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17/9/2011

Extended Drawing

Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht

The hand-drawn line is the most personal and individual form of expression in art. The execution of lines in a drawing is like a handwritten letter and tells a lot about the author. Whether it is florid or angular in style, people like to think it mirrors the artist’s character or inner emotions. The line speaks. And a drawing conveys a sense of great intimacy.

In Extended Drawing, the aforementioned artists have distanced themselves from these conventions. Personal handwriting is categorically avoided and they aim instead to attain the impersonal. Neutrality is the goal, and art is reduced to an instrument used for a ‘mechanical’ execution that allows the preclusion of too much expressivity.

The exhibition occupies the whole of the 2nd floor of the museum. It gives plenty of space to each artist and enables forty large works to be shown, bringing out an aspect of their work that has never before been addressed in such depth. Sol LeWitt, Robert Mangold, Bruce Nauman and Richard Serra are very important to the Bonnefantenmuseum’s collection, in which each artist has been represented by several works since 1987.

Sol LeWitt
1928 Hartford (CT) – New York City (NY) 2007

Sol LeWitt’s first wall drawing dates from 1968 and was created in the Paula Cooper Gallery in New York. Creating a wall drawing was a sudden, radical, but for LeWitt logical switch from three-dimensional to two- dimensional. He had suddenly found a method whereby he could escape the limitations of paper and canvas, but even more importantly he could work directly on the wall (or floor) without the intervention of a support (canvas or paper). In his own work, he thus changed the role of drawing as a modest medium into drawing on a large scale in architectural spaces. He also changed drawing’s significance as the most intimate form of ar- tistic expression, as Sol LeWitt did not execute his wall drawings himself. They were carried out by a team of assistants, albeit in accordance with the artist’s strictly set methods and designs. The most important thing is that the personal style of the makers was made as anonymous as possible, and over the years his crew developed all sorts of complicated techniques for doing so. Of course, every execution is different in appearance to the previous one, as the group of assistants inevitably put their mark on it, but this was not a problem for the artist, as long as the team kept to his guidelines and did not try to make it into a different art work. Sol LeWitt himself said that he saw it as a collaboration between the artist and the makers, comparing it to the performance of a piece of music. It is their interpretation of his work.

Executing the wall drawings demands a lot of time and patience. The walls are carefully prepared and given the correct ground coats. The acry- lic or latex top coat is applied in several layers using a special technique of crosswise brushstrokes. Lines and areas are marked with tape, and then paper templates are used. It is an extremely labour-intensive method that must also be executed with great precision. The paint layers are built up in a way that no differences in thickness are visible, and the final result must be completely flat.

The Bonnefantenmuseum’s collection includes several works by Sol LeWitt: Long Pyramid (1994), a sculpture of concrete blocks that stands in one of the inner gardens, a series of large gouaches on paper, Complex Forms no.8, a wooden sculpture from 1988 on display in the Cu- pola alongside Wall Drawing #801: Spiral, which Sol LeWitt designed especially for this tower in 1996 and which has recently been applied for the third time. And on the third floor is Wall Drawing #1239: Scribbles (2007) which is executed in pencils of different hardnesses.

Robert Mangold
1937 North Tonawanda (NY) – Washingtonville (NY)

The generation to which Mangold belongs is influenced strongly by the Abstract Expressionism of artists such as Barnett Newman. Movements like Minimal and Conceptual Art arose in reaction to this. In his work, Mangold has always adhered to the same strict formula of striving for a balance between surface, colour, line and form. His work is characterised by his use of the ‘shaped canvas’. The artist, however, regards his works as paintings rather than objects, even though he claims not to be interested in painting techniques. Mangold starts each of his works by drawing quick sketches, in which he makes the most important decisions intuitively. The best ideas are developed on a larger scale, in graphite and pastel on paper, after which several versions are created on canvas. In pen- cil on the shaped canvas, he creates a grid structure, which he uses to draw the thicker lines: ovals, waves, scrolls and circles. The lines appear mathe- matical in the precision of their execution, but from close up you can see that they are drawn by hand, over and over again until the right thickness has been achieved. The element of line – linear configurations drawn in pencil – is as important in his work as colour. To emphasise this, Mangold opted for the visible pencil line rather than the line drawn in the paint layer, in which the line is part of the paint and not an autonomous form. In his early works, the linear image was determined only by the dividing line between the panels. Although colours play an important role, they are inconspicuous and neutral, and expressly in balance with the shape of the canvas. In order to restrict the personal touch as far as possible, the paint is usually applied with a roller in several thin layers.

Although Mangold’s works can be taken in at a glance (something the ar- tist aims for), they only fully reveal themselves on longer contemplation. There is a paradox between what is there and what is not there, and a role is also played by the remaining space between the panels and the recesses.

