Evanescent art that isn't

[sartorias]

Thanks to green_knight for this link to a twelfth century boy's doodlesI've always loved these brief glimpses of real people. A treasured memory is the front leaves of a very battered and dull Latin historical treatise aimed at schoolboys, printed in the early 1600s, on which some unknown boy had sketched out different styles of doublets. He'd also practiced

Comments

[asakiyume]

I loved the twelfth-century boy's doodles too! So wonderful, so easy to understand :-)

The video on the Egyptian doodling that you link to was interesting too--I was fascinated to see the notes and writing--so different from formal hieroglyphics!

It's really great to have the window into everyday life and concerns (or into daydreams and imagination) that doodles provide.

[sartorias]

Yes . . . the connection between me and maker seems stronger because of the lessening of the 'art' lens.

[asakiyume]

"Art" is such an abstraction. It's hard to ever know what it means. More concrete reasons or explanations for things are easier. "These are our representations of the gods, that we make to honor them." "This is a picture of my girlfriend, which I drew because she's so pretty and I love her." "This is what that pile of bricks looked like before we started building the wall." And so on.

[sartorias]

In this context I think of "art" as the object created to endure--to represent important things. To cause the viewer to see the thing symbolized (thence the culture of the maker) as the maker wishes it to be seen.

These marginalia so many times seem to be moments captured as they really are. The difference between the formal portrait of the woman in her best gown, carefully posed before the best furniture, her hair arranged and shiny, surrounded by objects displaying her wealthy and taste--and the quick sketch of her bending down after hanging the washing, and stroking a cat. Both of these are "real" representations of the woman, but the first seems (to me) shown through a carefully crafted lens meant to control my reaction, and the second is made without a thought to me at all. It's a beautifully captured moment made by the artist just because.

[la_marquise_de_]

Marginalia can be incredibly informative, too -- the glosses in some Irish legal manuscripts are fascinating, as they show that the laws included were archaic and ill-understood even when copied. The scribes often glossed them to give attempted interpretations or to say what current practice was.

[sartorias]

Oh wow, that would be fascinating!

[anonymous]

I don't think cave paintings or indeed any laborious art work requiring multiple visits to the same task can count as a doodle, no. It might be related to graffiti, which is another informal art form, but whose intent is not ephemerality but duration. To be a doodle, something needs to be the product of a particular moment, and particular to that moment.

[sartorias]

Yes, I agree. I suspect that for some graffiti and doodling arise out of the same (or similar) impulses but I don't think they do.

[akirlu]

Oh, bother. This was me, by the bye. Didn't realize I'd logged out...

[raanve]

Being reminded that history is about real, actual people always gives me this strange sensation. I love that moment when you can sense ordinary people that in some ways are so similar to you or the people you know.

Those drawing by Onfim are so like the drawings of children I know that they barely require captions. Totally fascinating. Thank you for these links!

[sartorias]

I feel the same way!

[mayakda]

Oh, me too! I had a big grin on my face while looking at Onfim's drawings.

[scribblerworks]

I liked the article in your last link. Except that the following sentence gave me the sniffles.

"But scribbling is not doodling, because scribbles are marks made in haste or by an uncertain hand."

In haste or by uncertain hand??? WAAAAAAAA!

;-)

[sartorias]

I suspect that one's reaction hinges on how one defines scribbling.