Character sketch

Author: Ma Aizhou
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: With the spread of modernist movements globally, the influences of pop, installation, performance, and DV art, among others, have seemingly pushed easel painting to the edge of the art world. Sketching, which plays a significant role in painting, faces an awkward situation of being neglected. In contemporary art academies that emphasize sketching, it is merely treated as a basic exercise in form-making, and the true significance of sketching has not been well presented and continued in our era. Will sketching truly disappear in our generation? Through sketching, artists translate their observations of nature—perhaps a very chaotic feeling—onto paper. They hope to build a bridge between themselves and what they see, seeking a tacit alliance between the subjective and the objective, and finding a common language. Sketching begins as an intention, not entirely clear, but as the act of looking deepens and emotions mature, it quickly transforms into a rational, goal-oriented, and orderly process. This is a series of confusion and resolution, decomposition and synthesis, selection and concentration. The purpose of sketching lies in establishing a sense of order, an order of unity between the object and the self.