13 minute read
Newschool’s Annual Napkin Sketch Auction
Touchè Volume 2
NewSchool of Architecture and Design
Written by Emi Nevara & Hailee Strach
Napkin Sketches by Pauly De Bartolo & Tommy Hernandez
There is a story about Picasso in a cafe being asked to make a quick drawing for an admirer. He makes this drawing on a napkin, and offers it to the woman for a very high price. She was shocked at the price and allegedly said, “That only took you five minutes!” Picasso responds with perhaps there is a phenomenon of psychology, science, maybe even an experience to be studied about the practice of napkin sketches. From artists to architects, this well-renowned medium is a part of many artists and designers’ lives. When thinking about the significance of an architect and her/his napkin sketch, questions are drawn.
For example, what is it that makes the sketch worth anything? Well, an architect can spend months or even years on a profound design and be celebrated. But, what if that same architect has mastered the art of condensing complex thoughts into a coherent vision in just minutes? Imagine something drawn quickly using fast thinking and the logic of an architect, combining art with skill gained over years and illustrated on something tenuous as a napkin and you get the gist. The napkin sketch can be a sneak peek into what the architect is thinking. A five-minute sketch from Picasso is a representation of what he spent his entire life mastering.
When looking at a napkin sketch, one might see all of the years of hard work contained in every stroke. Another glance might reveal the potential inside the lines. A great napkin sketch is more than a scribble. So let’s look into what makes some napkin sketches so special. NewSchool’s eleventh napkin sketch auction was held at Monikar Warehouse. It followed a tradition that NewSchool has carried for quite some time. It is one of the school’s largest annual events where students, faculty, and local architects and designers come together for a night of art & design.
To acquire sketches for the auction, NewSchool students request sketches from star architects around the world, from faculty, and from well-known local architects and designers. Envelopes with blank napkins are sent to each potential artist, and if returned, the sketches are auctioned off during the event. AIAS NewSchool, a chapter of the American Institute of Architecture Students, acts as a the bridge to connect students with architects and designers. All funds raised at the auction go to help support their AIAS chapter of AIASF for activities such as visiting local firms, guest lectures open to students and the public, as well as to sending students to conferences across the states.
According to AIAS NewSchool, the highest bid ever received was for a sketch done by the beloved former president of NewSchool, Marvin Malecha which went for $1,000. The AIAS Napkin Sketch auction is open to the public and usually held in June of each year, but preparation for the event begins in February. Those four months are usually the busiest time for the student organization. However, regardless of how much effort is puts into this event, the stars of the show are merely napkins with ideas on them. Some are masterpieces, others are doodles, but most sketches earn high bids because of the famous hand that crafted them. Auctioneer and NewSchool former faculty member Alan Roseblum recently reported that year over year the quantity of napkin sketches has gotten better, and in his words the auction is now “a full-on art show.”
Obviously the bidders see value in them.
But, what do napkin sketches mean to architects and designers?
Newschool’s former president Marvin Malecha once shared meaningful insight into the importance of napkin sketches among designers.
Since napkins can be found almost anywhere, the ability to give life to a vision becomes much easier. Napkins become a an accessible portal from mind to matter. Malecha explained, “Napkin sketches have been a go-to companion for those who find spur-of-the-moment inspiration allowing for the exploration of thoughts and ideas with their hands.” Similarly, authors also use napkins as an exploration of thoughts and ideas stemming from the spur-of-the-moment inspiration. But even before language, there were drawings. Since prehistoric times, humans have been expressing themselves through illustrations. A napkin sketch allows this to continue in modern life. A napkin has great power of accessibility, allowing architects and other designers or artists to do what humans have been doing for centuries, communicate.
Malecha added, recently, on an evening in June, Pauly De Bartolo and Tommy Hernandez, both from the local architecture firm DBRDS (and known as star sketchers in San Diego) sat down with us at Nolita Hall in Little Italy with their sketchbooks and pen cases in hands. To them, sketching is a huge part of communication. They completed complex sketches while we interviewed them, sharing appetizers and even a few drinks. De Bartolo believes sketching on napkins is a social element as he often grabs them and starts sketching whenever he is out, be it at lunch with other designers, or by himself at a café or even on a flight. He mentioned that,
“Napkin sketches are an accessible, fun, temporary, disposable way to be creative. I wouldn’t say I look at napkin sketches as being important. You just do it. Here is a pen, here is a napkin, you just draw. It takes away thinking about it. If it’s a ***** one you throw it away and you do another one. The medium encourages people to not worry about doing **** ones”. In other words, the valuelessness of napkins is the value for architects and designers.
De Bartolo started sketching La Sagrada Familia by Antoni Gaudi on a blank napkin, a request by fellow student Kathy Forro. He claimed that he hadn’t looked at the famous Spanish project for quite some time, but that didn’t matter because it’s just a napkin.
Why do napkin sketches bring money?
You may wonder, if napkins’ value is their valuelessness, why do they get bid on for such high prices? Alan Rosenblum shared his thoughts on this, and why although he is exceptional at selling them, he remains puzzled by napkins as a medium. “My argument is simple. It’s not only that napkins are not a good medium, but of course they are the worst possible medium in the universe to draw on. It was not meant to be drawn on. It is a material that is meant to disintegrate very quickly to dissolve. It is supposed to dissolve in water and dissolve in the landfill. I cannot imagine anything less appropriate as something you are going to sell and people are going to pay for.”
