Nebuchadnezzar

1795–c.1805, William Blake

In the prospectus for his book, Varley announced his intention to include an engraving of Blake’s Nebuchadnezzar. This was never completed but, as with Ghost of a Flea, Varley may have been interested in the transformation of man into beast. The Bible describes how King Nebuchadnezzar was driven mad and forced to live like a wild animal as punishment for excessive pride. The association between moral corruption and bestial appearance is also suggested by Lavater, who traces a scale of perfection from the head of a frog to the face of Apollo (see the nearby panel).

Gallery label, March 2011

The Mountain Fern

1923, Katharine Cameron

Sophie Brzeska

1913, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska

Gaudier-Brzeska met the Polish writer Sophie Brzeska in Paris in 1910. They moved to London together the following year, and Gaudier added Brzeska’s surname to his own, although the couple never married. In this portrait, he uses areas of brightly contrasting colour to convey the contours of Brzeska’s face and hair. The bold use of colour and pattern was strongly influenced by artists like Paul Gauguin, and echoes the decorative designs that Gaudier-Brzeska was producing for Roger Fry’s Omega Workshops around this time.

Gallery label, September 2024

Exquisite Corpse

c.1930, André Breton, Nusch Eluard, Valentine Hugo, Paul Eluard

This work is one of numerous drawings known as cadavres exquis (the phrase means ‘exquisite corpse’) which were the result of collaborative game-playing among members of the surrealist movement. Unlike many examples of such works, the participants of Tate’s Cadavre exquis of c.1930 are known from an inscription on the reverse of the sheet, in André Breton’s hand, identifying them as Breton himself, the artist Valentine Hugo, the surrealist poet Paul Eluard and Eluard’s partner Nusch.

Do You Know My Aunt Eliza?

1941, Leonora Carrington

At the age of nineteen Leonora Carrington discovered Surrealism through Herbert Read’s book on the movement (Surrealism, London 1936). She was drawn into the movement’s orbit through her relationship with Max Ernst (1891-1976), developing her own richly individual imagery that grew out of her childhood obsessions (see also I am an Amateur of Velocipedes T11910). In the period 1937-41, added impetus came from the tensions engendered by Ernst’s rejected wife, Marie-Berthe Aurenche, and then by his imprisonment on the declaration of war. Escaping occupied France, Carrington crossed into Spain in a state of mental collapse and eventually reached Portugal in 1941, only to encounter Ernst travelling with the American collector Peggy Guggenheim to New York.

Sketch of three bottles and a mug

1956, Aubrey Williams

PRETTY EYES, ELECTRIC BILLS

1976, Edward Ruscha

This drawing comprises a seven-word phrase that slightly, but significantly, expands upon the work’s four-word title. The text ‘SOME PRETTY EYES AND SOME ELECTRIC BILLS’ is arranged over three centred lines of three, then one, then three words, in the top half of the horizontally aligned sheet of paper. The neat letters display the untouched, off-white colour of the paper and are surrounded by a bright blue pastel background. These letters were not outlined by hand but were positioned on the paper using acetate stencils in the sans serif typeface. Once these inverse stencils were in place, the powdery pastel background was rubbed into the paper by hand and with rags, so that the white paper shows through in places to create an impression of diffuse light behind the particles of blue pastel. A fixative was then applied to maintain the crisp division between the text and the background, before the acetate stencils were peeled back to reveal the bare, white paper surface of the individual letters. In his reliance upon the technical aids of graphic design, Ruscha subverts the common understanding of drawing as a medium of creative skill and self-expression. This mechanical severity is then purposefully undermined by the sensuous application of pastel, a traditional medium of fine art, together with its hazy blue colour which brings to mind a bright sunny sky and the drawing’s horizontal format which also has a landscape association.

