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18/2/2010

Pat Steir

RISD Museum of Art, Providence

Pat Steir (American, b. 1938), a major figure in American art since the 1970s, has created some of the most ambitious and challenging drawings of the late 20th century. This February, The RISD Museum of Art presents Pat Steir: Drawing Out of Line in its Chace Center special-exhibition galleries. Organized by Jan Howard, Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at the Museum, and Susan Harris, an independent curator, Pat Steir: Drawing Out of Line will present 40 years of Steir’s work in a survey that focuses on her exploration of the vocabulary of drawing.

Pat Steir: Drawing Out of Line concentrates on five distinct bodies of work: minimal and intimate word/image drawings (1971–74); richly delineated serial investigations of line (1975–76); heroically scaled wave drawings (1983–86); four interrelated series of stunning waterfall drawings (1991); and a new and dramatic series featuring broad, dark gestural marks that sometimes serve as a backdrop for delicate pastel grids (2007–08). Wall drawings, an ongoing aspect of Steir’s work since 1977, are also represented in a re-creation of Self-Portrait: An Installation, first seen at the New Museum in New York in 1987. In addition to the wall drawing, the exhibition will include some 50 drawings on paper, dramatically varied in scale—from intimate, journal-like sheets to compositions up to 21 feet long—set in relationship to her paintings and prints. The exhibition will encompass 6,000 square feet of gallery space within the Chace Center.

“Drawing is at the heart of everything she does—she is also a painter, printmaker, and poet—and her lifelong investigation of the vocabulary, history, and meaning behind mark-making makes The RISD Museum an ideal place to present the first retrospective look at her drawings in 25 years,” said Jan Howard, organizing curator.

When visitors enter the main exhibition space, they will encounter Steir’s quiet, early works—word/image drawings inspired by the randomness of John Cage’s musical compositions both in design and subtlety. She, like many artists of her generation, was challenging definitions of art, and particularly drawings. Abstract marks, images, and words are scattered across the sheet with equal weight. Having written poetry before learning to paint, Steir considers drawing and writing as one and the same. An example of this type of drawing, recently acquired by the Museum and on view in the exhibition, is The Burial Mound at Stonehenge (1973), rendered in graphite, ink wash, and dye on paper.

In 1975, Steir narrowed her research to focus on art itself, first making drawings in her own version of Minimalism’s geometric and serial formats, exploring the parameters of a mark with a drawn frame. For a time her drawing investigation took place only in prints as represented by the etching portfolio Drawing Lesson, Part 1, Line (1978, from the LeWitt Collection). The marks themselves refer to artists she admires, including Rembrandt, LeWitt, and Van Gogh.

In the series of large wave drawings, Steir challenges the notion of drawing in both scale and ambition. She created drawings such as Untitled (1985), which measures 5 feet by more than 14 feet (from the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York), by stapling sheets of rolled paper on her studio wall and composing with the movement of her entire body. The circular forms correspond to the reach of her arm, yet she was also inspired by the waves of Hokusai, Courbet, and Turner.

Drawings of waves gave way to waterfalls in 1987 as Steir discovered in them a vehicle for pursuing the nature of making a picture and of representing nature itself. Her marks, created by gravity, are literally falling liquid, at the same time providing the illusion of the waterfall. Four stunning series of drawings made in 1991 isolate and layer this gesture on paper. The RISD Museum’s drawing Austria Group No. 2 (1991), which measures five by five feet, is one of several works in the show that have not been exhibited in the United States.

Steir’s most recent drawings, seen for the first time in this exhibition, contain a complex network of line strikingly reminiscent of her earliest drawings and etchings. In Untitled (2008, collection the artist, courtesy Cheim & Read, New York)—created in oil, graphite, ink, acrylic, and pastel—the thick, curving, black brushstroke suggests a torso as well as water, with drips flowing downward from the point where the brush left the paper. Echoes in the recent drawings of techniques, strategies, gestures, and marks developed and utilized throughout Steir’s career illuminate the interconnectedness of her artistic output as a whole.

The entry gallery at the top of the Chace Center escalator will be covered with the wall drawing Self-Portrait: An Installation. The drawing was inspired by Renaissance and Baroque drawing manuals discussed in E.H. Gombrich’s seminal text Art and Illusion (1956) as well as those in the New York Public Library’s Rare Books Room. Steir was not being ironic in copying models from drawing treatises and calling the work a self-portrait; she was situating herself within the practice of past artists and acknowledging that all art comes from an understanding of the work of earlier artists. She is also questioning whether all art is self portraiture, even the most analytical and emotionally removed.

Steir will recreate this wall drawing with 12 RISD students in Wintersession internships led by Dennis Congdon, professor of painting. The drawing, which will commence on February 2, will take approximately two weeks to complete, giving the public the rare opportunity to watch Steir—along with Anthony Sansotta, a longtime member of the Sol LeWitt wall-drawing team—at work.

