Assignment: Find two artists who challenge your idea of what a drawing can be
Nanny, Small Bears and Bogeyman
Artist: Paula Rego
Medium: acrylic paint
Rego’s piece challenges my understanding of what a drawing can be because it shows that art doesn’t need to be perfectly meticulous or sensical. Instead, this work shows that art can be quite the opposite with it’s strange figures, adventurous blocks of colours, and quick brush strokes. This drawing has a wonderful whimsical quality to it that manages to be both comforting (the figures on the right) and unsettling at the same time with what I would assume to be the Bogeyman in the image.
Rego states that the painting is based on Elias Canetti’s (a German-language author’s) biography where the nanny’s boyfriend threatens to cut out his tongue, and that “the one who is most wicked is not the bogeyman but the nanny who has strapped him [the bear] up. She is so possessive and horribly evil that while I was painting the front bear another little bear appeared behind it.” This is really interesting to me because without this context I had assumed that the figure on the right was the benevolent one due to the concern of the nanny’s expression and the soft yellow she is painted with - a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” scenario likely intended to misguide the viewer.
Face and Teardrop
Artist: Georg Baselitz
Medium: drypoint etching
This piece challenges my understanding of what a drawing can be because it is so different from what I am used to. Baselitz’s piece is quick paced with it’s messily bold lines and colour. The side by side comparison of two subjects - the face and the teardrop - without any physical interaction between the two images (they are literally split down the middle) is still is able to build a psychological connection with their similarity of form and pose. I really enjoy how full of energy this drawing is, you can literally feel the movement in the lines. There really is a sense of rage behind the artwork (at least for me), from the angry red, heavily pressed lines, and chaotic movement. Baselitz describes the piece as “[signifying] the opposition and commitment involved in freeing expression and exposing the aggression of structure”. Despite the freeness there is still a sense of constraint the work, as neither image expands into the coloured area of the other.
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