A Little More on Lines

As so often happens, no sooner had I posted my blog on "Lines" than I read about Pat Steir's latest exhibit at Sue Scott Gallery in New York that ended last month. Entitled The Nearly Endless Line, it was a roughly brushed line that wended its way around corners and out of sight in a room, only to reappear, sometimes looping and squiggling to take on a life of its own.

My thanks to the Sue Scott Gallery for the image of Steir's installation.

Sometime emphasised by a slightly darker second line, it stood out from walls painted a deep royal blue that apparently was incredibly densely painted. The other magical ingredient was light, mysterious and other worldly. The immersion in this space, following this line around the room, could signify the passage of time in an almost hallucinogenic setting. Pat Steir, well known for her waterfall, drippy paintings, has also been creating wall drawings and installations for a number of years - I wrote a little about her work when she was showing Pat Steir: Drawing out of Line at the Neuberger Museum in New York at the end of 2010.

The power of a simple line is fascinating, particularly when it is large-scale, against a resonating colour and with appropriate lighting. Steir did Another Nearly Endless Line at the Whitney last year as well - not as powerful as the one at Sue Scott, but still one conveying a questing, thoughtful message.

I can't help thinking too of the power of a single sumi-e ink brush stroke in Chinese or Japanese brush drawings. These marks of beautifully nuanced tone can be a symphony of simplicity, yet make such an impact.

Look at these questing lines of calligraphy, Daruma, by Japanese poet and calligrapher, Ota Nampo Shokusanjin (1749-1823).

Shokusanjin - Ota Nampo - Daruma

This brush painting of Two Birds is by Bada Shanren (c. 1625-1705), one of the masters of Chinese calligraphy.

Two Birds, Bada Shanren, 1705

Hakuin Ekaku (January 19, 1686 - January 18, 1768) was one of the most influential figures in Japanese Zen Buddhism and  one of the greatest Japanese Zen painters.

Blind Men crossing a Bridge, Hakuin Ekaku (1685–1768)

Death, Hakuin Ekaku

Each of these works rely on the same sureness of hand that modern draughtsmen and women need to achieve powerful lines, whether on paper, scrolls or walls. The implicit message in all these memorable works is - for an artist - practice, practice, practice. As well, of course, as inspiration.

Celebrating Drawing

It used to be that drawing and drawing exhibitions were almost a rarity, not too many years ago. Now, wonderfully, it seems to be the opposite situation.

I thought about these contrasts when I read that Pat Steir, a pioneer in redefining drawing in America, is having a 25-year retrospective at the Neuberger Museum, Purchase, NY. Pat Steir: Drawing out of Line was first shown at the Rhode Island School of Design and has just opened at the Neuberger, until mid-December. I remember seeing her huge wave drawings back in the eighties. Impressive in size and even more impressive in their energy and vigour, they were done on long rolls of paper attached together. Steir made her abstract, flowing marks almost in dance movements, using her whole body, to attain a powerful fluidity that was very individual. Yet there was something about this motion of the drawings that brought one back to Hokusai's waves, as if both artists were tapping into underlying forces of nature. Steir dared to do things differently and redefine what drawing was all about, whether it was later depicting waterfalls almost by force of sheer gravity, or returning to minimal line in her most recent work.

Wind and Water', color soap ground, aquatint with soap ground , aquatint reversal, spit bite aquatint and drypoint, Pat Steir, 1996 (Image courtesy of the artist)

In another reminder of how important drawing has become to so many people today - just check out the Web for Internet-driven group drawing events such as Urban Sketches , SketchCrawl or Drawing Day 2010 - I read with amusement an article entitled "Naked All Night" in the September 2010 issue of American Artist. Like the Drawing Marathons run for a number of years by Graham Nickson at the New York Studio School, Pratt Institute, in Brooklyn, NY, has apparently been running an annual Draw-a-Thon for the last 22 years, during which some 550 people turned up to draw for seven hours, all night. Seven drawing studios, six drummers, pizza and soda and lots of enthusiasm for artists of all stripes – and apparently about 200 people lasted through the whole night. That is an eloquent testimony to today's state of drawing, I'd say!