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«Artist's Notebook as a Genre»
10.02.2005 - 06.03.2005
 «Rough copies never get destroyed.
In poetry, plasticity and elsewhere in art there are no finished things».
This is what Osip Mandelstam wrote in his «Conversation about Dante». He interpreted the invulnerability of the rough draft as the law of conservation of energy in an art piece.
It is well-known that in his first jotted outlines of a certain design an artist can sometimes strike a much greater expressiveness than he later manages through his exertions with various materials, be it paint, smalt, wood, or stone, or any other material. By losing in detail he gains in the overall expression. It is not inconceivable that such state of affairs is conditioned by the small size of graphic surface or form. In other words, in this case the artist is a better master of space and he encompasses it as a whole at a certain point of time; the coordination of eye and hand comes easy, without the external tension that is inevitable when working on a large canvas or a large form for an extended span of time and space.
There are strong reasons compelling the artist to resort to a peculiar cursive hand. It is the urge to embody a sudden plastic idea, to preserve a glimpse of a formative instinct, also it is the mnemonic technique inherent in the observation of Nature.
In his time, Hogarth, while wandering around London, used special notations to draw sketches on the nails of his left hand to be further deciphered in his workshop. Later, Goethe labeled these jottings as «hieroglyphs» of human figures. Indeed, according to Hogarth, «motion is a kind of language», which the author of «The Analysis of Beauty» believed to be sometime explored «with the help of something like grammar rules». Lorraine was in the habit of taking stock of his paintings by making sketches after them; he thus wanted to prevent forgeries and, probably, to register the pictures going to his customers. This resulted in a book, the so-called Liber Veritatis (The Book of Truth). More examples are easily available.
Many artists went beyond the language of the line and resorted to words. Such is the famous Delacroix's «Journals». An example of a different kind is Pushkin's manuscripts interspersed with cursive drawings. This interchange of languages, graphic and verbal, is extremely interesting from the psychological point of view. Observations depicted in words with concomitant drawings may merge to produce an independent research; such were the penetrating treatises of Leonardo da Vinci.
Yet, the main reason why artists« albums, pads and notebooks are of special interest is what Mandelstam referred to as »the conservation of energy of a work«. In art, perfection of a work is purely conventional. »You may well say, on putting aside a work, that you will never come back to it again«, said Picasso, »But never can you put the word «end» to it«".
Rough copies allow one to follow the metamorphosis of an image, to see the unity of time and space where the creative thought is being exercised. Perhaps the most significant requirement here is the unity of image, its capability of transformation, of transition to a different state. Such is the condition the artist reserves for himself in his pursuit of freedom.
Sketches and notes in notebooks speak of what it might be rather than what it will make. This is a specific genre favouring the subjunctive, and the sense of real possibilities gives way to the sense of a possible realities.
Sergey Daniel
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