Week 3. Beyond the Surface

Vesalius












Gordon Matta-Clark













1. Introduction and Outline of Project
• This class will focus on the art of architecture, engineering, anatomy and botany.

• In the previous week students will be told to bring to class something that has been dissected or broken apart to reveal some internal structure or mechanism. It is from this that they will make a series of five drawings. There should be enough objects brought to class that they can make five different drawings within the one group.

• The lecture at the beginning of the class will offer suggestions as to how they might approach each drawing and perhaps vary their approach, i.e. an engineers’ drawing is functional, an anatomists drawing is technical.


• There will be a discussion on the historical context for drawings that look beyond the surface: fascination with how things work (anatomy/botany) and social/political underpinnings (i.e. architecture/engineering).


2. Project Aims
• The class will support students learning with regard to the usefulness of technical drawing as a resource for developing ideas and explaining concepts and how these types of drawing are influential in contemporary art.

• Students will learn how small sketchbook plans can be developed into large projects (see Gordon Matta Clark and Frank Gehry).

• Students will get an understanding for how the surface appearance of something (an elephant, a house, a telephone) can become abstracted when the internal structures or mechanisms are revealed.


3. Independent study
• Students will take the five drawings they have done in class and look / think about at how they might abstract them further by combining different elements from each one.

• Students will then do five new drawings using elements of the five they did in class.

4. Intended Student Learning Outcomes of the Course (objectives)
By the end of the course students will:

• Use drawing as a means to develop and research ideas.

• Resolve drawing problems and develop strategies for presenting them.

• Be familiar with and critically engage in the discourse surrounding drawing at an introductory level.

• Be familiar with the principle of a self-directed practice at a basic level

5. Bibliography
Vesalius,
Gray’s Anatomy,
Piranesi,
Gordon Matta-Clark,
Artaud, Goya,
Paul Noble,
Toba Khedoori,
technical books.

session contacts- s.esling@auckland.ac.nz, d.watkins@auckland.ac.nz