Drawing on Writing

Wandering through the stacks at the Brooklyn Library the other week I happened on Arthur Danto's 1994 book, Embodied Meanings, a collection of his art criticism from The Nation.

As you know, I'm drawn to thinking about how and why pictures matter. I remember feeling intrigued by the title, but I don't exactly remember why I decided to check the book out--maybe there was an essay about some work from the 1980s that caught my attention. In any case, what sticks with me now, weeks after returning it to the library, is Danto's Introduction.

In fact, Danto's description of himself as a writer, his background, his intentions and process, his accidental beginning as an art critic, and his candid appraisal of how we come to understand the place and importance of pictures in the first place -- an art-critic's self-criticism -- was so illuminating, so engaging and revealing, that I think it's a must-read in itself.

He writes:

Let me say in conclusion that I get a lot more out of art, now that I am writing about it, than I ever did before. I think what is true of me must be true of everyone, that until one tries to write about it, the work of art remains a sort of aesthetic blur. Once, in the years when I was an artist, I evolved what I called a technique of analytical sightseeing, which meant drawing the sites I visited, seeing how they held together. Drawing a baroque church is far more elucidative than simply staring at it. The same is true about writing. I think in a way everyone might benefit from becoming a critic in his or her own right. After seeing the work, write about it.

This resonates deeply for me. Bringing an experience into my body through the process of writing about it solidifies the experience itself, makes it real, and creates a touchstone for feeling and thinking.

Something similar happens when I make photographs. Further, writing about photographs enhances my understanding of what draws me to photography in the first place.

But I don't draw much, though maybe I should. Something about the process of drawing, the act itself, the hand-brain connection...and here my thoughts are fuzzy. I'm remembering something I read recently that might relate, perhaps tangentially, but can't put my finger on it exactly—I'll have to get back to this...

But here's another thought, drawing from Danto: analytical photo-seeing, that is, drawing the photographs that catch our attention.

I'm always on the look-out for ways to illuminate the process, both technical and emotional, that leads to photographs that matter, that touch us. Teaching photography means I keep learning about it. Danto reminds me that drawing belongs in that conversation too.