Throughout the Museum’s collections, connections will be made to the Steir exhibition, including references to artists who have informed her work both in image and gesture. A small complementary exhibition of recent prints and drawings from the Museum’s collection on view in the Buonanno Gallery will feature the work of many of Steir’s contemporaries who share a similar drawing sensibility.

In celebration of Pat Steir: Drawing Out of Line, the Museum has organized a series of programs and events to underscore several topics related to Steir’s drawings. Steir will return to campus for two special conversations with artists. At 2:30pm on Sunday, February 28, she joins in conversation with Kathan Brown, founding director of San Francisco’s Crown Point Press, one of the most prestigious print shops in the country and where Steir has been making prints since 1977. This relationship has given Brown incomparable insight into Steir’s working process. Jan Howard, Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at The RISD Museum, will moderate a discussion about how the role of drawing has been played out in Steir’s prints. This event is co-sponsored by RISD’s Printmaking Department.

At 6:30pm on Thursday, March 11, Pat Steir and Julie Mehretu (RISD MFA 1997) will each discuss the central role of drawing in their work. Susan Harris, the co-curator for Pat Steir: Drawing Out of Line, will then direct a conversation on the drawing’s position in the art world during the period when each of the artists came to prominence, with a special focus on issues specific to women artists of their respective generations. This event is co-sponsored by the Painting departments at Brown University and RISD, and the Foundation Studies Division at RISD.

On Sunday, April 25 at 2:30 pm, a special poetry reading with Anne Waldman will celebrate the poet’s connection to Steir and other visual artists. Waldman has been described in The New York Times as “the fastest, wisest woman to run with the wolves in some time.” She is a poet, professor, performer, cultural activist, and the author of more than 40 books and small-press editions of poetry and poetics. With Allen Ginsberg, she co-founded of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, in 1974.

Also, on Saturday, April 24, from 1 to 4 pm, the Museum invites the community to The Big Draw, a day of drawing based on several themes in Steir’s work. This free event is geared to all ages and levels of ability. Refreshments will be provided by Tim Hortons on the Chace Plaza.

ORGANIZATION
Pat Steir: Drawing Out of Line, has been organized by Jan Howard, Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at The RISD Museum, and Susan Harris, independent curator. Jan Howard was appointed curator at The RISD Museum in April 2000. Since 2002, she has also served as the Museum’s curatorial chair. Prior to her position at RISD, she was a curator for 14 years in the Department of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at the Baltimore Museum of Art. She holds an M.A. in art history from the University of Kansas. Her exhibitions have primarily focused on modern and contemporary art, including Joe Deal: New Work, 2009; Interior Drama: Aaron Siskind’s Photographs of the 1940s, 2003; Laurie Simmons: The Music of Regret, 1997; Roni Horn: Inner Geography, 1994; and the series Drawing Now, 1987–89. She recently completed a collaborative reinstallation of The RISD Museum’s 20th-century galleries.

Based in New York City, Susan Harris is a curator and writer of contemporary art. She has a master’s degree in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. Her recent curatorial and publication projects include Jim Hodges: A Line to You and Nancy Spero: Weighing the Heart Against a Feather of Truth, both of which took place at the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. She curated two Richard Tuttle exhibitions at the MuseuSerralves in Porto, Portugal, and at the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea in Santiago, Spain, and authored the publication Richard Tuttle: Memento/cENTER which accompanied these exhibitions. Prior to this, she was a curator of The American Century: 1950–2000 at the Whitney Museum of American Art. She is also a contributing writer for Art in America and The Brooklyn Rail.

Accompanying the exhibition will be a publication featuring color reproductions, with text by Judith Tannenbaum, Richard Brown Baker Curator of Contemporary Art at the RISD Museum.

Image: The Austria Group. No. 2, 1991. Purchased with funds from the Paula and Leonard Granoff Fund and Donald Stanton ©Pat Steir

Support has been provided by The National Endowment for the Arts; Paula and Leonard Granoff; Locks Family Foundation; John Cheim (RISD BFA 1977); Howard Read (RISD BFA 1976); and an anonymous donor. The Providence Tourism Council is supporting the free community day featuring The Big Draw.

Press contact:
Matt Montgomery 401/454-6793, mmontgom@risd.edu
Carol Cutler (401 454-6793 | ccutler@risd.edu

Opening celebration: Saturday, February 27, 2010

The RISD Museum of Art Presents
224 Benefit Street Providence, RI 02903
Hours:
Tuesday through Sunday, 10am-5pm.
The Museum stays open until 9pm on the third Thursday of the month (except December)
Admission:
Adults: $10
Senior citizens (age 62+): $7
Youths (ages 5-18): $3
children under 5: free

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