Vivante Drawings is an online journal. Its purpose is to provide information on the nature and history of drawings and to address the question: just what is it that makes drawings so appealing, so attractive?
Lucy Vivante, editor, first learned about prints and drawings in a seminar taught by Christiane Andersson at Columbia University. Soon after graduating from Barnard College she went to work as a curator for Ian Woodner. She stayed with the Ian Woodner Family Foundation for three years. In the 90s she and Michael Miller sold drawings as private dealers based in New York City. The Louvre, British Museum, and National Gallery of Art, Washington were some of their clients. From 2000 to 2008 Lucy worked at The Bank of New York as a vice president in the bank’s philanthropy department. In September 2008 she moved to Italy where she is writing pieces for The Berkshire Review for the Arts and volunteering, through the Università della Tuscia, at an archive in Tarquinia.
In researching a residency application involving silverpoint (my speciality) for a Foundation in Italy, I happened on your most interesting website. Your December 7th, 2009, slightly wistful comments about Metalpoints and a “dream exhibition” resonated – I have always found that silverpoints, in particular, scattered amongst exhibtions of master drawings, leave one slightly unsatisfied. The shimmering, quiet voice of silverpoints does not need any other.
Coincidently, I was privileged to confirm this with a 2009 exhibition of contemporary silverpoint drawings which I helped curate with another silverpoint artist, Koo Schadler, for the Evansville Museum of Art, Evansville, IN. Having viewed the works digitally to make the selections, it became utter magic to walk into the exhibition rooms and see these beautiful drawings playing one off another in lustrous, restrained elegance. It is heartening to know that despite our being a very restricted number of silverpoint artists who work today, at least sometimes, the public can thus see silverpoints/metalpoints standing proud and alone as works of art.
My best wishes to you. Jeannine Cook
Jeannine Cook
1505 Cedar Point Road SE
Townsend, Georgia 31331
912.832.4606
http://www.jeanninecook.com
http://jeanninecook.blogspot.com
Greetings Jeannine,
Many thanks for pointing out the Indiana exhibition of contemporary silverpoint drawings and your blog. I look forward to studying both.
All best,
Lucy
Dear Lucy,
‘Just what is it that makes drawings so appealing, so attractive?’
What a great question!
Hope you will continue to post.
Great research.
All best,
BF, Amsterdam
Dear Bruno,
Glad you like the question. Joseph Beuys is supposed to have said “Drawing is thinking.” (For sure, Milton Glaser of the “I ♥/NY” slogan wrote a book with the title “Drawing is Thinking,” which I won’t read.) Short, but rings right.
All Best,
Lucy