With that, we close The Amsterdam Notebooks — and see a final litter square on the back cover, a detail from Page 1:
Once again, we wonder: Does it?
MORE: "A final litter square"? I meant little, but I'm going to accept the typo as a true Freudian slip.
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8 comments:
Should art rage? Or should it do other things as well? Personally, to much of what passes as modern art only rages. I think it should move me in some way but, too often, it now seems to be created only to enrage the viewer. Perhaps that was the reaction in Van Gogh's time but to me, looking at it from the perspective of time, I'm moved by its beauty. Can the same be said of much of what's considered art today?
Ann, I've enjoyed this graphic travelogue. Thank you!
Ann, thank you so much for this tour. It's a great idea and your drawings are wonderfully communicative.
Good question, Ruth Anne. It's hard to make yourself draw when you have a digital camera. But drawing is so different. To draw, you have to take the time to study the subject and doing this you have thoughts about it and you notice things to emphasize or to look for in your next subject. It's not just the time either, it's the requirement of understanding what you are looking at. And with the drawings, you add words when you want, you add insets and combine elements, you reconstruct some things from memory, you distort and caricature. I love photography, but it's so easy that it displaces drawing. There are some situations when you can't take a photograph. You can't just aim a camera at people for one thing. You're dependent on the light to a large extent. And you certainly can't take a photograph of something that you saw earlier in the day! So that makes a place for drawing. My biggest problem is actually that the pen I used stopped flowing properly and I've never found another one I liked as much. I've been mourning over that fountain pen for ten years. And I have two other fountain pens I still mourn as well — both of them were lost.
It was like an adventure in my head! Thank you for sharing the journal with us... I've never been out of the country yet, and the idea of keeping a sketch travel journal makes me even sadder about this fact.
I've loved the whole series and looked forward to each day's entry. Way better than photos. Thanks.
How so very similar to my "on the run" sketches.
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