Aritists Glossary #1 – Skiagraphia – shadow writing.

Who was that character in V. Woolfs The Waves? The one who had a notebook and collected words and phrases. Or Autodidact of the Breakfast table. But to hell with it.should I everbecomesomepompousartteacher they may serve me well.  Just suffix them all with “darling”.

Came across this reference to Derrida. (D. Petherbridge)

Skiagraphia/sciagraphy – which Derrida translates as “shadow writing”. Mark making as calligraphic in my drawings. Its a paragraph on chiaroscuro, and on the myth of the origin of drawing – of – the Corinthian maid (Butades, the potter, daughter) who traces her lovers profile as cast by a shadow on the wall before he goes to war. He then fashions a profile from clay. Drawing always describing an imminent disappearance, a loss of the loved object.

But it is the conjunction of “writing” and “shadow” that interests me for the “Scrawl Within” course. Redolent of the J. Cage quote – “Drawing is writing for the left hand.”

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“If you have not got the knack of drawing a man who has just thrown himself out of a window whilst he is falling from the 4th storey then you will never be able to go in for the big stuff” Delacroix to a young artist quoted by Baudelaire.

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I may as well list the three big painting cycles underway in the studio at the moment. As a list they look like an emotional nightmare. They are that and more to paint, each one brings up a gluttonous emotional sludge, I can taste each one. Maybe not the last. Three movements, all the potential for resolution. Each one an act of faith/courage/follishness (but, of course, will be employing dollops of “sprezzatura” liberally (see below), you won’t see the grimace at the black heart of it all).

• Jame’s Finger
• Embryo Cow Dual.
• Allegory of Love.

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There was an artist called Timanthes He painted a scene – the death of Iphigenia. He depicted the grief on all the faces save Agamemnon whose grief was so great that he left it vieled.the hidden as the locus of the most intense emotional response.

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ARTISTS GLOSSARY #2

“sprezzatura” – lively nonchalance. (The aristocratic hand, the flourish, gesture, the artless and effortless line).

Always worth a run of Wikipedia:

Sprezzatura is an Italian word originating from Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier, where it is defined by the author as “a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it.”^[1] It is the ability of the courtier to display “an easy facility in accomplishing difficult actions which hides the conscious effort that went into them.”^[2] Sprezzatura has also been described “as a form of defensive irony: the ability to disguise what one really desires, feels, thinks, and means or intends behind a mask of apparent reticence and nonchalance.”^[3]

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“macchia” – sevententh century name for a sketch – also used for a stain or a spill of liquid. Implies ” a freshness and immediacy as if the drawing was done by itself” (Baldinicci)

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“furia di diavolo” – devilish verve. Praise of Poussin’s drawings by Marino.

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“strepitoso” – noisy

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description of Salvator Rosa “Sincere, free, fiery painter…..despiser of wealth and death. ”

“Sketch with fire and execute with phlegm” Winkelman.