The Drawing Center's
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The Drawing Center
Introduction
(Drawing as Thinking on Paper)
Sinceits establishmentin 1976,The Drawing Center has evolvedinto a respectedNew York institution, internationally recognized for its historical exhibitions, which are frequendy accompaniedby extensivecatalogues,and for the opportunities and servicesit provides emerging and under-representedartists. The cataloguesrange ftom ReadingDrawings:A Selection from the VictoriaundAlbert Museum(1984), a thorough investigation of drawing that brings together an immense variety of "unique works on paper" from different countries and periods, to PlainsIndian Drawings r86y-r93y: Pagafrom a VisualHistory Q996), the most comprehensivepublication to date on theseremarkable and understudied works. Building on this reputation and with the desire to make a more substantialand permanent record of The Drawing Center's activities, which cover the diversity of drawing past, present, and future, I have envisageda new publications program under the tide Drawing Papers.While the scholarly books will remain in place as a vehicle for researchand criticism pertaining to the historical projects, rhe Drawing Pnperswill function as an open-endedand active spaceof intervention. Unfolding between all of the Center's initiatives, the Drawing Paperswill be a flexible seriesof exhibition and program-related publications that will serveas a catalystfor public discussion exhibion the status of drawing in a multi-media age.The serieswill document the Selections fions, or non-thematic group shows of works by emerging artists; installation-basedprojects by contemporary artists in the Center's Drawing Room; artists'writings on drawing; public programs, such as symposia,lecfures, and dialoguesheld in relation to historical and special exhibitions; and education programs for school children. fu The Drawing Center is the only not-for-profit institution in the United Statesto focus solely on the exhibition of drawings, both historic and contemporary,it provides the most appropriate platform for the developmentof a very dlmamic and challenging public discussionof the medium. Comprised of approximatelyten volumes per year, rhe Drawing Paperswill reflect an ongoing experimentalspace.Each volume will consist of black-and-white imagesand texts, ranging from artists' statementsto critical essays,and will vary in length depending on the project. At the end of each exhibition season,the Drawing Paperswill be collected in a portfolio. The serieswill representan upgrade in the documentation of the Center'scontemporary exhibitions, allowing significandy more page-spacefor the work of eachartist, and will createa lasting record of the dialogical relationshipsbetween artists, art historians,architects,critics, museum professionals,and students.As such, it will reach out to different audiencesand for a larger distribution internationally, and it will act as an efficient and perdurable archive. Presentedat the turn of the millennium, the Drawing Paperswill not only consider emerging artists and crucial historical figures side-by-side,they will also stimulate an oppositional culrure of drawing in the face of an ever-expandingand hegemonic systemof techno-scientific practices and forms of knowledge. Drawing may be the most resistant to definition of the arts, and perhaps becauseit is so difficult to specif', the medium offers a wide range of productive and analltic possibilities. In fact, like handwriting, drawing has alwaysbeen connected to a prime conceptualizationwith the line as symbolic abstraction of the entry into language.In processesof inquiry, the discipline of drawing has traditionally been consideredboth poetic and scientific, with high intellectual references,even when it expressedthe unintentional and spontaneous.Alternating between the casualsketch and the elaboratepicture, the preparatory srudy and the technically labored and finished work, drawing has often been divided into the
preliminary and the accomplished.Since the seventeenthcentury, when the parametersof the medium were basicallyestablished,this dual definition has allowed drawing to move in a liminal spacelingering between the conceptual and the autographic. It remained defined in the two senses,even after the Cubists attempted to displacethis division through the radical introduction of collage. In the 1960s,howeveq artists seriouslyinvestigatedthe medium and those associatedwith Conceptual Art rigorously tilted the distinction toward the conceptualizatton of the idea. Artists' reexamination and reevaluation of drawing from a minor support medium of painting and sculpture to an independent art in its own right has led to institutions such as The Drawing Center, with its mission to promote drawing and its public appreciation. The Drawing Paperswill interpret drawing aswidely as possible,confronting draftsmanship with experimental work inside and outside the so-calledmargins of artistry, to articulate and emphasizethe crucial role of drawing in the development of creative thought and the visual arts. Considering drawing as a founding discipline, the aim of the Drawing Paperswill be to question and depict the part the medium performs in the imaginative process.This meansthat the aestheticfields to be covered in the Drawing Paperswill be very broad, encompassingnotations for choreography,theater, film, installation-basedpractices,musical scores,architectural design, and other arts, to drawings