\u2019s summer-camp, where every one can scribble to their heart\u2019s desire. Moshe Barash writes: \u201cThe significance of the establishment of drawing as an independent medium\u2026is one of the central expressions in the formulation of the new image of the artist. This is because the great appreciation accorded to drawing implies the belief that the artist\u2019s vision is the source of the finished work.\u201d Today when the notion of a \u201cpreparatory drawing\u201d has almost disappeared, the burden placed on drawing is even heavier. Drawing is not an excuse for chatter, but the baring of the spirit, of the idea, or of the vision, whichever phrase one finds most fitting.
\nDrawing and TimeThe perfect painting \u2013 in fact more than one perfect painting \u2014 has already been painted. Perhaps there are no perfect musical compositions; perhaps there are no perfect literary works. But there are perfect paintings. No doubt, it may not be possible to agree over what is worthy of the title \u201cperfect,\u201d but it seems as though agreement can indeed be reached about the possibility of perfection in relation to the art of painting. At one time painting even strove to achieve such perfection. However, in respect to drawing such an ambition seems impossible. In drawing all symphonies are \u201cunfinished,\u201d even after the fixative has been applied to the paper. The medium of drawing will always signify, to a more or lesser degree, something partial, quivering, unrealizable and incomplete. Even \u201cmeticulous\u201d realistic drawing always suggests the character of a preliminary draft by virtue of the materials it uses: the pencil, charcoal, or chalk. But this does not by any means entail defeatism or melancholy. On the contrary. There is no perfect drawing, and therefore every drawing can be perfect. Perfection, an impossibility in relation to the art of drawing as a whole, allows every individual drawing \u2013 partial, quick, sloppy, or fragmented \u2013 to claim full perfection within the \u201cpossibilities\u201d of the medium, and its own specific goals. One might say that drawing is precisely the visual genre which permits imperfection and celebrates it. In its prior relinquishing of perfection it allows perfection in a place that is generally considered partial, damaged, or stammering. Therefore, especially today, drawing comfortably finds its place alongside poetry, as I will explain below.Drawing\u2019s forfeiture of perfection is a direct consequence of its openness to time. Drawing, almost always, is an art with a strong \u201cnarrative\u201d element. No matter how devoid of narrative the subject of the drawing is (for example: an etude by D\u00fcrer of a piece of fabric \u2013 is this a cloth, or an elevated mountain range beckoning a traveler?), drawing inevitably sketches a \u201cmap\u201d of progress, of tarrying, of obstacles, of alternations of dark and light terrain. Drawings produced by computer graphics software are not included in the exhibit, just as poetry written by computers (and such applications exist today) does not grace these walls. Computerized drawing is perfect drawing and therefore tends to be uninteresting.Drawing leaves traces. In comparison with painting, it is difficult to obscure them, and for the most part drawing doesn\u2019t want them to be obscured. Anywhere one finds a series of traces, in the metaphoric sense, one has a story. A story of labor. And where there is a story, there is time. Drawing can be a vehicle of expression for any subject, inanimate is it may be, but it will almost always say something about the time of the drawing\u2019s creation. I mean time understood in an objective sense (short time, long time, a long time ago, fast, slow) but also something which may be called the psychic rhythm of the artist while at work on a drawing. The drawing does not preserve the order of time of its creation. The beginning is almost always shrouded in mist, like the end. We don\u2019t know from which port of origin the pencil set sail. The drawing is given to us all at once. Yet it preserves the sum total of all the qualities of time that were experienced at the time of its creation, and therefore the sum total of all of the artist\u2019s transient realities while at work. Drawing is a protocol of testimony of human existence as it changes in time, a testimony made visible to the eye. Now we can understand Neustein\u2019s phraseology: for example the notions of investigation, fragility, the question and the progress towards the chaotic all derive from the quality of drawing as a preserver of time. Time engenders questions and investigation, the recognition of imperfection and fragility, separation and chaos. Only a work of art in which time plays such a vibrant part can strive for chaos, as Neustein says, or seek \u201cthe form behind the form,\u201d that is the memory of form, as Kadishman says. A work of art that has no time is a \u201cnoun,\u201d a finished and frozen form. A work that for some time was one thing, and then became something other, slowly turning into a third something \u2013 this is a form that can be examined in the gallery, and its archaeology can be traced. Drawing is the main avenue through which a consciousness which is unfinished, non-uniform, and imperfect, can arrive at a commensurate visual expression.
