Role of the Draft in the European Art: its Functional Evolution and Formal Metamorphoses

The draft as a cultural phenomenon, whose contents were the preparatory materials, and which represents a kind of intermediate stage between the conception and the completed works of art, is always present in any artistic process. However, its functions and specific forms of existence have significantly changed, and that is due to a number of factors. First of all, it was the creative method that shaped the culture, secondly, the subject-object relations, expressed in the dialectic of the relationship “author-hero”, thirdly, the changes in the artistic goals of the draft according to the creative process in different eras. In terms of the theocentric culture of the Middle Ages, the concept of human creativity emanated from the fundamental philosophical principle “ad imaginem Dei”, and in the socio-cultural context, the draft appeared as a sample whose composition and chromatic characteristics were fixed as a canon. In the context of the Renaissance, when the world outlook paradigm had changed, the artist became the creator of the concept of understanding in society. In such ideological conditions, the philosophical draft ceased to be the canonical model; it got individualized and took on the function of a tool for deeper acquaintance with the world, and was formalized in the form of scrupulous field sketches, i. e. studies. With the advent of the Modern Era in the fine arts, the draft finally became a purely artistic phenomenon, reflecting a variety of forms and stages of the creative process. The draft, necessary to visualize the stages of the creative process, began to exist in the form of drawing, design, sketch, and etude. Analyzing the draft’s function in the aesthetic-artistic paradigm of modernity, the author states that, along with the traditional search tasks of composition and color, the draft is an instrument for creation of the “true” mental experiences of antiquity, so popular in the aesthetics of the Art Nouveau. In the absence of drama of the plot, mental immersion and aesthetic admiration as core pieces, the draft becomes far more valuable than the moment of creativity, rather than in the Middle Ages or Renaissance.

draft, European painting, design, sketch, creative method, etude, function evolution, study, concept of the “author-hero”, medieval sketchbooks, renaissance studies, Alexander Ivanov, Valentin Serov

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