Drawing, like handwriting, uses a repertoire of lines. One kind of drawing concentrates on the straightness of what is straight, the purity of what is curved, and the perfect spacing and alignment of shading and hatching. In this mode objects are made from marks whose spring and stiffness produce wonderfully energetic textures. The sheet is enlivened, as a field is when the wind bends grass all in one direction. In another kind of drawing the line seems to be shaped by the thing seen, to reach around surfaces rather than outline or decorate them, to be as heavy or light as the thing represented.

LRB 2 January 2003 | PDF Download