Book Review: Lines of Thought: Drawing from Michaelangelo to now

Lines of Thought: Drawing from Michaelangelo to now

By Isabel Seligman, Foreword by Bridget Riley, Preface by Hugo Chapman

Published by Thames and Hudson

I greatly enjoy art, particularly line drawings and sketches. I don't know what appeals in these works, perhaps it's the simplicity or the art of perfectly understood form, but I find them thoughtful, enduring, elegant and beautiful. The recently published Lines of Thought: Drawing from Michaelangelo to now uncovers the process and practice of drawing, and how artists have used drawing as a means of recording and provoking thought. The book is wonderfully illustrated by a selection of work created over 500 years. From Dürer to Degas, Michelangelo to Matisse, Rembrandt to Riley, this volume studies the types of thinking that produced their drawings―brainstorming, inquiry, experiment, association, development and decision―giving us fresh insight into the creative impulse of some of the world’s greatest artists.

120 illustrations in total, each of them awe inspiring. Let's take a look at a few of my favorites:

Plaster Cupid Study, 1890 Graphite - Paul Cezanne 

Pen and Ink by Julie Mehretu, 2002

Pen and Brown Ink, The Virgin and Christ Child with a Cat, Leonardo da Vinci, 1478-81

Melchior Lorck, Tortoise and view of a walled coastal town, 1555

A traveling art exhibition accompanies the book, and will tour the United States in 2017 and 2018, inspiring and encouraging the practice of drawing. I hope that I can find a museum near me to view these amazing pieces from the British Museum’s outstanding Prints and Drawings Collection.

The exhibition and the book includes work by artists as diverse as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Albrecht Dürer, Piet Mondrian, Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Bridget Riley, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Franz Kline and Rachel Whiteread. Combining work from master artists of the past with artists working today, clearly demonstrates the common thread of drawing as the basis for creation. I definitely recommend taking a closer look at this beautiful book, and purchasing your own copy via the Amazon link below: