The Story of Drawing: An Alternative History of Art [Hardcover]

Winner of theApolloBook of the Year Award 2024

Drawing is at the heart of human creativity. The most democratic form of art-making, it requires nothing more than a plain surface and a stub of pencil, a piece of chalk or an inky brush. Our prehistoric ancestors drew with natural pigments on the walls of caves, and every subsequent culture has practised drawing—whether on papyrus, parchment, or paper. Artists throughout history have used drawing as part of the creative process.
 
While painting and sculpture have been shaped heavily by money and influence, drawing has always offered extraordinary creative latitude. Here we see the artist at his or her most unguarded. Susan Owens offers a glimpse over artists’ shoulders—from Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Hokusai to Van Gogh, Käthe Kollwitz, and Yayoi Kusama—as they work, think, and innovate, as they scrutinise the world around them or escape into imagination.
 
The Story of Drawingloops around the established history of art, sometimes staying close, at other times diving into exhilarating and altogether less familiar territory.“[A] compelling and enlightening book.”—Michael Prodger,Apollo

“Owens’s selection of artworks is superb. Each provides a plot point in her history of drawing. . . . Its scope is enormous, but the book feels suitably intimate.”—Daisy Dunn,Literary Review

“Owens’s book matters because drawing continues to be marginalized in public understanding of what art is. . . .The Story of Drawingmakes the case for drawing as uniquely able to convey aspects of human experience that no other medium can.”—Ben Street,Times Literary Supplement

“It is a history of materials as well as of style, taking in developments in paper-making and implements.”—Apollo

“Susan Owenlc-