Product Description

We all draw as children: we scrawl a sunbeamed circle for a face and dots for eyes, and then we move on to portraits of Mom with an upside-down U for hair and Dad with trousers up to his armpits. But sooner or later, almost everyone stops. In this delightful, revelatory book, Peter Steinhart explores why some of us keep on drawing–and what happens when we do.

Combining the scientific, the historical, the anecdotal and the personal with marvelous ease, Steinhart asks some provocative questions: Why do drawings often speak to us more eloquently than paintings? What is the mind doing when we draw? Why is so much drawing of the face and of the nude figure? What is the dynamic between a clothed artist and a naked model?

Steinhart makes clear that, at its best, drawing is a spontaneous expression of what we see, an “undressed art” unencumbered by affectation or calculated fashion. And he reveals its many rewards: it helps us to focus, to slow down, and to really see the world and ourselves. At once erudite and engaging, The Undressed Art illuminates the allures and joys of a familiar art–and inspires us to pick up a pencil and draw.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #696439 in Books
• Published on: 2004-06-15
• Released on: 2004-06-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 272 pages

From Publishers Weekly
With the triumph of photography and the retreat of representation from "serious" visual art, the place of drawing as a central and necessary human activity might appear to be under some threat. Yet naturalist Steinhart's lively and gently polemical book shows it to be positively thriving, most passionately (and unexpectedly) in "drawing groups" that meet all over the country to sketch models and discuss technique. Steinhart (The Company of Wolves) is himself the enthusiastic member of such a group, and details of their rearguard defense of drawing traditions are the affectionately rendered center of the book. Moving from his own experiences to art history, science and the lives of the artists and models with whom he comes in contact, Steinhart examines this resurgence not only as an exercise in cultural self-expression but a collective response to a fundamental human need. Along the way, he gives quick but informative sketches of the world of children's drawing, the physiology of facial recognition and the evolution of photography. But the book's true milieu is the studio, and its core subject the complex relationships between hand, brain, eye and subject in the drawn depiction of the human figure. The fascinating life of the figure model Florence Allen (who not only posed over a period of many years for everyone from Diego Rivera to Richard Diebenkorn, but helped organize her colleagues into a professional guild) shows a side of the art world rarely explored with such sympathy and depth. And if Steinhart partakes a little of the "Us vs. Them" opposition to the contemporary art world common among his peers, he doesn't make a big deal out of it. For him, a drawing bound for the fridge door is taken as seriously as a painting in the Prado. 31 illus.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
Why does the human animal, alone of all creation, have the ability -- and the primal need -- to represent the world, as filtered through the senses and the intellect and the soul, in the form of drawings? Out of such a simple yet fundamental question, Peter Steinhart conjures a fascinating meditation that spans such fields as religion, psychology, Darwinism, feminism, sociology, neuroscience and philosophy. In The Undressed Art, Steinhart has created one of those sui generis works such as Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. While its scope might not be as large as Pirsig's, Steinhart's book still speaks to many of the same issues of community, mindfulness, personal liberation and the dynamic interplay between past and present.

A naturalist by trade, Steinhart brings a keen scientific manner to the main question of "why we draw." He cites the latest theories from consciousness studies, such as those found in the work of Steven Pinker. He also delves into the famous left-brain, right-brain theory of artistic creativity, discussed in books such as Betty Edwards's classic Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. He reviews anthropological and zoological evidence on the subject and examines the neurological development of children, elucidating the standard stages of artistic capability. Steinhart also looks at ways in which our culture respects or devalues the act of drawing.

All of this is couched in pellucid prose aimed at the general reader. Discussing the hardwiring that underlies facial recognition among our species, Steinhart writes, "Our intense awareness of our own faces and postures is a quality older than humanity . . . Humans will look for responses to their own faces or bodies in the face of another, and thus seek to get others to display respect or fear or amusement in their facial expressions." There you have the quintessence of occupations as diverse as diplomat, politician, entertainer and hooker distilled into a few sentences. For Steinhart, the rewards of drawing are threefold: understanding, self-expression and communication. But beyond these somewhat obvious answers, he evokes a kind of Zen satori space that the artist enters, before concluding, "Whatever it is that gives an individual the impulse to draw seriously is very much a mystery." He nonetheless affirms that "Drawing . . . is a kind of exploration, a search for our own inner nature, our origins, our souls."

Steinhart contrasts the meditative inner journey of drawing with the typical shallow amusements and flashy preoccupations of modern culture, building a strong case for drawing as a therapeutic counterweight to the thoughtless vices of our time.

A dedicated student of drawing (an engaging self-portrait in pencil on the dust-jacket substitutes for the usual author photo), Steinhart guides us expertly through the actual mechanics of learning how to do it. He has a facility for conveying in words the interaction of muscles and eyes and mind that go into capturing on paper whatever presents itself to the artistic gaze. His description of his own struggles with artist's block is particularly affecting.

