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"Vitamin D2: New Perspectives in Drawing"
Vitamin D2: New Perspectives in Drawing, Phaidon, 2013
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"Vitamin D2: New Perspectives in Drawing"
Vitamin D2: New Perspectives in Drawing, Phaidon, 2013.
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"Vitamin D2: New Perspectives in Drawing"
Vitamin D2: New Perspectives in Drawing, Phaidon, 2013
Vitamin D2: New Perspectives in Drawing
Phaidon, 2013
From the lovely pencil squiggles and hatchings on its cover through some 500 illustrations on thick pages that resemble drawing paper, Vitamin D2 is an easy pill to swallow. It’s the second such volume from British art publisher Phaidon – the first, Vitamin D, was released in 2002 – and includes 115 artists who have established themselves internationally since then.
Arranged in alphabetical order, the artists nominated by critics, curators and gallery directors around the world demonstrate an array of approaches and cultural influences. “By gradually entering the global stage, drawing is regaining a political urgency and is emerging once more as a direct, simple, often inexpensive medium to which artists turn when other forms are not readily available or are compromised in some way,” Christian Rattemeyer, a curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, writes in the introduction. “Drawing’s current immediacy means different things in different places, and we have new histories and contexts to explore and from which to learn.”
A case in point is Inuit artist Shuvinai Ashoona, whose surreal drawings in coloured pencil and ink variously show a woman in a red parka with a bulging belly that resembles a globe, and clams thrusting phallic-like from a seabed that’s also home to mysterious other-worlds.