\nDrawing and Poetry\u201dWhat notes, letters, journals, and first drafts are to the poet, drawings are to artists,\u201d writes Joseph Meder in the introduction to his classic book on drawing. This may be so sometimes. But anyone who writes poetry knows that sometimes there are no notes, journals, or drafts \u201cen route\u201d to the poem: in many cases, and perhaps the most significant ones, the poem is the draft, the poem is the \u201cnote,\u201d and the note is all there is. A few corrections and revisions may come later, but often a poem is written with one flourish of the pen, in a quiet ecstasy, unselfconsciously. Here one might modify Meder\u2019s assertion and say: \u201cPoems are to the poet what drawings are to artists.\u201d
\nPoetry is a form of speech, \u201ca kind of saying,\u201d a special dialect of language, \u201ca language within language.\u201d Drawing is a form of visual presentation, \u201ca kind of showing,\u201d or a special dialect of art\u2019s language. The special form of speech is not a mannerism. It flows from a unique vision of the world, and from the limits of quotidian linguistic expression. A poem, wrote Cleanth Brooks some sixty years ago, does not merely lead to a logical conclusion according to the development of its \u201cargument.\u201d A poem is not only \u201cthematics\u201d just as a picture is not only an \u201cimage.\u201d The \u201cconclusion\u201d of a poem is the processual reworking of a diverse system of tensions that unfold while the poem is read. Its \u201cbottom line,\u201d \u201cwhat it is talking about,\u201d \u201cwhat the poet intended,\u201d \u2013 all these have virtually no importance when it comes to poetry, and the same is true of drawing.Let\u2019s take for example Uzi Katzav\u2019s drawing of a glass. A drawing of a glass is not \u201cmerely\u201d a drawn glass, but a representation of the \u201cdrama\u201d of drawing it; that is to say its coming into being as an image drawn in time. The glass is also a representation of a cheap Israeli glass, familiar to everyone, but it is also a representation of a human existence in the time span which begins with the vessel-less sheet of paper, and which ends with the glass drawn on paper. This glass, despite the fact this it is half empty, contains a great deal. It cannot quench our thirst, but it can feast the eye. Therefore the similarity of the liquid in it to a tear. Without entering into a detailed analysis of this sketch, several qualities of spirit and time are discernable: the light region on the left, which is perhaps the problem the drawing is trying to solve; the background areas where the pencil gropes at different levels of intensity, like someone who takes a detours on side-paths, to avoid the cage of the lion that threatens him, a sort of whistle in the dark; the areas where light and material collide, and the passage of light through the glass\u2019 handle where it falls onto the table with a crash that only the drawing can hear, and the long stain near the cup, where the heart beats wildly, because any false move might bring the entire structure tumbling down; the leg of the table, belonging to the middle realm between light and material, something vague, scarcely real, as though the eye cannot grasp both what is above and what is below the surface of the table, and vision has become clouded or glassy; and of course the entire bottom third of the sheet, of quivering and inscrutable lines, as if drawn with the left hand, a section which stands in a curious equation within this vertical \u201cdiptych,\u201d in contrast to the solidity of the upper part, as though negating the entire experiment of trying to grasp something, writing a cancellation stub, or a summary, or a newly balanced structure, facing the upper part, the accomplished and sound part, sunk in thought, trying the pencil, muttering something. The \u201cboring\u201d leg of the table is not incidental: it draws attention to what is above it, the more important part, constructing the gaze from bottom to top, facing the empty half of the mug, as something which contains the emptiness within the material. This quality of the drawing, by the way, is compared explicitly by Ruskin to the rhetoric of poetry. Just as in many poems one may find what appears to be a \u201cweak\u201d line, which is \u201cjustified\u201d rhetorically before the climax of a poem. Thus, for example, in Tamar Kroll\u2019s poem (p. 57) \u201c\u2026where paths still bend\u201d depicts a fairly standard landscape, only to allow the following stunning landscape-line to shine forth: \u201cand hidden nature erupts like a fray.\u201d The range of times that a drawing \u201cremembers\u201d always requires a length of time to observe the drawing, even if set on paper with Rembrandtian swiftness, so that one can try and identify the various times it contains. A drawing, like a poem, must be read \u201cout loud,\u201d the hand must trace the movement. A drawing will generally contains several \u201cclocks,\u201d like in Gyula Zilzer\u2019s meta-artistic etching.
