Journal of Art Historiography (Dec 2020)
Erica Tietze-Conrat, “On Drawings”
Abstract
Originally published as ‘Ueber Handzeichnungen’, Kunstgeschichtliche Anzeigen Beiblatt de Mitteilungen des Instituts für österreichische Geschichtsforschung, edigiert von Max Dvořák, Jahrgang 1913 Heft 1/2, Innsbruck: Wagner 1913, pp. 41-51, signed February 1914. The following remarks have been inspired by the essay by Franz Martin ‘Haberditzl, Über Handzeichnungen’, which appeared in the fourth issue of Die graphischen Künste during 1913; this comprised an essay on distinguishing draftsmanship from the other arts made on flat surfaces and characterizing its unique qualities. The loose disposition of the essay by Haberditzl makes it clear that the present remarks are intended more as a parallel account than as a critical review. We might see the work of art as an example of the eternal law of the only way in which the intellect can present itself within the material world; the painting is bound to a given form of material such as canvas or wooden panel etc., and this material imposes its law – that of the surface. The colours combine to one sort of imaginary illusion or another also balance one another in the surface; this flat nature recalls the canvas. What about in drawings? The paper lies bare and visible; it is not a demand of the material, the flatness is not a product of the colour harmony but the material speaks itself. The unified effect of this combination of intellect and material is dissolved and has become a parallel rather than a coagulated phenomenon. It is so natural and obvious to see that this is paper that this plays no part in the aesthetic impression of the drawing. The material only gains an artistic value as creating space or rhythm by the colour of its paper, whether it is white or coloured, and the comparative emphasis within the drawing. By the elimination of this particular materially bound aspect from consciousness, the other more intellectual aspect is successfully heightened, and we speak of the abstraction of drawings.
