White cube

As a medium, drawing covers a range of attitudes in art, from the immediate, intimate and subjective to investigative, analytical and narrative. Joseph Beuys described it as 'a thinking medium', both as a catalyst for processing thought, and as work in its own right. This selection of drawings and prints traces a range of subjects, including: 'Ideas Generation', where artists use the immediacy of drawing as a means to prepare and refine a concept; 'Systems, Architectonics and Abstraction', in which predetermined rules, structures and methods govern the form of the image; 'Expressions of Anatomy', where intimate portrayals of the figure assume a central position; 'Graphic Narratives / Surreal Legacies', featuring imagery from the fantastically bizarre to the comically illustrative; and 'Historia', which examines how drawing has been used to question the role of photography in the mediation and construction of historical memory.

Kupferstichkabinett: Between Thought and Action featured work by 55 artists, including Bruce Nauman, Lucian Freud, Antony Gormley, Raqib Shaw, Gabriel Orozco, Jake & Dinos Chapman, Gary Hume, Luc Tuymans, Georg Baselitz, Miroslaw Balka, Tracey Emin, Mona Hatoum, Damien Hirst, Anselm Kiefer, Julie Mehretu and Rachel Whiteread, amongst others. A fully illustrated catalogue, with a text by the exhibition's curator Susan May, Creative Director, White Cube, accompanied the exhibition.