\nTherefore poetry cannot be read quickly, the way finely polished prose can sometimes be read. Only a poem strictly regimented by meter, that is to say, a poem whose music \u201cremembers\u201d only one kind of time, allows fast reading, and this is true only in the case where its semantics are not \u201cstruggling\u201d against its mechanistic rhythm. (This will happen only with bad poetry). But a poem which has changing, unstable rhythms, requires slow reading, and in fact many readings, for the very same reason I spoke of in respect to drawing.Common to both of these \u201cforms of speech,\u201d poetry and drawing, is abstemiousness. Speech is limited. As a poet or draughtsman you always limit yourself. At the supply shop they will sell you canvases and tubes of paint, and with the same word processor you could have written a one-thousand page novel. But this self-limitation translates immediately to a potential advantage. The poet can say much less than the novelist. Most of the time she can say only one thing. But the power of this thing can sometimes reverberate so, that it multiplies and becomes an entire world of meaning, like a candle flame placed between two facing mirrors. The draughtsman, if we take up Uzi Katzav\u2019s cup again, can express loneliness and living in a loose equilibrium at the edge of an abyss inside the home. How can one even speak of this? One does not speak. Instead one draws a half empty cup at the edge of the table. Orit Gidali sees here the \u201cgreat desert near the city.\u201d An entire novel, or a full-length feature film would be necessary to speak this cup, this desert.
\nDrawing and SpectacleDrawing and poetry are economically marginal art forms. Their market value is at the bottom of the price-list, even when we consider the more expensive artists. A Van Gogh drawing was sold at a tenth of the price of a Van Gogh painting (a tenth being equivalent to eight million U.S. dollars.) Economic value is at the base of the \u201cartistic\u201d hierarchy. How many people will admit that a small etching by Morandi is a hundred times more dear and valuable to them than an entire Correggio ceiling? An oil painting of the traditional kind derives much of its power from the illusion of \u201ctouch\u201d that it affords the viewer (its owner, and later, the museum viewer). The illusion of touch enables the illusion of ownership of the painting as property, and what it represents (objects, women, lands) as more property. John Berger writes about the pleasure of gazing at something which expresses the possibility of its being \u201chad,\u201d like a model in an advertisement. Drawing, even when it uses color (that is when it is a \u201cdrawerly\u201d painting), negates the illusion of touch, and therefore it \u201ctakes the wind out\u201d of the illusion of taking and of proprietorship, whether it is only a sketch or a consummately finished drawing.
