Drawing: The Invention of a Modern Medium
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Love Seduces Innocence, Pleasure Leads Them On, Repentance Follows
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Studies of Figures after "Judgment of Paris" and "Parnassus" by Marcantonio Raimondi
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Study for "The Oath of the Tennis Court"
The drawing was previously folded into sixteenths, although currently the folds dividing it into eighths are more visible. On the verso, two of the eight sections are covered in brown wash strokes, presumably offloading the brush or testing (by David or someone else).
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Virgil Reading the Aeneid to Augustus (Study for "Tu Marcellus Eris")
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The Instructive and Appetizing Meal: Voltaire and Three Dinner Companions(?)
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Study for "The Gates of Hell": Shades Speaking to Dante
Drawing is irregularly shaped like an upside-down "L" and is laid down to tan paper, itself laid down to blue mount.
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Astolphe Brings Back the Head of Orrile, for Canto XV of Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso"
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The Ghost of Clytemnestra, from Aeschylus's "The Furies" ("Eumenides")
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Drawing became modern in the 18th century, when it left the confines of the artist’s studio to enter an expanded field of discourse, culture, politics, and social life. This transformation is most evident in France, where drawing was significantly, and influentially, repositioned and reconceptualized. This exhibition traces the emergence of the modern understanding of drawing from the 18th through the 19th century in multiple senses: as an autonomous form of expression, an index of the artist’s style, an object of aesthetic contemplation, an epistemological tool, and a commodity. The variety of techniques, materials, and approaches presented here offer a historically complex answer to the basic question: what does it mean to draw?
While historically grounded, the exhibition is not organized chronologically; rather, it is arranged around a constellation of categories that speak to key aspects of drawing. The display is divided into three sections—Medium, Object, Discourse—and, within them, into several subsections that treat the basic procedures of drawings not merely as the means but also as the agents of representation. “Medium” refers to the conjunction of materials and techniques with the historically specific conventions that govern their use in drawing. It explores artists’ interaction with, rather than simply their use of, the material bases of drawings. “Object” addresses the social and cultural functions and uses of drawing, focusing on its role as a tool of artistic instruction, its relation to reproductive technologies, its uses in architecture and decorative design, and its contribution to the production of knowledge. “Discourse” considers drawing as a means of conceptualization as well as a visual mode of thinking in and of itself.
This exhibition is the result of a unique collaboration between Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, the William Dorr Boardman Professor of Fine Arts at Harvard University; Elizabeth M. Rudy, the Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Associate Curator of Prints at the Harvard Art Museums; and the Harvard students who helped develop and organize the exhibition in the context of two seminars taught in the Fall 2015 and Spring 2016 semesters, in the museums’ Art Study Center.
The exhibition catalogue, featuring essays by students from the seminar Drawing: Object, Medium, Discourse, is available in the shop early February 2017.
Access the related digital tool on our website for more information about the works on view, including short entries written by students from the seminar Drawing on the Exhibition and audio commentary.
This project is supported in part by the Gurel Student Exhibition Fund and the Mellon Publication Funds at the Harvard Art Museums.
Share your experience on social media: #DrawingsatHarvard
Related Programming
Information about related events, including gallery talks and a lecture by Harvard professor Ewa Lajer-Burcharth on February 8, 2017, can be found in the museums’ calendar. View a recording of the February 8 lecture on Vimeo or YouTube.
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