Drawing Now

by Hoptman, Laura J.

• ISBN13: 9780870703621
• ISBN10: 0870703625
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-10-01
• Publisher: Museum of Modern Art

Summary

From John Currin's old-master-style Playboy bunnies to Elizabeth Peyton's fin-de-siecle portraits; from Julie Mehretu's dizzying, multilayered architectural landscapes to Shahzia Sikander's multipatterned miniature ones; from Yoshitomo Nara's angry and enigmatic little girls to Kara Walker's stereotypical negresses; and from Barry McGee's caricatures of urban graffiti to Matthew Ritchie's cosmological diagrams--drawing is back, if it ever went away. In contrast to the digitized, multimedia direction that much of contemporary art has taken in the past decade, drawing has become the major mode of expression for many of today's most important young artists. Drawing Now, published to accompany the first major survey of contemporary drawings at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 15 years, contains more than 100 color reproductions of work by 26 international artists, both well-known and emerging, that demonstrate the fascinating variety of methods and approaches, mediums and scales, apparent in this old-again, new-again art. Accompanying essays by the exhibition's curator, Laura Hoptman, explore eight themes that she perceives in the field--Drafting & Architecture, Mental Maps & Metaphysics, Popular Culture & National Culture, Fashion, Likeness & Allegory, Envisioning a City, Science & Art, Comics & Other Subcultures, Ornament & Crime--and provide key impulses behind drawing's recent resurgence.

Author Biography

Laura Hoptman is Curator of Contemporary Art at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh.

Table of Contents

preface	6	(1)
acknowledgments	7	(3)
introduction: drawing is a noun	10	(4)
science and art, nature and artifice	14	(16)
ornament and crime: toward decoration	30	(16)
drafting an architecture	46	(22)
drawing happiness	68	(16)
mental maps and metaphysics	84	(20)
popular culture and national culture	104	(24)
comics and other subcultures	128	(20)
fashion, likeness, and allegory	148	(18)
conclusion: the emancipation of drawing	166	(2)
catalogue of the exhibition	168	(8)
selected exhibition history and bibliography	176	(13)
index of illustrations	189	(2)
lenders to the exhibition	191	(1)
trustees of the museum of modern art	192