From an accomplished practitioner, curator and theorist comes “Stick Figures: Drawing as a Human Practice” to reset the terms for an ancient activity. D. B. Dowd embraces drawing as a process for everyone, not just artists. This beautifully designed book uses a wonderful range of visual samples to explore an elemental human capacity. The artifacts of drawing (chiefly, illustrations and cartoons) are rescued from outdated hierarchies of taste and engaged on their own theoretical and cultural terms.
“Startlingly original.” — Steven Guarnaccia, former op-ed art director of the New York Times
“In this measured and clear-eyed polemic, D. B. Dowd offers a compelling new picture of illustration and cartooning as modern cultural history, and provides helpful, innovative taxonomies for students, scholars, and general readers.” — Michele H. Bogart, Professor of Art History at Stony Brook University and author of “Artists, Advertising, and the Borders of Art.”
“Highly organized. Reading ‘Stick Figures’ gives you the feeling you are on a narrated journey with an author willing to expose his ideas and feelings in exchange for you taking another step forward… to grab the next bread crumb on the forest floor.”— Whitney Sherman, illustrator and director of the MFA in illustration practice at Maryland College of Art, and co-editor of “History of Illustration.”
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