Drawn Together: Yale and Columbia Students Explore Graphic Works at the YUAG

On Friday, April 7, Professor Diane Bodart of Columbia University brought students in her graduate seminar, “Drawing as Gesture,” to examine works on paper in the YUAG’s Duffy Study Room. The group was joined by Yale PhD students Sarah Bochicchio, Nicole Boyd, Theo de Luca, Adela Foo, and Bennett Harrison, in addition to Yale’s Focillon fellow Michaël Vottero and Columbia professor Michael Waters. Nicola Suthor and Morgan Ng, professors at Yale’s Department of the History of Art, helped coordinate the visit.

During the session, the group explored works ranging from early modern Italian, French, and Spanish prints and drawings to twentieth-century pieces by Picasso and Saul Steinberg. These objects sparked lively discussions about figural idealization and deformity, copying and fantasy, authorship and collaboration, and the graphic inventions sometimes executed by artists over many years on the surface of the page.

Not only was the session an opportunity to scrutinize some remarkable artworks in their full materiality; it was also a chance for interuniversity community building. After the study session, the students and faculty celebrated their discoveries with a reception in the Loria Center. The study session was the second encounter organized recently for graduate students with a special interest in Early Modern European art at Yale and Columbia. The students look forward to more such collaborations for broadening their intellectual communities beyond the boundaries of their universities.