Untitled (Desert-Galaxy)

1974, Vija Celmins

Untitled (Desert–Galaxy) is a work on paper by the Latvian-born American artist Vija Celmins that presents two individual drawings side by side on the same sheet of paper: on the left is a galaxy in outer space and on the right is an image of a closely-cropped desert floor. The artist has used graphite pencil on an acrylic gesso ground for both drawings. These drawings – as is the case with the majority of the artist’s drawings, prints and paintings – are based on photographs rather than the direct observation of nature. The various subject matters of Celmins’s drawings of the late 1960s and 1970s include photographic images of oceans, deserts, lunar surfaces, cloud-filled skies and galaxies – all spaces of vastness and anonymity, isolated from direct human intervention. Celmins lived and worked in Venice Beach, California in the 1960s and 1970s after moving from Indianapolis to undertake a Masters degree in Fine Art at University of California Los Angeles. Untitled (Desert–Galaxy) is the earliest work by Celmins in ARTIST ROOMS. It was produced during a long period in which her practice was focused intently upon the medium of drawing, having abandoned painting in the mid-1960s only to return to it again in the early 1980s with a series of night sky oil paintings.

Six Geometric Figures ( Two) (Wall Drawings)

1980–1, Sol LeWitt

In the Zone

1982, Denzil Forrester MBE

This work is part of Forrester’s ongoing nightclub series. It depicts attendees of 1980s Reggae and Dub club nights, located close to the artist’s home in Stoke Newington, East London. Forrester would bring his drawing materials to the nightclub and set them up on a table near the dancefloor. Working on drawings only for the length of a single track, he sought to represent the energy and vitality of the crowd. The artist has spoken about the importance of these club nights in uniting his cultural community, as places that were created for and enjoyed by people of colour. They function as spaces in which cultural expression, fashion, creativity and joy can be explored - without the oppressive gaze of white society-at-large.

Gallery label, June 2022

Forty eight notebooks and sketchbooks written and created by Donald Rodney, and the personal archives of the artist

1982–98, Collection owner: Donald Rodney

Untitled (Drawing)

1964, Lancelot Ribeiro

This is one of a group of four untitled drawings in pen and watercolour on paper in Tate’s collection by the Indian-born artist Lancelot Ribeiro, all of which date from 1964 (Tate T15686–T15689). Each of these small figurative drawings combines blocks of bright watercolour paint with organic intricate patterns drawn in black pen on white paper. Although much of the imagery is abstract, recognisable forms such as faces and landscape or manmade elements often appear.

Christ Church, Spitalfields

1990, Leon Kossoff

This drawing is the preparatory work for the painting adjacent to it. Leon Kossoff was born and studied in London and uses the city as his principal subject. He likes to draw and paint the everyday life on the streets of London. Paintings are done in his studio but large charcoal drawing such as this are drawn on the spot. Kossoff has done a series of drawings and paintings on the subject of the grand city church, Christchurch, Spitalfields, by the architect Hawksmoor, inspired by the great mass of the building in relation to the streets around it.

Gallery label, September 2004

The Roaring Forties: Seven Boards in Seven Days

1997, Tacita Dean CBE

The Roaring Forties: Seven Boards in Seven Days is one of several chalkboard series by Tacita Dean that evoke the aesthetic of black and white cinema. It comprises a sequence of white chalk drawings on seven eight-foot-square Masonite panels that Dean prepared with blackboard paint. The Roaring Forties is the name given to a zone in the southern Atlantic, between 40º and 50º latitude, which is noted for its gale-force winds. Dean used old photographs for reference to construct an epic sea narrative in seven parts, including scenes of a storm, a ship under full sail listing with the wind and a series of muscled figures engaged in such activities as rowing a skiff or climbing in rigging. As with the chalkboards Disappearance at Sea 1995 (Emmanuel Hoffmann Foundation, Basel), and more recently Sea Inventory Drawings 1998 (private collection), Dean draws associations between the language of the storyboard and a more traditional approach to drawing. By giving herself seven days to complete the seven boards for The Roaring Forties, Dean likened the time-bound qualities of film to those of the drawing process. She also demonstrated that reliance on strict editing applies as much to drawing as to film. In The Roaring Forties, the reference to cinematic storyboards is accentuated by the many hand-written directional notations that punctuate the epic scenes. Instructions such as 'aerial view', 'fade up from black' and 'pan to action from out of frame', together with arrows indicating wind direction, prevent the viewer from being absorbed in an unfolding narrative. They also refer beyond the dimensions of the actual surface of each board. This incomplete, suggestive quality and visible traces of cloudy erasure remind the viewer that narrative itself is an unending process of editing and adjustment. Offering us glimpses of an incomplete narrative, The Roaring Forties can also be understood in terms of Dean's fascination with the 'clue'. The 'clue' is often Dean's way into a rich narrative texture, and her work frequently has an investigative edge as she reassembles a trail of evidence in order to separate fact from fiction. The sea often features in her work as a metaphor for the shifting fabric of storytelling itself. Pieces such as Disappearance at Sea 1996 (T07455) and Aerial View of Teignmouth Electron, Cayman Brac 16th September 1998 2000 (P78389) deal with the power, both imaginative and physical of the sea. In Dean's work, the ocean can be seen to have prompted extravagantly romantic, utopian projects while also tragically thwarting them. Further readingFrances Richard, 'Tacita Dean: The Drawing Room', Artforum, vol.36, November 1997, p.116, reproduced p.116.Tacita Dean, exhibition catalogue, Tate Britain, London 2001.Virginia Button and Michela Parkin, The Turner Prize 1998, exhibition brochure, Tate Gallery, London 1998, [pp.4-5], reproduced [p.12]. Helen DelaneyFebruary 2002