that are fully executedand self-containedrepresentations. In regard to this internal division, which has perhapsemergedwith increasing clarity since the development of the mechanization and computerization of design production, it is important to study the relationship between drawing as instruction/imagination and drawing as artistic aspiration. At the sametime, the digital developmentsin recent years might suggestthe disintegration of this ages-oldtechnique on paper. Using the samematerial publications are made from, will drawing resist disappearanceinto ryberspacemuch as books have?Up until now, regardlessof the hype of the Web Lifestyle, e-books have failed at displacing traditional books. Nonetheless, the rapid accumulation and communication of information today prevents us &om prefiguring the future. It seemsunlikely, howeveq that an e-drawing will replace a drawing on paper: it may become a supplement,but probably never a substitute. During the twentieth cenrury the ideology of modernism replacedthe narrative and communicative functions of drawing with an almost exclusiveconsideration of its expressive,notational, and self-referential dimensions.Drawing as a coming-into-language has evolved from the most gestural expressionof the unconscious(such as in the automatic drawings of the Surrealists)to the matrixial design informed by the modernist credo of objectivity and deskilling (such as in drawings by Minimalist and Conceptual artists). Through this trajectory drawing has experienceda gradual transformation from being an intimate graphological confession to becoming a strucrural model, in which lines and marks are organizedaccording to a matrix determined by the spaceof the sheet.As soon as representationwas defined by the generating processand material, drawing becamethe exploration of marks left by the process itself. Paradoxically,as this occurs, the autographic and conceprualseemto fuse again. In an era of eclecticism and electronics,it is this vitality of the moving hand and the exploring mind that will be the poignant and fascinating subject of the Drawing Papers. CerunnrNg DE ZEGHER Director
KersanrNe Gnossn
I place my wall installations wherever my g ze leadsme when I enter a spacefor the first time. The work is real. It makes the wall visible by depicting its surface.At the same time, it is a certain form in a certain place. All my spray paint wall works are temporary. They will disappear.They live like a four-dimensional virus ignoring the basic architectural structures that host them.
The works in the exhibition are listed following each respectiveartist'sstatement.
Untitled, rygg Acrvlic on wall
KanuenrNa
Gnossr, Untitbd, ry99 Acrylic on waIl, 47 ft 6 in x r 37 ft 3 in (57o x 1647 cm) Installation view at the Kunsthalle Niirnberg
HoNoe Thrrsnr
In a docum ent^ry sense,photographs are spatially and temporally quite sculptural. With a camera, I take black-and-white photographs. Looking at one of the photographs I have taken, I then copy the image onto paper with charcoal pencil and recreate the photograph. Charcoal pencil is like soot on paper, and I use it becauseit gives a sensation akin to something burning. This way of working requires a gre t deal of time, but its simplicity and repetitiveness appeal to me as a stroll through consciousness. My Walhing in the Mountains seies started with walks in the mountains of the hamlet in which I live. Defining nature is difficult; all I do is walk in the mountains. I sensein the changing vegetarion there and in the signs and traces left by insects, animals, and people a wonderful order and ease.
Walking in tbe Mountains-May, rggz Charcoal on paper,mounted on wood, 8 ft 6 in x t7 ft 4 in (z5g x 532 cm) Walking in tbe Mountains-March, rgg+ Charcoal on paper,mounted on wood, 7 ft 5 inx t7 ft z in (zz7 x 525 cm)
rgg2 Tixnsur, Walking in tbe M0untains-Ma!, Charcoal on papet mounted on wood, 8 ft 6 in x t7 k 4 Q59 x 532 cm)
HoNoa
Srnvn Roonw
Notes on the Hot Wheels Drawings Unlike my paintings, I make my drawings in series-usually the result of an exploration of an outside system or structuring process,tempered with a healthy dose of intuitive responses.By setting up rules, I am forced away from a comfort Tsns-f61ggd to continue ((1vs1["-to discover things anew. 16 The Hot WbeelsDrawings were done using a 1969 stencil set made by Mattel. I had this toy as a kid. It is one of my earliest drawing memories. When I rediscovered the toy I began again,basically plotting down lines and forms (with a brush instead of the suggested pencil), quickly moving away from the Corvettes, Ford MK fVs, and Turbofires in an attempt to arrive at that interior landscapethat occurs when one is quietly lost in the simple activity of drawing and looking at a picture. Using these six simple stencils-the box states that there arc 216 possible drawings-I have been working on the series sporadically for about two years and have so far completed around a 150. I am interested in the fact that these organic looking images are made up of the lines and shapesofhot rods and racing cars;and that the drawings are createdentirely out ofan arrangement of lines that are not my own (perhaps the accidental smudgesand stains are the only marks that are uuly mine). The ink colors were chosen in responseto the rememberedcolors of actual Hot Wheels cars that I had as a kid; and thus, as the images move between suggestion and abstraction, they become a kind of reference to memoryand to the fleetingnessof rememberedthings incomplete.
