The Death of Drawing?

A critical review of Euan Gray and Witte Wartena’s Pop Life exhibition at the City Art Centre, Edinburgh. 

Saturday 2 November 2024 – Sunday 9 March 2025

It’s 2024: quantum computing is on the horizon; robots are replacing our jobs; AI is shaping the future of our creative landscape. Is it time to put down the humble pencil?

Gray and Wartena’s Pop Life invites us to brush the dust off the biro at the bottom of our bags and get sketching. Exploring the realm of contemporary drawing through the eyes of pop culture, Pop Life is, essentially, attempting to make drawing trendy again – in other words welcoming the pencil into the popular culture phenomenon. With the “decline in entry level drawing skills” (Farthing, 2011), this review of Pop Life will evaluate the success of Gray and Wartena in making drawing…cool again.

In order to form a strong analysis, one must utilise our trendy friend: the internet. According to generative AI, the factors that contribute to something becoming popular include: 

Remarkability 

Pop Life certainly hits the remarkability scale. The conception that drawing is a traditional technique resistant to innovation, is firmly contradicted by Marc Brandenburg’s installation.  

Breaking the boundaries of graphite, Brandenburg accompanies his meticulous drawings with backlighting and dark walls to create the hedonistic atmosphere of a Berlin club. Eyes 5cm from his drawings, his skill is almost unbelievable.

Situated near the entrance to the exhibition, the white cube is disrupted by his Berlin portal – prompting us to leave any preconceived ideas about drawing at the door.

Social Currency

For drawing to be revived, it must be part of the ‘it-crowd’ and what better way to do it than presenting Donald Urquhart’s cultural entanglement of music, fame and contemporary art. From The Beetles to Leigh Bowery, Urquhart uses the fluid marks of ink to give insight into his lavish life of 1980s London. Satisfying our 20th century celebrity obsession, here the act of drawing acts as a means of knowledge for social currency.

Practicality

Bolstering the status of drawing requires mimicking the success of the pop culture sensation: TikTok – practical, immediate and short content. Upon entrance, David Shrigley’s eye-catching one-liners cover the wall. Flicking between the sixteen drawings presented, elitist art themes are subverted through his humorous take on the human form. Shrigley’s drawings become the epitome of ‘simple but effective’, using satire and child-like forms to expose the absurdity of human life. What could be argued as a lack of technique, only encourages us to all pick up a pencil regardless of our skill.

Price, availability and quality

Drawing exists as an accessible form of visualisation and communication in the exclusive art sphere. Pop Life demonstrates this inherent act of hand and mind, which bypasses our preconceived ideas of drawing. From artists using old book covers to drawing directly on the wall, drawing is presented as an ingenious and accessible route into the art sphere.

Through the affordable ticket into the exhibition and the use of commonplace materials, Pop Life displays an accessible sanctuary amongst the pompous fog of the art world.  

In summary, Pop Life is an advertisement for the pencil. Resurging the outmoded practice of drawing through the entanglement of our 20th century obsession with popular culture, one can’t help to leave the exhibition itching to get their hands on a pencil.

Surrounded by an array of artists, Gray and Wartena highlight the overlooked complexity and depth of drawing. As artists themselves within the show, their strong passion in the potential of drawing radiates through the unspoken atmosphere of ‘we told you drawing was cool’.

 Amongst the technological orientation of creative forms, reviving the physical process of drawing is an ambitious task. Nonetheless, Pop Life undoubtedly strengthens the popularity of contemporary drawing amidst the current art scene. Who knows…maybe drawing is cool again? 

Untitled (2024) Marc Brandenburg, graphite on paper 

Leigh Bowery - Cooking with Gas (2012) Donald Urquhart, ink and gouache on paper

Untitled (2024) David Shrigley, acrylic on paper