Estudo para a construção de um caderno de desenho de aves : aves do Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga

Abstract

This thesis addresses drawing as means for knowledge and memory of species. Birds guide our theoretical and graphic narrative; their drawing first appears on the stone surface of caves through a hand-made line done approximately thirty-six thousand years ago. Ever since then, the drawing of birds continued to be carried out on various supports, many of them observable and protected in museum rooms from the 17th century onwards. Many of these drawn birds, as in Nature, can go unnoticed by the less attentive observer. Thus, the main objective of this thesis is to build a Book of Drawings based on the observation of the birds that appear throughout the Lisbon’s National Museum of Fine Art’s permanent collection of works. The theoretical-artistic proposal is guided by a naturalistic approach which doesn’t have analogical pretensions relative to scientific drawing - the aim is for a drawing which allows quick identification of species as it happens with current Bird Guides, however with no preoccupations of obeying to the strict rule of profile representation so common and characteristic of the ornithological drawing. The thesis is organized into three parts, each covering a chronological line traced by the drawing of birds. The first one starts in prehistoric caves, where stone housed the first record of a bird, and ends in 21st century’s common bird guides; the second part analyses the drawing of six birds observable in two-dimensional artworks belonging to the collection of the National Museum of Ancient Art, in Lisbon, geographical space hosting the iconographic survey that serves as the basis for the artwork and third part of this thesis, divided into two moments - the survey of pieces where it is possible to observe birds and their subsequent identification in the Book of Drawings