THE UNDRESSED ART

Steinhart (The Company of Wolves, 1995, etc.) finds the compulsion to make images out to be “by turns erotic and puritanical, social and narcissistic, uplifting and depressing.”

The act of drawing has been given a bum rap over the past half-century, he writes; it’s been diminished, disparaged, and dismissed by waves of abstraction and expressionism, by video and conceptual and installation art. Like outlaws, figurative artists hole up in small groups and drop-in sessions with zero commercial incentive, responding to some innate human impulse and seeking a personal vision like any other artist. Himself a drawer as well as a writer (previously in the purlieus of natural history), Steinhart willingly accepts that he is venturing into ineffable territory, but he seeks nonetheless to find verbal meaning in this kinship between spirit and substance, the burrowing for the hidden, the intensification of experience that figure-drawing gives to him. His thoughts are as intimate as a diary (though he will also make forays into brain chemistry in his search), often revolving around specific drawing classes. He is bracingly unself-conscious about the first flash of desire and anticipation that comes when the model disrobes, yet what he really wants to chew on is the recording and manipulation of experience, the containment of details, the way in which drawing allows a communication with the world, a connection, an empathy. He provides some terrific material on how models respond to their work and plenty of good stories about drawing classes. He appreciates the way drawing forces him to focus, while also allowing him to give himself over to an urge without apology. Steinhart searches for a coherent understanding of what makes him draw, but he is also at ease when he abandons rationalism and feels the graces guiding him to a moment of emotional access.

An absorbing exploration of why we put pencil to paper. (29 illustrations)