Drawing on the “Lived Experience” —An Investigation of Perception, Ideation and Praxis

Alex Ashton

University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia.

DOI: 10.4236/adr.2014.23007                

Abstract

“When we do not have the words to say something, drawing can define both the real and unreal in visual terms” (Kovats, 2007: p. 8). The paper addresses the question: what is the relationship be- tween perceptual experience and its interpretation through drawing? It is proposed that drawing, as knowledge and experience, is a particular way of coming to know the world that is explicated within artistic practice. The research examines how drawing, through its expression of the con- crete and the imaginary, provides interconnected ways of orientating knowledge that contribute to a multifaceted understanding of the “lived experience” (Dilthey, 2010). The study draws on phi- losophy, in particular the writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, to consider the complexities and in- terconnections of mind, object and body that are experienced through drawing. A central tenet of the research is an examination of the role of the body in constituing and explicating experience. In considering how we, as objects, are integral to the world and its phenomena, it is proposed that our “sense experience” (Sentir) (Heidegger, 1962) furnishes us with the ability to enter into this world as sensate beings; to interact, affect and engage with the world in both time and space. Mau- rice Merleau-Ponty in an essay entitled “Eye and Mind”, first published in 1961 (Johnson, 1993), contends that it is through contemplating a connection between the “seer and the seen”, in a direct reference to artist and viewer, that our experience of the world is “opened up more fully” (Johnson, 1993: p. 124). That is, by being immersed in the visible, the concrete, through the body, the visible is not appropriated, but is instead revealed by the act of “looking”. The practice of drawing is a means through which the act of looking is evinced in a tangible form. Investigating practice: Drawing, it will be argued, can make the invisible visible; exploring through sensing, feeling, think- ing and doing. It questions and investigates the possibilities of experience, ideas and memory through its ability to retain and articulate traces of the past, the present and imagine the future. In attempting to define and refine conceptions of the foundations, or beginnings, of practice, its de- velopment and emergence, philosophical paradigms offer the practitioner ways of thinking: these include historicality, presence and intention. It is this first person’s point of view, subjectivity, and its role that becomes the principal focus of investigations. The outcomes document, as a visualisa- tion and a transcript, a progression, from description of the “lifeworld” (Moran, 2005) or “lived experience”, towards an interpretation of the immersed, subjective experience.

Keywords

Drawing, Practice-Based Research, Philosophy, Phenomenology, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Art, Fine Art