\nSomething that contains many different times cannot become eternal property because it casts doubt on the concept of eternity as a \u201cpreferred\u201d kind of time. Drawing always says: I will not give you the illusion of power and the pleasure of gazing at something which pleasurably speaks of its similarity to property, to a woman, to the landscape of a conquered land, to a home. I can only be a (serious) parody of all these. It is as though drawing always jokes about the illusion of touch and ownership which Berger places at the center of the cultural attitude toward Western art. Drawing will never allow the eye to touch. Drawing\u2019s distance (irrespective of the subject matter, which may be intimate) is a matter of principle. Meir Appelfeld\u2019s still life drawings, which seem to invite a bowing down and inwards, as in entering a Japanese home, will always remind us of their non-existence as utensils. If you look at them without their glass covering, you will see them crumble, like dust in the wind, a too-strong exhalation and they are almost erased. Such vessels, which can barely hold themselves up, how could they hold anything else?Therefore, our age may be more qualified to admire drawing, if our age were not such an admirer of money and spectacle. I admit that the preparatory sketches for the Sistine Chapel seem to me more digestible than their colorful counterparts on the ceiling, above the hordes of tourist crammed in to the point of suffocation, just as I will prefer many times over Michelangelo\u2019s unfinished slave statues in the Galeria dell\u2019Academia in Florence, over his David, exhibited in the same hall. The reasons are general aesthetic ones, but also trivial ones: David has been reproduced ad nauseum. The statue\u2019s groin has been printed on men\u2019s underwear. Hundreds of thousands of plaster replicas are sold throughout Florence. The \u2018slaves\u2019 are not, and never could be, popular or showy items. The \u201cpopification\u201d of the statue is not completely unmotivated by the work of art, even if the work of art is not to blame for it. Pop sniffs outs the latent spectacular element in works of art and exploits them for its own ends. The crippled form of the slave statues has inoculated them against spectacle. Capitalism\u2019s imperial forces have no interest in them. Try to imagine them on underwear.This is also true of several drawings. I admit, somewhat shamefacedly, that I cannot bear to gaze at a Rubens painting, while his drawings are dear to my heart. Without hesitation, I would take the drawings of Poussin, Lorrain, Van Dyke, Constable, or Turner any day over their paintings (this list could be extended, however such a swap is not being offered, for the time being at least). One can understand why so many people cannot bear so many paintings which are so far removed from the human scale as our own age has shaped it. Perhaps the difference lies in the fact that the imagined addressee of many paintings includes the patron, and money, and the conversion of the painting into merchandise. Not every artist can (as Velasquez and Goya could) undermine the commercialism of the work in a subversive way. The drawings, particularly those which were not intended for exhibition, the travelogues, the sketchbooks of etudes, are innocent of it. When you don\u2019t expect something to be bought, you don\u2019t stick a price tag on it.
\nWhen Rubens paints, even if he is painting himself next to his wife, he is thinking of eternity. His addressee too, stands one thousand years down the road. Drawing, in comparison, is the most \u201cmortal\u2019 and most \u201ctemporary\u201d of all art forms. It has no need for overstated prettifying or for exaggerated greatness because in any case it cannot proceed more than a few steps along this axis. Drawing does not think one thousand years ahead, but tries with all its might to remember the few minutes in which it came into being. Memory, Derrida notes, is involved in the act of drawing from the outset. Derrida wonders: how can someone claim to be looking at the model and at the drawn lines at the same time? Is it not necessary to be blind either to the object \u2013 or to the drawing? This is the precise exchange which drawing \u201cseizes,\u201d the time of the artist at work, the time of human decay which passes \u201cslowly,\u201d at life\u2019s pace, seizing also the time of the construction of the drawing, which passes quickly (always faster than the pace of life), as against the \u201cbig\u201d time, and carrying on a struggle against it (of that being built against that being destroyed), but also carrying on a dialogue of likeness and representation. Is not every drawing an abstract map of life, that is, always a metaphor of a journey (which has left traces on the very path it has itself created), just as every journey is the realization of the phrase \u201ca way of life\u201d? (This explains tourists\u2019 regular disappointment after whirlwind tours of spectacular cities, as though they are saying to themselves: \u201cis this really our life, no more?\u201d A good drawing prevents this kind of response.)
