Transcriptions

Each year students work on transcriptions from paintings, drawings and sculpture. The following is an excerpt from “Why Transcribe,” an essay by Graham Nickson.

Great art of the past did not appear out of a vacuum; it had a continuous link with its precursors, distant and recent. It reached for the life line of understanding the past holds out to the present.

No matter how tenuous their life might seem at times, masterpieces of the past are still alive today, enormously relevant to young and older artists alike. By transcribing, artists can find the key, the Rosetta Stone, that reveals first the language of the masterpiece, then its content of magic. Above all, the masterpiece offers unimagined possibilities.

To look with intensity, with a searching eye, at great works in the museums will unlock great truths; however, the vehicle that has prime importance in that quest for knowledge is the transcription. The transcription endeavors to understand the nature of the original work; it investigates the power of the work through its construction rather than emulating its look or style. In working directly from the original, this profound revelation is made possible.

A transcription is an adventure, an entry into the unknown in search of knowing. It is a fount of possibilities never before fully realized that will nourish the transcriber when that person returns to his or her own work.