On the other hand, Tommy Hernandez, who sketched the meatball appetizers in front of us, believes napkin sketches are precious because in a way that sketching on them requires more time than other mediums. “Depending on the type of pen that you are using, depending on a napkin you get, it’s a different feel, it’s a different sketch. For the ones I submitted this year, I had to use a ballpoint pen for some of the details and used a gel pen for others. If I use something that we normally use in the office, it saturates too much, it bleeds right through everything, and it tears easily, so a lot of the details get lost. It forces you to take your time. You have a new surface of a new napkin so you are going to detail, but you are having to take your time with it because you can stretch the hell out of it and now it’s no longer precious. Crap, I have to do it again, but it’s forcing me to take my time. So that’s why I prefer the napkins. That’s why I appreciate that they are always there.”
In theory, like Rosenblum, many would agree that napkins are not the ideal medium to produce beautiful sketches. Though Hernandez sees this as the beauty of napkin sketches as they become unreplaceable and precious in that sense. Hernandez also shared this with us. “My boss had brought up that she hates this whole notion of art being on display. She brought up the idea that art is supposed to be disposable. In the past, when you purchased a work of art, it deteriorated, it went away, and there was something beautiful about having to recreate it, having to find your own style because there are no photographs and there was no way to copy it. You are really just gaging what it was and how it made you feel. Whereas now, what happens is, it’s no longer precious if you just have it replicated there”.
But the act of framing napkin sketches and selling them to the highest bidder is a way of elevating the medium and preserving the art on them, if at least for a little while longer. Rosenblum believes art should last long in a good condition especially if somebody is paying to get it. “If somebody is buying something and paying for something, even though this is a benefit and people do it largely for that aspect, I think it is better if they know what they are buying is going to last that it’s a keeper.” Rosenblum expressed that at some point, AIAS NewSchool might test out transitioning from accepting only napkins to any mediums including more durable surface ones, such as Japanese rice paper which is his preference.
De Bartolo agreed with this. He values napkins as a medium that gives him the ability to experiment, but he is curious about the auction exploring different mediums. In fact, he confessed that he did not use any of the napkins that AIAS NewSchool had given to him, and instead, he used the ones that he found when he went out or on his flights, and he also donated one sketch to AIAS NewSchool that was done on a birch panel. “I’m gonna lean onto the idea of the value of sketching. And yes, there is the napkins as the medium, but I’m not gonna play by the rules. I’m not gonna give them back the couple of napkins they gave me”.
Rosenblum adds, “Art is only considered art if it’s signed by an artist, and it’s not something I made up. There is the historical precedent/anecdote of Marcel Duchamp’s readymades, perhaps the most famous of all being the urinal, that he presented to the art academy in Paris, in 1917. He presented a urinal put on a pedestal, called it ‘fountain.' and signed it ‘R Mutt’. The idea is that anything can be art if the artist sold the sign. For it to be considered art, it has to be signed by an artist, dated, and it needs to be known who made it, when, and how. Anonymous is difficult to sell.”
Hernandez agrees with the value of signatures on the napkins and said, “it’s giving the whole aspect of the idea that it’s not a lot of money but it’s something precious that I can hold on to, especially when you consider there was Zaha Hadid, and there was Cesar Perry, and there was Thom Mayne, it’s the starchitects submitting their work, so for us it becomes precious”. As DeBartolo and many others agree, napkins are cheap and available anywhere, however, when there is art on the surface of those cheap materials, it suddenly becomes valuable. Hernandez believes that is the reason AIAS NewSchool has been so successful in raising funds from these sketched napkins.
One thing worth mentioning, Rosenblum never sketches. Instead, Rosenblum draws with hard lines, and he would rather not call them “sketches” because those drawings require much more time and thinking. “I do not draw from life. I only draw essentially from my head. I believe in the morality of work called thinking through making, which is something I have been practicing for a long time”. He says that there are two ways architects and designers use sketches, one is as a recording and observation tool, and the other is a process tool for thinking and designing. If he would categorize what he does into either of those two, his process is closer to the latter. For observation purposes, he replaced sketching with photography, which is something he has been into since high school, and instead of bringing a sketchbook, he carries his camera.
For a designer like Rosenblum, it makes sense not to admire napkins because the medium for sketches or drawings does not have to be instant and disposable. As De Bartolo mentioned, napkins allow sketches without thinking too much even though they could lead to deeper thinking in the end, his way of drawing requires deep thinking from the beginning phase. But Rosenblum's drawings garner some of the highest bids every year at the auction. So, does the medium matter? We don’t know yet.
Whatever the medium, we are just grateful that the NewSchool Annual Napkin Sketch Auctions attract a huge crowd every year and they bring together students, faculty, and local architects and designers to raise money for a great student organization. If you’ve never gone to one, we highly recommend you attend this year's event.
Founding principal and designer at DBRDS, they served as Past President of the San Diego Architectural Foundation from 2015-2017 and again from 2021-2022. Their leadership has significantly contributed to the architectural community in San Diego.
A faculty member at NewSchool, Alan Rosenblum previously served as the auctioneer for the Napkin Sketch Auction.
Designer at DBRDS, he is also an alumni and faculty member of NewSchool. In 2023, they joined the San Diego Architectural Foundation’s Board of Directors.
Former NewSchool President (2016-2020)
President’s Blog – Marvin Malecha
Design Mind: The Importance of Napkin Sketches | NewSchool of Architecture & Design (newschoolarch.edu)
