THINKING THROUGH DRAWING: PRACTICE INTO KNOWLEDGE

THINKING THROUGH DRAWING: PRACTICE INTO KNOWLEDGE 39

At the same time
that we were prepar-
ing to host the Thinking
Through Drawing Sympo-
sium, Occupy Wall Street
was making news each
day, spreading beyond
New York to become a
nationwide movement.
In response, the Arts and
Humanities faculty at
Teachers College was asked to consider the following
question at their monthly faculty meeting: “What is
the relationship between Occupy Wall Street and No
Child Left Behind?” Having just attended this meet-
ing, a related question came to mind as I planned
my presentation: “What is the relationship between
Occupy Wall Street and Thinking through Draw-
ing?” My answer, inspired by a bumper sticker I once
saw, was that both were out to “subvert the dominant
paradigm!” In the case of Wall Street and NCLB, the
dominant paradigm was fiscal and educational policy
imposed from the top down, disempowering, on the
one hand, the 99%, and on the other, teachers and
students. By contrast, Occupy was grassroots democ-
racy supporting populist economics, and, by exten-
sion, education from the classroom up.
Applied to the Symposium, the dominant para-
digm being subverted is the belief that drawing
has nothing to do with thinking, and that, indeed,
one necessarily impedes the other. This attitude is
associated with the Modernist view that art is more
a matter of feeling than thought, but actually goes

much further back. Initially, it comes up in Plato’s

Republic (Cornford, 1941) where he rejects repre-

sentational art on the grounds that realistic imagery

excites the senses, thereby trapping the mind in the

ever-changing world of appearance and distracting

the intellect from its higher task of seeking ultimate

Truth found in the unchanging, immaterial realm

of the Forms.

More recently, Betty Edwards, in Drawing on

the Right Side of the Brain (1989), suggested just the

opposite. Based on recent neurobiological research,

she claims people can’t draw what they see because

the “left brained” intellect interferes with “right

brained” observations by imposing predetermined

schema over what comes in through the eyes. This

Symposium, by its very title, Thinking Through

Drawing, argues against all such assumptions.

Instead, it identifies drawing both as a domain of

thoughtful engagement within the visual arts, and as

an aid to thinking across disciplines, including “left-

brained” arenas like mathematics and medicine.

Supporting this position, conference present-

ers opposed any reduction of drawing to an anti-

intellectual task, “right-brained” or otherwise.

Instead, they drew upon their own evidence from

cognitive science, psychology, and neurobiology, as

well as practical experience in art and education, to

offer a more comprehensive image both of drawing

and thinking, in which they combine to engage the

brain as a whole, along with the associated affective

and physical functions. My presentation takes the

argument into Plato’s camp by considering the phil-

osophical underpinnings of different approaches

Philosophical Dimensions of Drawing Instruction

Seymour Simmons, III, Ed.D.
Associate Professor of Fine Arts,
Winthrop University

Visiting Professor in Art and Art Education

Teachers College, Columbia University