Figure drawing and alternate narratives of artistic mastery

Figure drawing is a rich and problematic context for exploring drawing conventions with many connections to contemporary art and visual culture. The human figure can inspire students to more fully develop their own artistic practice and to critically engage with contemporary art and visual culture. Representations of the human body in art and visual culture are also relevant to important issues in the lives of students. Figure drawing has a long history associated with technical skills, ideas about mastery and the artist’s training. Skill, knowledge and drawing techniques, when combined with critical conversations about representing the human body, provide rich topics for discussion and reflection. How the human form is dressed, undressed and depicted in art and popular visual culture reflects vital issues about gender, race, identity, beauty, compliance and agency. This paper describes a range of different methods to give the skills associated with drawing the human form context within contemporary issues and to disrupt conventional and uncritical approaches.

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Teaching Essential Drawing Principles in Relation to the Human Figure

The Art of Teaching Art ◽

10.1093/oso/9780195130799.003.0007 ◽

2000 ◽

Author(s):

Deborah A. Rockman

Keyword(s):

Contemporary Art ◽

Visual Arts ◽

Human Form ◽

Traditional Art ◽

Human Figure ◽

Visual Artist ◽

Principles Of Design ◽

Changing Role ◽

Applied Arts

There is perhaps no more significant experience in the study of drawing than the study of the human figure. One needs only to look to the ancient Greeks and to the Renaissance masters to recognize the historical importance of the human form in the study of the visual arts and the refinement of visual expression. Although the figure’s presence and significance during the period known as modernism and in contemporary art has ebbed and flowed, its influence is always felt to some degree, and no classical or traditional art education would be complete without a substantial focus on drawing and studying the human form. Much debate is currently taking place about the changing role and responsibility of foundation courses for students studying both the fine and applied arts. If we examine those aspects that the fine and applied arts have in common, we find that a concern for communication is paramount, whether it takes place in a gallery or museum, in a television or magazine ad, on a showroom floor, on a computer monitor, or in any number of other locales. The power of the human form to communicate cannot be overstated, primarily because it is what we are. We have things in common with other humans that we have in common with nothing else. Looking at a human form in any context has the potential to provide us with the experience of looking in the mirror, of seeing our own reflection, so to speak. It follows that any significant experience in visual communication must thoroughly examine the role of the figure, and for the visual artist this requires experience with drawing the figure. The fine and applied arts also have in common a concern for principles of design and aesthetics. If we acknowledge the presence of these principles in nature, then we may also recognize an element of universality. Quite simply, I can think of no finer example of the application of principles of design and aesthetics than the living, breathing human form, and the human form is universal.

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Screen Presence

10.3366/edinburgh/9781474403375.001.0001 ◽

2016 ◽

Author(s):

Stephen Monteiro

Keyword(s):

Contemporary Art ◽

Social Contexts ◽

Popular Media ◽

Andy Warhol ◽

Film Culture ◽

Artistic Practice ◽

Popular Film ◽

Robert Rauschenberg ◽

Mona Hatoum ◽

Source Materials

Cinema plays a major role in contemporary art, yet the deeper influence of its diverse historical forms on artistic practice has received little attention. Working from a media and cultural studies perspective, Screen Presence explores the intersections of film, popular media, and art since the 1950s through the examples of four pivotal figures – Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Mona Hatoum and Douglas Gordon. While their film-related works may appear primarily as challenges to conventional cinema, these artists draw on overlooked forms of popular film culture that have been commonplace, and even dominant, in specific social contexts. Through analysis of a range of examples and source materials, Stephen Monteiro demonstrates the dependence of contemporary artists on cinema’s shifting applications and interpretations, offering a fresh understanding of the enduring impact of everyday media on how we make and view art.

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Screening Statues

10.3366/edinburgh/9781474410892.001.0001 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Steven Jacobs ◽

Susan Felleman ◽

Vito Adriaensens ◽

Lisa Colpaert

Keyword(s):

Contemporary Art ◽

Three Dimensional ◽

Interdisciplinary Approach ◽

Film History ◽

Two Dimensional ◽

Artistic Practice ◽

Experimental Art ◽

Broad Scope ◽

Art Practices ◽

Extensive Reference

Sculpture is an artistic practice that involves material, three-dimensional, and generally static objects, whereas cinema produces immaterial, two-dimensional, kinetic images. These differences are the basis for a range of magical, mystical and phenomenological interactions between the two media. Sculptures are literally brought to life on the silver screen, while living people are turned into, or trapped inside, statuary. Sculpture motivates cinematic movement and film makes manifest the durational properties of sculptural space. This book will examine key sculptural motifs and cinematic sculpture in film history through seven chapters and an extensive reference gallery, dealing with the transformation skills of "cinemagician" Georges Méliès, the experimental art documentaries of Carl Theodor Dreyer and Henri Alekan, the statuary metaphors of modernist cinema, the mythological living statues of the peplum genre, and contemporary art practices in which film—as material and apparatus—is used as sculptural medium. The book’s broad scope and interdisciplinary approach is sure to interest scholars, amateurs and students alike.

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Contemporary Art, World Cinema, and Visual Culture

10.2307/j.ctvf3w2p5 ◽

2019 ◽

Keyword(s):

Visual Culture ◽

Contemporary Art ◽

Art World ◽

World Cinema

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Making Up 3D Bodies

Proceedings of the ACM on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques ◽

10.1145/3468779 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 4 (2) ◽

pp. 1-9

Author(s):

Kiona Hagen Niehaus ◽

Rebecca Fiebrink

Keyword(s):

Software Tool ◽

The Body ◽

Design Parameters ◽

Artistic Practice ◽

Human Form ◽

Modeling Systems ◽

Exploratory Approach ◽

Disability Status ◽

High Level ◽

The Impact

This paper describes the process of developing a software tool for digital artistic exploration of 3D human figures. Previously available software for modeling mesh-based 3D human figures restricts user output based on normative assumptions about the form that a body might take, particularly in terms of gender, race, and disability status, which are reinforced by ubiquitous use of range-limited sliders mapped to singular high-level design parameters. CreatorCustom, the software prototype created during this research, is designed to foreground an exploratory approach to modeling 3D human bodies, treating the digital body as a sculptural landscape rather than a presupposed form for rote technical representation. Building on prior research into serendipity in Human-Computer Interaction and 3D modeling systems for users at various levels of proficiency, among other areas, this research comprises two qualitative studies and investigation of the impact on the first author's artistic practice. Study 1 uses interviews and practice sessions to explore the practices of six queer artists working with the body and the language, materials, and actions they use in their practice; these then informed the design of the software tool. Study 2 investigates the usability, creativity support, and bodily implications of the software when used by thirteen artists in a workshop. These studies reveal the importance of exploration and unexpectedness in artistic practice, and a desire for experimental digital approaches to the human form.

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