Gardner Cox, Visiting Artist Lecture 1957

Gardner Cox shows a series of slides talking about a wide range of artists, specifically focusing on artists and their relationship to the human skull. Cox also focuses on the way artists handle paint and think about the formal qualities of painting in relation to ideas of morbidity, death, and mortality. For each artist that Cox talks about, he stresses the importance of their mastering a strong skill set in observing, and drawing from life in order to create their cinematic masterful oeuvres. Each painting should have a life of its own and should represent life and liveliness as well as darkness. Cox also talks about his own artistic practice, and the deep connection he has to drawing, particularly the medium of charcoal for the way it forces him to deal with the unknown and guide him to make the right choices in his practice. Cox then ends his lecture stressing to the participants how important drawing is and encourages them to cultivate a strong drawing practice in their work. Cox specifically states that whenever participants get the opportunity to draw models around them, they should render themselves vulnerable and sensitive. This vulnerability allows them to be sensitive to the models they draw, to deeply feel their expressions, and to connect to the body and their surroundings, which makes them stronger artists.