In a still life drapery suggests all sorts of turbulence—if you’re in the mood to see it. There’s nothing still about a still life even though you’re looking at a pile of pottery, stemware, plastic fruit and, of course, bulging cloth. We’ve talked about that before:
https://artamaze.wordpress.com/2012/12/25/still-life-a-misnomer/
In this post’s drawing, the artist/student selected a portion of the still life on the table that led to an exploding composition on the page. In my analysis you can interpret the green lines as either emanating from a central point (explosive) or you can see them as converging implosively. You can shift your view back and forth between the two ways of seeing. Either way, it’s a trip!
Whether you see those lines as centripetal or centrifugal, the focal point is nothing. It’s a little triangular black part of the background, a vacancy. If the lines had been made to converge on a thing, the drawing would feel like an illustration or a picture with a message. It would belong to the 18th century or before, at least in Western Art. But the fact that the convergence is on emptiness makes this a modern drawing. The lines converge on that little nothing, but because it’s nothing, it lets you go again. And so your eye–your attention–moves all through the image. That’s the modern sensibility: you have to pay attention to everything. It’s a real trip, man.
For a reference to Diebenkorn and the Parthenon, go back to https://artamaze.wordpress.com/2015/09/03/let-it-be/
Drawing in china marker on gloss paper, ~ 11 x 17, by Lizzy Mendoza.
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artamaze by Katherine Hilden 