As a technique, drawing was a firmly entrenched feature of European culture and society from the Early Modern Period until the 20th century. In conjunction with writing, it was the central competence for the acquisition, organisation and communication of knowledge, as well as forming an essential component within the design and production processes found in the realms of art, trade and industry – not to mention its role in everyday leisure activities. 

Within the context of the international conference “Drawing Education: Worldwide!”, questions of the historical and modern value of drawing, including relevant teaching methods and materials, will be considered from a global perspective. Which aesthetic standards and stylistic norms were established and maintained throughout the centuries via the teaching of drawing? Which theories of art as well as cultural and social premises form the basis of the different drawing techniques used? And not least, what effects drawing education had on the bodies and minds of the learner – from heightened coordination-skills to the ability to analytically observe the world?

A key element of focus will be not only on the exchange of methods and motives for drawing from the colonial period to the present, including the effects of globalisation, but also on the non-hegemonic forms of debate and development within the context of drawing history.

  • Concept: Nino Nanobashvili, Ulrich Pfisterer, Tobias Teutenberg
  • Registration: episteme[at]zikg.eu

Speakers amongst others:

  • Rikako Akagi / Kenji Yamaguchi (Okayama University, Okayama): The Evolution of Drawing Education in Modern Japan: Influences of Indigenous and Introduced Cultures;
  • Lamia Balafrej (Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA): Between Knowledge and Sensation: Persian Drawing, ca. 1390-1550;
  • Ami Kantawala (Columbia University, New York): Re-Framing the past: Re-Making invisible Histories of Nineteenth Century Pedagogies of Drawing and Re-Membering Art Educators in Colonial India;
  • Johannes Kirschenmann/Caroline Sternberg (Akademie der bildenden Künste, München): The role of drawing within art education at the Munich Art Academy, and its international significance;
  • Peter Lukehart (National Gallery of Art, Washington): The Evidence of Drawing in Sixteenth- and- Seventeenth-Century Italy;
  • J.P. Park (University of California, Riverside, CA): Art by the book: Painting Manuals and the Leisure Life in Early Modern China;
  • Harold Pearse (University of Alberta, Edmonton): Drawing Education in Canadian Schools: Late Nineteenth to Mid Twentieth Centuries;
  • Oskar Vazquez (University of Illinois, Urbana, IL): Drawn from Life: pedagogy and power in Mexico’s and Spain’s art academies;
  • Jorinde Voigt (Akademie der bildenden Künste, München): Prospective Trip;
  • Veronika Winkler (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, München): The trained eye. Drawing and the liberal arts in the Viceroyalty of Peru.