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

References

[1]	Bachelard, G. (1994). The Poetics of Space. Boston: Beacon Press. (Foreword by John R. Stilgoe)
[2]	Bailey, H. B. (1982). Drawing and the Drawing Activity: A Phenomenological Investigation. Doctoral Thesis, London: Institute of Education, University of London.
[3]	Berger, J. (2008). Berger on Drawing. Cork: Occasional Press.
[4]	Butler, C., & De Zegher, C. (2011). On Line—Drawing through the Twentieth Century. New York: Museum of Modern Art. Cain, P. (2010). Drawing: The Enactive Evolution of the Practitioner. Bristol: Intellect Books.
[5]	Carroll, N. (1999). Philosophy of Art. London: Rouledge. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203197233
[6]	Dilthey, W. (2010). Understanding the Human World—Selected Works. In R. A. Makkreel, & F. Rodi (Eds.), Vol. 2. Prin- ceton: Princeton University Press.
[7]	Dilthey, W. (1985). Poetry and Experience—Selected Works. In R. A. Makkreel, & F. Rodi (Eds.), Vol. 5. Princeton: Prin- ceton University Press.
[8]	Focillon, H. (1992). The Life of Forms in Art. New York: Zone Books.
[9]	Graham, B. (2000). What Could Art Learn from Design, What Might Design Learn from Art? Some Practice-Based Art Do- ctorates. In D. Durling, & K. Friedman (Eds.), Doctoral Education in Design: Foundations for the Future (pp. 425-434). Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire University Press.
[10]	Harty, D. (2012). TRACEY—Online Journal. Drawing Phenomenology Drawing—An Exploration of the Phenomenological Potential of Repetitive Processes. http://www.lboro.ac.uk/microsites/sota/tracey/journal/proc/images/harty2012.pdf
[11]	Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and Time. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
[12]	Heidegger, M. (1971). Poetry, Language and Thought. New York: Harper and Row.
[13]	Hooker, J. (1987). The Experience of the Landscape. London: South Bank Centre.
[14]	Huebler, D. (1969). FRAC, Limousin 1992; Originally from the Catalogue Artists and Photographs. New York: Multiple Inc. Husserl, E. (1970a). The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. An Introduction to Phenomenology. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
[15]	Husserl, E. (1970b). Logical Investigations. New York: Humanities Press.
[16]	Jacobs, T. S. (1991). Drawing with an Open Mind. New York: Watson-Guptill.
[17]	Johnson, G. A. (1993). The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader, Philosophy and Painting. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
[18]	Kockelemans, J. (1967). Phenomenology—The Philosophy of Edmund Hursserl and Its Interpretation. New York: Anchor Books.
[19]	Kovats, T. (2007). The Drawing Book—A Survey of Drawing: The Primary Means of Expression. London: Black Dog Publishing.
[20]	Langer, S. (1953). Feeling and Form: A Theory of Art. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Limited.
[21]	Lester, S. (1999). An Introduction to Phenomenological Research. Taunton: Stan Lester Developments. http://www.sld.demon.co.uk/resmethy.pdf
[22]	Malpas, J. E. (1999). Place and Experience—A Philosophical Topography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511487606
[23]	Malpas, J. (2008). Heidegger’s Topology—Being, Place, World. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
[24]	Merleau-Ponty, M. (1964a). Eye and Mind. In J. E. Edie (Ed.), The Primacy of Perception (pp. 159-190). Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP.
[25]	Merleau-Ponty, M. (1964b). Cézanne’s Doubt. In P. A. Dreyfus (Ed.), Sense and Non-Sense. Evanston: Northwestern Uni- versity Press.
[26]	Merleau-Ponty, M. (2004). The World of Perception. Abingdon: Routledge.
[27]	Merleau-Ponty, M. (2006). The Phenomenology of Perception. Abingdon: Routledge.
[28]	Moran, D. (2001). Logical Investigations. Abingdon: Routledge.
[29]	Moran, D. (2005). Edmund Husserl——Founder of Phenomenology. Cambridge: Polity Press.
[30]	Moustakas, C. (1994). Phenomenological Research Methods. London: Sage.
[31]	O’Riley, T. (2006). An Inaudible Dialogue. Working Papers in Art and Design. http://jrp.icaap.org/index.php/jrp/article/view/257/238
[32]	Plummer, K. (1983). Documents of Life: An Introduction to the Problems and Literature of a Humanistic Method. London: Unwin Hyman.
[33]	Prosser, B. (2004). An Archetypal Psychology of the Ordinary: An Investigation through Drawing. Doctoral Thesis, Bristol: University of the West of England.
[34]	Rawson, P. (1987). Drawing (2nd ed.). Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
[35]	Rawson, P. (1979). Seeing through Drawing. London: British Broadcasting Corporation.
[36]	Ric?ur, P. (1992). Oneself as Another. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
[37]	Ric?ur, P. (1996). A Key to Husserl’s Ideas 1. Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press.
[38]	Rowley, A. (2007). Helen Frankenthaler: Painting History, Writing Painting. London: I. B. Tauris.
[39]	Sale, T., & Betti, C. (2004). Drawing: A Contemporary Approach. Belmot, CA: Thomson Wadsworth.
[40]	Sawdon, P., & Marshall, R. (2012). Hyperdrawing: Beyond the Lines of Contemporary Art. New York: Tauris.
[41]	Stanley, L., & Wise, S. (1993). Breaking out Again: Feminist Ontology and Epistemology. London: Routledge
[42]	Wrathall, M. A. (2007). Heidegger and Unconcealment: Truth, Language and History. New York: Cambridge University Press.
[43]	Woodruff-Smith, D. (2007). Husserl. Abingdon: Routledge.
[44]	Zahavi, D. (1994). Husserl’s Phenomenology of the Body. études Phénoménologiques, 10, 63-84. http://dx.doi.org/10.5840/etudphen199410199
[45]	Zaner, R. M. (1964). The Problem of Embodiment: Some Contributions to a Phenomenology of the Body. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 249-287.