Drawing in the project: image and object

1. This text relates to our current investigation on the relationship between design and drawing. The text Design through Drawing (Pombo and Magalhães, 2005, 61-72)- allows us to demonstrate the possibility of understanding the subject of design through drawing, as the heir of disegno of the Italian Florentine Renascence Culture and as way of projectual action. We consider the origin of the disegno as proposal of the project since drawing was the subject that was able to bring together the various arts designated as drawing (arti del disegno). In Renascence disegno as a liberal art instils itself as a subject deriving from theoria; the abstract intellectual knowledge acquired through contemplative observation. From the 18th century drawing, as an artistic action, starts to conquer autonomy. Drawing liberates itself from its project function to art (in the disegno tradition) and asserting its autonomy by abiding by its own internal rules. Contemporary drawing, motivated by the action of desire, abandons the artistic necessity and becomes an object of art. Drawing is neither history through memory of its past (classical drawing), nor the revelation of the invisible through the visible (romantic drawing), but simply the manifestation of art itself (contemporary drawing). As act of projecting (and not as manifestation of art itself) drawing is the condition of existing for…, drawing exists as a function that gives form to a project. Drawing (pre)exists as a multidisciplinary function: the triangular correlation between representation- classificacion- imagination.(Partenone, 1984-1990, 36