Recto Verso: Redefining the Sketchbook

Bringing together a broad range of contributors including art, architecture, and design academic theorists and historians, in addition to practicing artists, architects, and designers, this volume explores the place of the sketchbook in contemporary art and architecture. Drawing upon a diverse range of theories, practices, and reflections common to the contemporary conceptualisation of the sketchbook and its associated environments, it offers a dialogue in which the sketchbook can be understood as a pivotal working tool that contributes to the creative process and the formulation and production of visual ideas. Along with exploring the theoretical, philosophical, psychological, and curatorial implications of the sketchbook, the book addresses emergent digital practices by way of examining contemporary developments in sketchbook productions and pedagogical applications. Consequently, these more recent developments question the validity of the sketchbook as both an instrument of practice and creativity, and as an educational device. International in scope, it not only explores European intellectual and artistic traditions, but also intercultural and cross-cultural perspectives, including reviews of practices in Chinese artworks or Islamic calligraphy, and situational contexts that deal with historical examples, such as Roman art, or modern practices in geographical-cultural regions like Pakistan.

Author Biography

Angela Bartram works in live art, video, sculpture and published text. Bartram’s artwork has been included in a variety of exhibitions, including the Miami International Festival of Performance (2013); and at the gallery Grace Exhibition Space (New York 2012). She is a senior lecturer in fine art at the University of Lincoln. Nader El-Bizri is an Associate Professor in the Civilization Sequence Program, and the Director of the Anis Makdisi Program in Literature at the American University of Beirut. He is also an associated researcher in history of philosophy and science at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris. Douglas Gittens is a researcher and senior lecturer at the Lincoln School of Architecture. He is also an active member of the Architectural Contexts Research Group and the Drawing Research Group at the University of Lincoln, and a member of the Architectural Humanities Research Association (AHRA). His research interests include spatial theory, the phenomenology of architecture, architectural representation and the documentation of architectural memory and lost space.