Learning drawing: Sustaining the primacy of visualcy within a neo-liberal artschool curriculum

Abstract

Abstract The paper champions an articulacy in drawing visualcy as central to a visual arts pedagogy, arguing that the one domain of human inquiry which distinguishes the visual arts from other disciplines is surely that surrounding the faculty of vision. The ascendency within the artworld of a relational aesthetics often devoid of perceptual insights is traced through a brief history of the relationships between visual artforms and their sociopolitical contexts, culminating with the shift of emphasis away from the perceptually intriguing and towards the contemporary imperatives of a professional practice defined in terms of the neo-liberal values permeating the UK Higher Education sector since 2010. The text rehabilitates the Formalist notion of enstrangement as a means of revitalizing the primacy of perceptual inquiry over 'looking through language', and is illustrated with drawings by the author.