Blind Folly, or How Tacita Dean Draws reframes drawing itself as a practice of wilful not-knowing — curator Michelle White argues that Dean's deliberate adoption of blindness in image-making is a direct response to our culturally, technologically, and ecologically unstable moment.
About This Book
What does it mean to draw without seeing — and why does that matter now? Curator Michelle White spent seven years in conversation with Tacita Dean to answer that question, and this book is the result. Spanning more than three decades of Dean's practice, from chalk landscapes to celestial phenomena captured on film, White's text traces a consistent strategy: the embrace of indeterminacy, chance, and medium as the conditions of image-making rather than obstacles to it. Drawing here is not preparation for another work — it is the work, and its incompleteness is the point. Illustrated with more than forty images, this is an essential text on contemporary drawing practice and artistic process.
Key Features
- 112 pages illustrated with more than forty images spanning over three decades of Dean's drawing practice
- Text by curator Michelle White, developed from seven years of conversations with Tacita Dean
- Published by MACK
What You'll Discover
- White's central argument that Dean's practice of adopting blindness to make an image is an urgent response to cultural, technological, and ecological instability
- How Dean's drawing ranges across media — from sweeping chalk landscapes to fleeting celestial phenomena on film — united by a single conceptual strategy
- The role of fate, folly, and chance as structuring forces in Dean's approach to mark-making over more than thirty years
- An intimate critical perspective shaped by seven years of direct dialogue between author and artist
About the Author
Michelle White is a curator whose text here draws on seven years of sustained conversation with Tacita Dean. Her analysis positions Dean's drawing practice within urgent questions about image-making in an unstable contemporary moment.
Specifications
- Format: Softcover
- Pages: 112
- Dimensions: 129 x 197 mm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9781915743787
- Publisher: MACK
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Artists, curators, and critics with an interest in contemporary drawing, film, and the intersection of chance and artistic process; readers engaged with Tacita Dean's broader practice.