Heartfelt congratulations to Susan Owens (1990, English) on winning Book of the Year in the 2024 Apollo Awards for her most recent book, ‘The Story of Drawing’.
In ‘The Story of Drawing’, Owens guides her readers through a history that runs from 13,000 years ago to the present day in order to make a claim for drawing as the ‘engine room of creation’. It is a journey that takes the reader from the flickering lines of cave art to the refined perfection of Ingres, the minute observations of Dürer, and onwards, to the experimental shores of our own era.
Across the book’s twenty chapters, Owens argues for a global appreciation of drawing’s evolution by conducting readers from the cloistered world of medieval scribes to the wide landscapes of Europe, China and Japan, and through the workshops of the Renaissance. Throughout, whether she is looking at sketches made by Gainsborough or contemporary artist Tacita Dean, Owens makes a case for drawing as a simpler, more democratic form of art-making which is nonetheless fundamental to the creative process.
Perhaps the most striking feature of the book, argues Tim Smith-Laing in his review for Apollo, is Owens’ evident delight in the dexterous, tactile process of creation. Whether these traces are made as scratches on limestone, via charcoal, chalk and ink or human bodily fluids, there is a direct and discernible relationship between the artist’s hand and the image. It is this relationship which creates the sense of immediacy that galvanises this thrilling book.
Susan Owens is a noted art historian and former curator of the V&A. Speaking about this project, she said, ‘reading English at Somerville taught me to be unafraid of diving into big subjects and making them my own. My brilliant tutors encouraged me to look at texts closely and to ask what the details can tell us. I carried that approach into my career as an art historian, and it is what drove this book’.
Listen to Susan Owens discussing ‘The Story of Drawing’ on BBC R4’s Start the Week. Read more about the Apollo Awards.