Kelly Chorpening is the Fine Art Programme Director at Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts, London. She has worked extensively in drawing as an artist, writer, curator and educator within fine art and across disciplines, and in a number of national contexts.

Rebecca Fortnum is Professor of Fine Art at the Royal College of Art, UK. She is the author of Contemporary British Women Artists: In Their Own Words and On Not Knowing: How Artists Think. She has exhibited widely including solo exhibitions at the Freud Museum and the V&A Museum of Childhood in London.

The first university-level textbook on the power, condition, and expanse of contemporary fine art drawing
A Companion to Contemporary Drawing explores how 20th and 21st century artists have used drawing to understand and comment on the world. Presenting contributions by both theorists and practitioners, this unique textbook considers the place, space, and history of drawing and explores shifts in attitudes towards its practice over the years. Twenty-seven essays discuss how drawing emerges from the mind of the artist to question and reflect upon what they see, feel, and experience.
This book discusses key themes in contemporary drawing practice, addresses the working conditions and context of artists, and considers a wide range of personal, social, and political considerations that influence artistic choices. Topics include the politics of eroticism in South American drawing, anti-capitalist drawing from Eastern Europe, drawing and conceptual art, feminist drawing, and exhibitions that have put drawing practices at the centre of contemporary art. This textbook:
* Demonstrates ways contemporary issues and concerns are addressed through drawing
* Reveals how drawing is used to make powerful social and political statements
* Situates works by contemporary practitioners within the context of their historical moment
* Explores how contemporary art practices utilize drawing as both process and finished artifact
* Shows how concepts of observation, representation, and audience have changed dramatically in the digital era
* Establishes drawing as a mode of thought
Part of the acclaimed Wiley Blackwell Companions to Art History series, A Companion to Contemporary Drawing is a valuable text for students of fine art, art history, and curating, and for practitioners working within contemporary fine art practice.

List of Illustrations ix
Notes on Contributors xvii
Acknowledgments xxv
Introduction 1
Kelly Chorpening and Rebecca Fortnum
Part I The Power of Drawing 11
1 The Black Index 13
Bridget R. Cooks
2 A State of Alert: The Politics of Eroticism in South American Drawing 29
Sofia Gotti
3 Graphic Witness 55
Kate Macfarlane
4 Drawn from Communism: Anti-Capitalist Drawing from Central-Eastern Europe 71
Magdalena Radomska
5 Differencing Drawing: Feminist Perspectives on Line, Surface, and Space 95
Griselda Pollock
6 A Dirty Double Mirror: Drawing, Autobiography, and Feminism 123
Rebecca Fortnum
7 Between the Sky and the Handle: Shilpa Gupta's Drawings in the Contemporary 147
Parul Dave Mukherji
8 Drawing as Contagion 161
Jade Montserrat
9 Curating Drawing: Exhibitions and the Centering of Drawing in Contemporary Art 167
João Ribas
Part II The Condition of Drawing 183
10 Observation and Drawing: From Looking to Seeing 185
Paul Moorhouse
11 "Drawing's Impropriety" 203
Lucien Massaert
12 Drawing in Atopia: An Exploration of "Drift" as Method 221
Beth Harland
13 Works on/in/with Paper: Approaching Drawing as Responsive Marking 239
Marina Kassianidou
14 Indexical Drawing: On Frottage 257
Margaret Iversen
15 Ground as Critical Limit 271
Laura Lisbon
16 Drawing's Finish 287
Stephanie Straine
17 Radical Antinomies: Drawing and Conceptual Art 309
Anna Lovatt
18 Drawing Desires 325
Sunil Manghani
19 Drawing from Life and the Twenty-first Century Art School 343
Kelly Chorpening
Part III The Expanse of Drawing 367
20 Marking Time, Moving Images: Drawing and Film 369
Ed Kr ma
21 Digital Drawing 389
Tamarin Norwood
22 The Dot and the Line: Drawing Amongst Computers 407
Jane de Almeida
23 Installation/Drawing: Spaces of Drawing Between Art and Architecture 431
Sophia Banou
24 Informational Drawing 451
Matthew Ritchie
25 Drawing Towards Sound - Notation, Diagram, Drawing 471
David Ryan
26 Chinese Calligraphy: A Drawing Ecology 493
Eric Wear
27 The Enduring Power of Comic Strips 513
Simon Grennan
Index 531