Just a little bit more on graphs. Apart from identifying the rise in graphing / mapping in contemporary art (possibly as a result of our new media driven age) my motivation behind the last post was also to identify that graphing / mapping / illustrating ideas through drawing / sketching seems to play a significant part in the practice of artists who teach and use it in their teaching as a method of explanation.

Many artists teach, however not so many manage to integrate their teaching into their practice as an artist (i.e. teaching as an opportunity to all at once perform, discuss and reflect on artistic practice). Instead it serves as a side-line for them, possibly a means of survival but possibly also because it has shared goals with much artistic practice, communication, ideas led, challenging existing orthodoxies etc.

The following (in no particular order) is a short list of artists who teach and use graphing / mapping / illustrating ideas through drawing / sketching:

• Josef Beuys and his Blackboards (mentioned in the last post) which then became works or artifacts / documentation to exhibit.
• Paul Klee and his infamous approach to drawing of “taking a line for a walk”. Klee taught at the Bauhaus and at Dusseldorf Academy. The importance of drawing / sketching is evidenced by Klee’s publication Pedagogical Sketchbook (image above) written from classes he taught at the Bauhaus.
• John Maeda, this may seem like a strange one but I think drawing / sketching / mark making plays a crucial part of Maeda’s practice. This is clear in much of his work which uses repetition of simple line, texture, pattern, colour etc. and seems to follow through into certainly some of the early part of his teaching, employing Design by Numbers as a means to teach people how to programme visuals. His teaching has also influenced ex students to create Processing which initially carried on this tradition but has developed since.

Who have I missed out here?