Missionary Position II

1985, Sonia Boyce OBE

Missionary Position II draws inspiration from the intersection of different cultures. Boyce uses herself as the model for both figures, reflecting her growing antipathy towards her Christian upbringing. The praying figure suggests passive acceptance while the figure on the right proposes an alternative position. The head-wrap, adopted in Britain and the Caribbean in the 1970s, is inspired by Rastafari and reflects a growing sense of cultural freedom and connectedness across the African diaspora. By contrast, the ‘missionary position’ title stands as a metaphor for the role of Christian missionaries in imposing colonial rule and oppression.

Gallery label, January 2022

Back Drawing

1990, Juan Muñoz

Back Drawing is one of a group of studies of disembodied torsos produced by the Spanish artist Juan Muñoz during the early 1990s. This painting shows a naked back, in white chalk on a black background, sharply highlighted to accentuate contour, shadow and texture. The torso dominates the upper half of the canvas. Except for the lone hand suspended above the torso, other body parts are absent; the lower body and left arm are truncated and the shoulders form an awkward and uneven diagonal as if the figure is bending forward. In two later Back Drawings 1992 (illustrated in Wagstaff, pp.52-3) for which Muñoz used oil pastel, the figures’ aging skin and stooping shoulders are emphasised, but in this one the back, although arched and with protruding shoulder blades, has smooth flesh. The artist based this work on photographs of himself. Muñoz commented: ‘With the back drawings I wanted to draw the back and make it very beautiful, enticing yet giving nothing away.’ (Quoted in Possible Worlds, p.58.)

Untitled

1999, Dame Phyllida Barlow DBE RA

Drawing is important in Barlow’s practice, and central to an understanding of her sculptural work. These drawings span a period of more than twenty years. They embody the same ambiguous nature as Barlow’s sculptures and represent the range of her sculptural vocabulary, which includes racks, arenas, greengrocer’s crates, crumpled canvases, strange furniture wrapped around with soft materials, and the layering, accumulation and juxtaposition of ambiguous objects and shapes. Made with thick, gestural brushstrokes, the drawings retain spontaneity of feeling and vitality. Across the group, similar marks are repeated and developed, suggesting solid forms and hinting at familiar shapes.

Gallery label, October 2013

Window

1999, Ewan Gibbs

Presented by the Patrons of New Art (Special Purchase Fund) through the Tate Gallery Foundation 2000T07598 Gibbs makes drawings based on photographs using black ink on graph paper. Every square of the graph's grid is filled with a symbol of varying tone. The tonal differences follow the shades of light and dark in the photograph and result in the abstracted representation of a scene. Gibbs's symbols were originally inspired by knitting and crochet patterns. Since he graduated from Goldsmiths College in 1996 he has been developing his personal range of simple forms. These include diagonal lines, crosses and, in Window and Wall (Tate T07597), circles with or without a dot in the centre. A spectrum of tones is created by using thicker and thinner nibbed pens and applying more or less pressure. The forms and compositions are becoming progressively simpler. Earlier drawings were made up of a combination of different symbols. Recent drawings, like Wall and Window, are made up of only one type of symbol. Initially Gibbs worked with found images of interiors, usually, but not always, empty of human presence. In 1999 he was working with photographs of hotel rooms selected from holiday brochures advertising package tours. More recently he has based his drawings on photographs of hotel façades which he has taken himself.

