Bafflement and recognition: on drawing the figure with uncertainty and conviction

The central question of my MFA is this: what is it that I draw when I draw the figure? I ask this question to try to understand what I feel is a conflict between my exclusive focus on drawing the human figure on one hand and my uneasy feelings about the body on the other. In the figure I have no doubt chosen the most celebrated subject in the history of Western art. Yet that the same time one of the main projects in Western philosophy has been to transcend our bodies in a quest for pure spirit. In my thesis I investigate this ambivalent relationship we have with our physicality. In search of reconciliation I look to philosophy and art as well as aesthetics and neuroscience. I suggest that our Western celebration of the body tends to be one of our ability to distance ourselves from our body; to regard it from the outside as an object, and in doing so assert our intellect's superiority over it. In my view, this assertion of intellectual power overlooks the body's ability to make sense of the world and to sense meaning on a pre-reflective level. In scrutinizing my own drawing process I arrive at a definition of "body", not as a fleshy, objective body supervised by my intellect, but as my physical, internal experience of the world and of others. My body accounts for my experience of the world and has a grasp on the world that my poor intellect can only dream of. It is in this experiencing body that my drawing process begins and through drawing the figure I reflect, with lines and marks, on what my body understands before I reflect on it. The figures in my drawing are therefore not specific ones, but rather investigations into a general body, stripped of features, hair and clothes. They are not portraits or protagonists in a narrative, but rather the outcome of a process of questioning. This process is inconclusive and marvelling by nature and feeds of bafflement and recognition, uncertainty and conviction in equal measure.

Grantor dc:publisher

UNSW, Sydney

Year dc:date

2011

Author dc:creator

• Groen, Maria Speyer

• Phenomenology
• Figure drawing
• Body
• Merleau-Ponty
• Cognitive science
• Aesthetics

Statement dc:rights

• open access
• CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
• free_to_read

Licence

• https://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_abf2
• https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/au/

Language dc:language

EN

Identifier

https://doi.org/10.26190/unsworks/23598

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:unsworks.library.unsw.edu.au:1959.4/50437