Steinhart dips in and out of journalistic mode, chronicling the loose network of drawing groups across the country. With his focus on drawing from live, nude models, he digs into the lost history of such heroic models as Florence Allen, who hung with the Beats, posed for Rothko and Diebenkorn, and founded the Bay Area Models' Guild. This portion of the book is fully as intriguing as the more theoretical parts.

Steinhart also deals frankly and fruitfully with the sexual dynamics between artist and model. With supporting testimony from many artists of his acquaintance, he argues that the sexual charge is transient and secondary to the real connections that link perceived and perceiver.

Steinhart's book raises a couple of issues that it fails to deal with. There's no real examination of non-Western modes of drawing, no sense of how different cultures have regarded it. For someone attempting to make a universal case about the nature of humanity, this deficit is notable. On a related note, it's amazing that a person of Steinhart's sensitivity uses the phrase "flesh-colored" twice to describe a certain shade of crayon. Really? Whose flesh? Given Steinhart's emphasis on the division between word-types and image-types, I was also surprised not to see at least a small discussion of writers known for their drawings, such as Henry Miller, Vladimir Nabokov and Charles Bukowski. Finally, in his analysis of the historical battle between figurative and abstract art, Steinhart misses a chance to cite how artist Robert Williams and his Juxtapoz magazine have sought to restore the representational mode to prominence. But the overall effect of this engaged and engaging book is to make its lucky readers feel that only by picking up a pencil and drawing can we tap into "a repository of wisdom and energy, purpose and comfort" that is larger than all of us.

Reviewed by Paul Di Filippo

Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

From Booklist
Naturalist Steinhart's previous books include The Company of Wolves (1995), so drawing may seem like a departure for him, but as he so magnanimously avers, "The naturalist and the artist are alike in their watchfulness." Each must be disciplined, observant, and ardent. Steinhart has been drawing for years, finding it an immensely beneficial endeavor, and he is not alone. Although art schools downplay traditional drawing classes, many amateurs and professionals have formed drawing groups so that they can work with a model, thus instigating a grassroots renaissance of figure drawing. Steinhart, an engagingly grounded and generous writer, seeks to explain this phenomenon, and his conclusions are as surprising as they are moving. An "undressed art" in its intimacy, drawing from nude models is an "act of discovery" and a "way of seeing" that nurtures our innate "human need to look deeply and expressively," especially at each other. As Steinhart incisively chronicles the experiences of models and artists alike, he eloquently celebrates life drawing as a communion and a source of compassion and meaning. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Join the Group
Steinhart's subtitle should be expanded to "why we draw the human figure," which would explain his title and better account for the content of the book, three-fourths of which concerns figure-drawing groups. The remaining chapters are independent essays on learning to draw, field sketching, how composing a picture differs from representational drawing, the impossibility of drawing for a living, and a final unrewarding speculation on artistic sensibility.
The heart of the book is a deeply felt and insightful set of reflections on the author's long experience with figure-drawing groups in the San Francisco Bay area. This includes a useful sketch of the history of nude modelling, and exemplary attention to the model as an equal partner in the figure-drawing experience.
As someone who has spent the better part of the last ten years in a weekly group of the sort Steinhart is describing, I can vouch for the accuracy of his account. The book has many wise things to say about the manifold challenges of depicting the human form on a sheet of paper. Our experiences do not always coincide. For Steinhart, figure drawing both is (Chapter 11) and isn't (Chapter 2) about sex, in a dance of desire that is more erotically charged than my own history of learning to see the human form. I didn't recognize his view "that artists tend to draw themselves in the model's pose," and to inflict their own physical needs on the forms they depict (p. 144). His use of art history to reinforce his arguments is highly selective.
However, if you want to learn what it would be like to participate in a figure-drawing group, or to compare your own experience with that of a stimulating and knowledgeable companion, you will find this volume hard to put down.

Excellent coverage of art modelling
In this age of photography, there is still a healthy subculture of models and artists who hold drawing the nude figure in the highest regard. Peter has numerous recent interviews with both models and artists in the San Francisco Bay Area. His book covers the experience of the art model particularly well. If you have ever wondered what it is like to get up in front of a bunch a strangers and model in the nude, there are good insights here. Highly recommended.

Excellent Book
I have recently joined a figurative drawing class and find this book very encouraging and insightful. We live in a world that instant gratification becomes the key to everything we do. Drawing teaches us to slow down and see things the way they are. As a beginner for drawing, this book answers many questions about figurative drawing: why we draw, why we like to draw nude and how drawing can help me see many things I miss out in this fast paced world.

I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in drawing and art in general.