Works from the series,FlotWheelsDrawings, rggT-gg Ink on paper, rg x 24 in (48.3 x 6r cm) each
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Srrvn RoorN, Hot Weels, Tfurbofire, ry97 , 9 r z4 in ( 4 8 .3x 6 l cm ) fnk on paper1
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Garden-Space There is one in front of me, behind me, aboveme, below me. This place surrounds me, in this place I move. My hand draws the path of the bird's flight acrossthe dome of the sky. The branches of the treetops. The waves against my boat. The mirror in the deep. Garden of remembrance. without point of view, without point of vanishing. Fleeing toward the earth's core, opening up from there, it forms a cosmic place, radiating and weighdess, imagined and really seen. The artist stands and floats in this room ofthree hundred and sixty degrees.
Drawings from the Amiens series, 1999 Pencil on paper, g 7/6 x rz 5/8 in (24 x 3z cm) Collection of Le Frac Picardie Drawings from the Rostockseries, 1996 Pencil on paper, 9 7/16 x n 5/8 in (24 x 3z cm)
Honillonnnges, Amiens, 1999 Benrere Ceurrra Tucuorsrt, Pencil on paper, 9 7/16 x rz 5/8 in (z4x 3z cm) Collection of Le Frac Picardie
Peul Z.ttwtsne,
My drawings are about subdety and simplicity, or more so about the complexity of simplicity. Each shapein the drawing has to function at a maximum level of power. Placement of the compositional elements is crucial. For example, an oval shape can imply movement when placed in a certain area and on a certain axis. Regardlessof its size, it can set the entire drawing field into motion. Herein lies the difficulty in these drawings. When does the addition of one element or the subtraction or shift of another element result in the collapse of the composition? This is the conundrum on which these drawings exist.
YearsWest,rg98 Drawings from the series3o YearsEast-fhirtl Charcoal on paper, 30 x 24 in (76.2 x 6r cm) each
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The Drawing Center is the only not-for-profit institution in the country to focus solely on the exhibition of drawings, both contemporary and historic. It was establishedin 1976 to provide opportunities for emerging and under-recognized artists; to demonstrate the significance and diversity of drawings throughout history; and to stimulate public dialogue on issuesof art and culture. This is number 1 of the Drawing Papers,a seriesof publications documenting the Center's exhibitions and public programs and providing a forum for the study of drawing.
Boenn or Drnpcrons Dita Amory GeorgeNegroponte Co-Chairmen
FrancesBeatty Adler JamesM. Clark, Jr. FrancesDittrner Colin Eisler Bruce Ferguson Michael Iovenko Werner H. Kramarskv Abby Leigh Wlliam S. Lieberman Glenn Ligon Michael Llnne Sally Engelhard Pingree Elizabeth RohatFn* Eric C. Rudin Jeanne C. Thayer* Edward H. Tuck Andrea Woodner " Emeritus Catherine de Zegher Director Executiae
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Major support for the development and presentation of the Drawing Papershas been generouslycontributed by FrancesDittmer. The paper of the Drawing Papersis provided by the Aberdeen Paper Group a division of Cenual Lewmar LLP.
The Drawing Center is also grateful for the support it receivesfor its exhibition programs and operations from the following sources: Benefnctors Adler Family Foundation, The Charles Engelhard Foundation, Fifth Floor Foundation, Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, Mitch & Abby Leigh Foundation, EdwardJohn Noble Foundation, May & Samuel Rudin Family Foundation, Inc., Eugene V and Clare E. Thaw Charitable Ti'ust. Major Sponsors Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Jo Carole & Ronald S. Lauder, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Sponsors Harriet Ames Charitable Ti'ust, Anne H. Bass,The Bohen Foundation, Frances& John Bowes, The Buhl Foundation, Charina Foundation, Christie's, The Chubb Corporation, Con Edison, Cowles Charitable Ti.ust, Douglas Cramer, Katherine Farley & Jerry I. Speyer,Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, Inc., The Howard Gilman Foundation, Goldberger Foundation, JeanneGreenberg & Nicolas Rohaqm, The Greenwall Foundation, The Greenwich Collection Ltd., The William and Mary Greve Foundation, Inc., The Heathcote Art Foundation, F{ome Box Office (HBO), Mr. & Mrs. JamesHoughton, Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies,Alison Lasley,Philip Morris Companies Inc., The Felix & Elizabeth Rohat'rn Foundation, The SchiffFoundation, Roy & Niuta Titus Foundation, Tirfts Foundation, Weingart Foundation, Elizabeth Weir & Mallory Factor, and The Woodcock Foundation. Witb significant sapport fT on The Institute of Museum and Library Services,National Endowment for the Arts, New York City Departrnent of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, and The Drawing Center's National Council, Friends, and Members.
The Drawing Center 35 Wooster Street New York, NY 10013 Tel 212-219-2166 Fax:212-966-297 6