afro

2000, Chris Ofili

The composition of this drawing is dominated by the word ‘afro’, and the flowing lines which emanate from it. Closer examination reveals that the word is composed of tiny drawings of heads. Ofili revels in such visual puns. Underlying this work is Ofili’s response to the racist view that ‘all black people look the same’. The afro becomes a statement of black pride and, since each tiny head is different, a way to create individual portraits.

Gallery label, September 2004

In the Summer Camp Tent

2002, Annie Pootoogook

Untitled

2004, David Shrigley OBE

This drawing shows two black silhouetted figures, joined so as to appear as one. As the words written on the page state, the image represents an elephant standing on a car. The car is a simplified representation of an old-fashioned vehicle such as a child might draw. Viewed from the side, it consists of an angled-off dark area between two parallel lines drawn using a ruler, sitting on two half-circles representing wheels. The elephant towers over the car, completely out of proportion to the vehicle’s size. Only the front part of its body is visible on the page, its front feet planted firmly on the car roof and the top of its head cut off by the edge of the paper. Its trunk is nearly as wide as its legs and it looks out at the viewer from a single large eye. This eye, like the centres of the car tyres, consists of a rounded white area with a black spot in the centre. The white area is bare paper, around which the artist has filled in the contours of the car and the elephant with black ink, applied with a brush. The words ‘elephant chooses to stand on your car’ are written in capital letters on five heavily-ruled lines next to the left of the elephant’s legs, under its trunk.

Cross Section of the Via Appia in Late Antiquity

2015, Pablo Bronstein

This series of 18 drawings is inspired by the Via Appia in Rome. One of the city’s oldest and most important roads, it is lined with churches, mausoleums and mansions. Bronstein’s version is deliberately unrealistic. Set in an empty landscape, it includes styles from different periods of architectural history. Bronstein sees it as a single long drawing. ‘The panorama is a scene about the end of time, civilization, and historical styles – as seen from a cold perspective’, he has said. Visitors can follow it around the gallery as if they were strolling along the Via Appia.

Gallery label, October 2020

Standing Figure with African Masks

2018, Claudette Johnson MBE

To create this work Johnson drew herself using a small mirror on a low chair. She gazes directly down on us, at an angle that heightens her confident stance. She has said, ‘I’m interested in giving space to Blackwomen presence. A presence which has been distorted, hidden and denied.’ The masked figures in the background reclaim the often unacknowledged inspiration of African art on white Western artists. By referring to the masks as ‘African’, Johnson draws attention to art history’s failure to record the names, or even the nationalities of the artists of these influential works.

Gallery label, December 2020

lick your teeth, they so clutch

2021, Rachel Jones

lick your teeth, they so clutch 2020 is a large-scale landscape-format painting in oil stick on canvas. Like Jones’s earlier paintings, it employs a kaleidoscopic palette and boldness of form typical of her work. Here, fiery reds collide with fleshy pinks and acid yellows against the counterbalancing coolness of blues and greens, contributing to the sense of tension created by the competing forms and the interplay of textures. Jones’s characteristic use of oil sticks as her medium allows her to create an intensity of pigment, layering colour and melding different textural layers that result in a tactile painted surface suggestive of a physical, embodied and intuitive approach to mark-making.

Drawing 25

2022, Nnena Kalu

Drawing 25 2022 comprises two drawings in pen and pencil on yellow paper that each depict a circular vortex. They are exhibited side by side. The work was made by the artist in a live drawing performance, in which she began by creating an initial first layer of drawing and mark-making in fine liner pen, building up repeated circular motions. She then added a second layer to the works, working across both drawings at the same time, a trope typical to her practice. Kalu’s movement can be perceived in the drawing in the circular curves. This piece differs in style to the artist’s previous vortex drawings, where she has typically worked with pastel crayons when creating the second layer, whereas in this work she has instead opted to continue with the same blue pen.