In 1990, the Bonnefantenmuseum acquired the painting Red with Green Ellipse/Gray Frame (1989), and in 1994 Plane/Figure Series (Double Panel) F (1993), and four drawings from the same series, as a gift from the artist.

Bruce Nauman
1941 Fort Wayne (IN) – Galisteo (NM)

Bruce Nauman is one of today’s most important artists. Early on, he aban- doned painting and began a restless investigation into the possibilities of sculpture, performance, installations, film, video, photography and neon for his work. Ideas from other disciplines, like literature, dance, music and theatre were to play an increasingly important role in his art. Nau- man was a pioneer in the field of video art. The series of early videos from the 1960s, in which he filmed himself carrying out absurd and pointless exercises in his studio, are considered particularly ground-breaking. He has never imposed any limitations on himself, executing every idea in the most suitable medium and always searching for new visual possibilities. Right from the start, Nauman investigated serious themes like the human condition, and his work plays with language, humour, irony and meaning or contradiction.

For the neons, Bruce Nauman made sketches in pencil, charcoal and watercolour. For the figures, he used the outlines of the bodies of himself and his wife. The double outlines in different colours indicate where neon is to be used, and the layered figures indicate how they will appear when the neon flashes on and off. The primary colours red, yellow and blue are used for the male figures, while the female figures are represented in softer shades like pink, green and orange. The timing of the sequences is very important and is fixed and repeated in a continual loop, each figure having its own individual programme.

Though neon light is immaterial, it draws attention immediately, com- pletely dominating its environment and attracting through its warm glow and intense colours. The same applies to Nauman’s neons, despite the unsettling message they convey. Conflicting signals are given simul- taneously in a deliberate attempt to arouse confusion and unease in the viewer.

In 2009, Bruce Nauman was awarded the oeuvre prize, the Golden Lion, at the Venice Biennale. Works by Bruce Nauman in the Bonnefantenmuseum’s collection include a series of works on paper, Untitled (including Fingers and Holes) (1994) and an installation from 1990, Hand Puppet.

Richard Serra
1939 San Francisco (CA) – New York City (NY)

Serra’s drawings are not sketches for his sculptures, but autonomous works of art. Although he has been drawing since 1972, his first solo exhibition only came in 1974, at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York. Originally, he worked in charcoal, but switched to paintstick from 1973. He developed his own procedure for making large blocks of paintstick (a mix of oil pastel, tar, beeswax and resin), which enabled him to work large surface areas with a single movement. It is a heavy, physical, repe- titive way of working, in which the linen or paper is covered with the paintstick. Besides physical strength, it also demands great concentration. The layers are applied from the centre; first horizontally and then vertical- ly, crosswise, until the black has enough absorption and the structure of the linen becomes visible. This material quality allows people to experi- ence his drawings as an object rather than as a flat surface, which is what they actually are.

Unlike colour, which reflects light, black absorbs light and therefore gains weight and gravity. This affects people’s physical experience on entering a room where Serra’s works are installed. The heaviness of the black areas affects the perception of scale, and of the interplay of lines and the specific shape of the linen.

At his big exhibition of drawings at the Bonnefantenmuseum in 1990, Serra remarked, “The only way you can place a weight within the confines of a given space is by defining the form of the drawing in direct relation to the floor, wall, corner or ceiling of the room. In this way, a space or lo- cation can be marked out within the architectural framework that differs from the architectural intention. The black installations have succeeded only when they have brought about a change in the architecture on the flat surface. In doing so, illusionist strategies must be avoided. The black shapes, which function as weights within a given architectural space, cre- ate new spaces and locations within this space, resulting in a dislocation of spatial experience”.

Richard Serra is known mainly for his large-scale sculptures in Cor-ten steel, which are constructed in such a way as to sound out the limits of the laws of gravity.

The Bonnefantenmuseum has two works in its collection: Top Cut/Double Tilt (1985), a drawing on linen, and The Hours of the Day (1990), a sculpture consisting of twelve steel plates that stands in one of the inner gardens.

Extended Drawing is accompanied by a publication. Available at the Museum Shop.

The Bonnefantenmuseum receives long-term support from the Province of Limburg and project-related support from the city of Maastricht.
Sponsor: DSM
The Bonnefantenmuseum is a beneficiary of the BankGiro Loterij.
KLARA is mediapartner of the exhibition.

Image: Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing a118 (2005) © Peter Cox

Press contact: Guillemette Naessens / Noortje Fischer: Tel. +31 43 329 01 10, fax +31 43 329 01 99, pressoffice@bonnefanten.nl

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