\nDrawing and RevelationJames Elkins writes: \u201cwhat matters in painting is pushing the mundane toward the instant of transcendence [\u2026] just as water heats up and then suddenly disappears.\u201d A work of art has a \u201cboiling point,\u201d writes Elkins, and it must be brought just up to the verge of it. It cannot be allowed to evaporate and be lost, but it must be allowed almost to become something else, within the limits of its materiality (simple paints on a simple canvas). Reaching this boiling point, where the material and the ordinary cross the border into the artistic (some may call this moment a \u201crevelation\u201d or uncovering of the \u201ctruth\u201d in a work of art) is much more difficult to do in drawing. It is harder to \u201cboil\u201d something \u201cdrawerly\u201d compared to something \u201cpainterly.\u201d Something \u201cdrawerly\u201d always contains a reminder that it is mundane, earthbound, of this world, ordinary. A painting (its color, its finish) is a material form which submits much more easily to the kind of alchemical distillation that Elkins describes in his book. Drawing, even the most perfect kind, always refuses perfection, because it forfeits having full color. Therefore, when an artist manages to \u201cboil\u201d a drawing, and to transmute it from the realm of the mundane and ordinary, the achievement is even more impressive and heroic.
\nDrawing, by its nature, seeks a resting point between the empty page and the page which is scribbled to the hilt. Drawing is a compromise between the two. Each drawing is a new compromise. True, the empty page also lies in ambush for color, as does the fully painted surface (as in Rothko\u2019s painting), but this is contrary to the palette\u2019s nature, which is variegated and seeks to realize different hues. Drawing contains within it the dangerous seed of the \u201cone\u201d: the inherent danger of monotony, on the one hand, and on the other, of the void. Drawing tries to find the unfinished resting place between empty and full. Poetry is a stop between silence (a page of poetry usually contains more white than black) and ordinary speech. It is no longer silence, but not quite speech yet. This too is a possible definition of drawing.Heidegger writes: \u201cThe essence of art is poetry. The essence of poetry, in turn, is the founding of truth.\u201d The essence of art is the revelation of human existence, as it occurred in a particular place, at a particular time. The work of art testifies that this revelation occurred \u201chere\u201d, in this work of art, and for the first time. It is possible to discern two kinds of revelation in art. The first kind emerges from the artistic act itself, while it is occurring. Revelation in this sense is similar to walking through a dense forest, to groping along, without knowing where the road leads, and whether it leads anywhere at all. Suddenly something becomes organized on the canvas, or on the computer screen, or on the theater stage. Something is revealed, but not an angel descending from the clouds seated on a swan, but something which was hidden within simple reality. A bird hopping off a branch, a frog leaping into a pool, a line finds its right posture on the canvas. Something like that. Artists, in any field, if they are artists and not theoreticians trying to visually illustrate an idea, strive for these moments, and fear them, as they fear their absence. These moments may conceal forgery, deceit. The magnitude of understanding may conceal self-deception. But it is impossible to attain meaning in art without arriving at a place where, suddenly, something is understood.This something can be explained by the term \u201cobjective correlative,\u201d associated with T.S. Eliot. Eliot claims that poetry (and art in general) converts emotions and sensations into concrete elements which are parallel and matching, which express and stimulate these emotions and sensations in a non-explicit fashion. Every good verbal work of art conjures up objects, gestures, character, etc. which are the visible concrete expression of an abstract feeling or idea. Thus, for example, in Tal Nitzan\u2019s poem (p. 25) water and the ways in which it moves is an objective-correlative for an emotion which is too subtle, too complex, for it to be described with the ordinary emotional lexicon, something which is both suffocating and transparent, both permeable and blocked; thus, in Israel Eliraz\u2019 poem (p.88) the chair becomes an object which contains the way in which the world confronts us, hard and inviting, receiving, yet challenging and frightening like a dog baring its teeth. Poetry tries to express what is impossible to express explicitly in shorthand, with an image, an object, a hand gesture. Drawing is, as Max Liebermann says, \u201cthe art of subtraction\u201d because a very little bit is sufficient for it to convey a vast amount of information. A poem sees an idea or a feeling in banal things. This is precisely what distinguishes a poet from someone who writes poetry but is not a poet; the ability to see \u201cwithin the crevices of the couch\u201d (in Sivan Beskin\u2019s poem, p. 60) an abyss of dark deeds. A poem\u2019s self-limitation forces it to say a great deal with very little. The objective correlative is poetry\u2019s life-breath, because it is the quintessential character of condensed poetic expression allowing it to be communicated to an addressee. We too can sit on Israel Eliraz\u2019 chair, just as we too can drink from Uzi Katzav\u2019s glass. Bridges.Eliot\u2019s term is still useful (although not fashionable in poetry criticism) but few remember that it was not Eliot who conceived of it. Eliot seems to have borrowed it from another person, not a poet, or poetry critic, but a painter \u2013 Washington Allston, the American Romantic artist (1779-1843). The artist\u2019s consciousness is in need of an objective correlative for it to be expressed, Allston wrote. This is perhaps the strongest point of contact between poetry and visual art, and the explanation for the fact that a glass of water, or a chair, can be of extreme importance to someone. The ability to see and recognize \u2013 the revelation of the concrete which contains the abstract is also the distinguishing mark of someone who is an artist, compared to someone who is not. Thus for example, is the ability to see in a teapot (in Meir Appelfeld\u2019s drawing) a mysterious and threatening pressure, where others only see the imminent cup of tea. The objective correlative is the way in which what cannot be said is said, and what cannot be shown is shown. This is not restricted to poetry or to drawing, but is true of art in general, however, in poetry and drawing especially, there are greater chances of meeting an objective correlative at the moment it is perceived as such by the poet or artist, before it is rationally and meticulously processed (on the canvas or in the pages of a draft).Unlike drawing, it is difficult to see the process of writing behind the words. In this sense writing is more like painting in layers, and the top layer is completely opaque. A printed poem always conceals its layers, its erasures, its revisions. Poets usually do not display drafts of their poems. Nevertheless one can identify in a poem a quality in which one can sense the power of the quick moment, the urgent line, the sudden coming into being. These traces could be found in the poem\u2019s semantics, but they are much more present in the poem\u2019s music. The poem\u2019s music contains the equivalent of the pencil marks of a drawing. The music frays the clean edges of the typeface and takes the poem back to the time of its composition. This music can preserve something of the power of the psychic rhythm of the poet at the time of writing. Especially in free-verse forms of poetry one can feel more powerfully the moment when the music of the poem has reached something it deems important \u2013 a climax, or a low point. A moment where the pencil stalled, panicked, or broke. The \u201cdrawerly\u201d in art is found in the artist\u2019s willingness to leave traces for its addressees, including the meanderings, the false turns, the delays, and the dead ends \u2013 on the way to the truth or truths of her or his work, at the expense of the temptation to present itself to them as \u201cperfect.\u201d Leonardo da Vinci wrote to an artist-addressee; \u201cHave you never observed poets when they are composing their rhymes? They don\u2019t take the trouble to write well-formed letters, and they don\u2019t mind erasing a few verses, to compose better ones.\u201d
\nThere are some poems where it is possible to mark the exact point on the page where the poet understood what he is delivering right now. The poem leads you on a path it has paved itself, and which it continues to pave, a path someone has already walked. You can experience not only its arrival but also its travails. It is the same with drawing. Not necessarily, of course: what was called above \u201cprojective\u201d drawing, the kind that realizes previous ideas in a calculated fashion, represents the opposite of any kind of \u201crevelatory\u201d drawings. This kind of drawing is not interested in discovery, perhaps it is not capable of discovery, but only of reconstruction of what is already known. Poetry books, too, are filled with thousands of poems written with the competency necessary for a poem to seem like a real poem. But sometimes something real reveals itself. The body reacts to something; the hand draws or writes sometimes before it has understood what is happening. A small earthquake occurs, the hand responds like a seismograph. Yes: it is possible to draw academically and completely rationally, it is possible to write literate poetry with rhyme and meter. There is room for this is well. But this should not diminish the possibility of poetry or drawing which preserve something of the power of the moment when the world showed something to someone, which prior to that moment had been, to her or him at least, a secret or a veil, a moment where, as in Alex Ben-Ari\u2019s poem,<\/p>\n
At once
\nSome thing is caught and deciphered.<\/p>\n
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