Tivoli 1922

Robert Austin made this drawing of Tivoli with pencil, and what strikes me first is the gentleness in the marks. It feels like a slow, deliberate process, building up the image bit by bit. There's a real delicacy to it; the lines are so fine and the values are so soft. Look at the way he renders the buildings, not with heavy outlines, but with a network of delicate lines that describe the forms and capture the light. It’s almost like he is knitting the image together. The texture of the paper is allowed to breathe through, adding to the sense of airiness and light. I can imagine him sitting there, patiently observing and recording what he saw. This piece reminds me a little of some of the drawings of Cy Twombly, in the sense that both artists have this incredible ability to suggest form and space with just a few economical lines. And like Twombly, Austin seems less interested in capturing a literal likeness of Tivoli than in conveying a feeling, a sense of place, an atmosphere. It’s less about what Tivoli looks like and more about what it feels like to be there.