Page 37 - Studio International - June 1970

were flags, girdles and shirts. 'The Store' the Ray Gun Theatre performances—which had been bared, and fragments of newspaper
reliefs and objects are basically coloured led to the 'soft' sculptures. represent the information taken in. This piece
fabric, though the fabric is stiffened with plas- In 1962 and the beginning of 1963, I rendered and the reliefs and sculptures made using
ter and painted with house enamel. Coloured volume by a scalloping, convex line around newspaper scraps (like the Celine, Backwards)
vinyls were not then in widespread use. the object, in calendars and alphabets. The could be considered drawings. The whole
`The Store' drawings change more and more wings of the biplane become bulky. An ir- period of the street concerns drawing. News-
from line into colour—areas of atmospheric regular line is also used to suggest mass. paper—Street—Brain. Also—Flag. The Pro-
wash set in space with a summary indication Voluminous subjects are preferred, pneu- vincetown subject is a translation of the street,
of line (usually a cast shadow or the space- matic-like tires, out-pushing like baked pota- the newspaper.
energizing dots). In 'The Store' drawings, the toes, buns and a certain design of a portable The consistency of the styles developed in Los
paper becomes the store window. typewriter. The circle and the letter 'B' Angeles was interrupted by a return to New
In 'Circus (Fotodeath/Ironworks)', a per- become important, as do subjects involving York and a trip abroad in the summer of
formance of February 1961, the stage is spheres (like the pool table) and pillow effects. 1964. The one-man show in Paris in October
divided into halves, one in black, white and The imagined space of the drawing becomes was devoted to Parisian edibles, some in
neutrals, and the other in rich colour. The that of a room containing an object. The stages of being consumed.
contrasting colour schemes are identified in social setting becomes 'The Home', located in Re-establishment in New York occurred in
the script as 'male' and 'female'. The colour, home-conscious Los Angeles—to which I March 1965 in a new loft of large proportions.
softness, and lubricity of the store material is moved in August 1963. Though it was located on the fringe of the
considered 'feminine'. `The Home' works made of fabric or wood Lower East Side, I felt no engagement with
Specific commissions, applications of draw- required plans and templates, partly because the area comparable to that of 1959-62. I
ing, especially of posters and magazine covers, I lacked the skill for sewing and facilities for was affected by the huge scale of the new
stimulate my drawing activity. Taking a fine woodworking; partly out of a desire to place, filled with light, and I arranged the
poster as the motive for drawing, I produce de-personalize the work and involve others in rooms so that the eye could travel from one
many more drawings than are necessary—a its manufacture. From practical beginnings, end to the other-204 feet.
`suite'. More drawings than are so identified I developed a mechanical style per se in pen The 'monument' drawings beginning at this
are studies in the course of arriving at a and pencil, involving the use of perspective. time were stimulated by the new scale and
poster. In the period 1959-61 posters were This linear style is also seen in the 'erotic' also by the viewpoint from an airplane. The
produced for the two-man show at Judson drawings of 1965. In the decline of the style, area in which the objects are placed grows
(with Dine), the Ray Gun show, the perform- metamorphic elements appear. from a room to a landscape, like that shown
ances of 'Blackouts' and 'Circus', the one- Drawings in preparation of soft objects on a postcard. The objects consequently be-
man show at the Reuben Gallery in May consist of: (1) a drawing of the object as hard come 'colossal', since the landscape, being a
1960, the Martha Jackson show of 'New (as it appears) — to acquaint myself with the real one, cannot be taken as a miniature.
Forms, New Media', the Passloff Dance facts of it; (2) drawings leading to the con- A large part of the pleasure of drawing is the
Company, and 'The Store.' struction of it by sewing or carpentry; (3) awareness of shifting scale. Drawing is
In 1961, I rented a store on 2nd St. and used drawings anticipating or imagining the soft miniaturistic, but while drawing one imagines
it as a studio, as a re-creation of a store and as effect. This is seen clearly in the set of draw- differences of scale. One effect of the monu-
a theatre. Drawing in this period gave way to ings later, in preparing the Drum Pedal. ment drawings is an imaginary expansion of
the direct dishing up of gobs of coloured In soft objects, the expressionism is 'built in'. the drawing scale. The function of these
plaster in space (using clothing and food sub- But the effect need not be seen as expression- drawings is to depict, like an impressionistic
jects as a vehicle). The first step in the reliefs istic. Once the room-space is established, the photograph, though there are elements of un-
was the forming of the shape roughly in chicken mass of air and light is taken into account, and naturalistic calligraphy recalling the line
wire, which could be called a sort of drawing. the 'skin' of the subject is thinned to give the drawings of 1959.
Hasty preliminary sketches were made but illusion of participating in the whole space A postcard is sometimes used, altered. Dis-
the drawings were finished in the reliefs (though the effect is gravity). The model of pleased with the summary crayon and water-
and objects. Some watercolour fragments the animate body, with its interchange colour statements of the early monument
dropped on the floor were rescued after being through the skin with its surroundings, is drawings, I later (1967) took up pencil and
scuffled about for several weeks, and collaged combined with the inanimate subject. The pencil crayons, resulting in a more architec-
in combinations. soft sculptures are therefore not objects in the tural effect.
In the spring of 1962, Dick Bellamy offered sense of the hard and isolated objects of the The 'monuments' — a conceptual direction—
me the use of the Green Gallery on 57th St. Dada or Surrealist period. move from simple placement of favourite
for the summer, to build a show. Midtown Another statement of this participation of objects onto the landscape to more studied
was a new environment. Though I made thing with its surroundings is found in 'The relations of object and site. F.ex., the ironing
some works for this show at the downtown Store' reliefs, whose torn edges indicate board echoes the shape of Manhattan Island.
Store, this time marks the end of my engage- removal from a larger shape. Vision at that Some of the juxtapositions are means to social
ment with the Lower East Side, in which I time, for me, was assumed flatter, and what comment, often supported by written material
had immersed myself for six years. was seen, taken as a plane surface, like a film, accompanying the drawings. Some 'drawings'
The space of the drawing now becomes the mirror, or newspaper. Thus, an advertisement consist of text alone, a sort of prose poetry
space of a gallery, a move toward anonymity or part of one, ripped from a newspaper, was describing a visual effect.
of space, and a concentration on the objects taken to correspond to a glance at the plane At the end of Spring 1967, figure drawing
themselves. of vision. In the street period, the newspaper reappears in pencil, erotically inspired, as a
An exception to gallery anonymity is found also served as a bridge between the subject of substitute for an object, or to convey the
in the Bedroom Ensemble construction, where the street and my representation—the news- sensation of an object.
the front room of the Sidney Janis Gallery paper having the colour, linearity and also the Throughout the variations described in the
suggests an actual bedroom. daily, vulgar, and language-filled character ten years of drawing covered, there have been
Drawing of the object in space required an of the street. returns to previous solutions when necessary.
emphasis on volume. This was stimulated by In the Street-Head (1959), the mass of material Style means to me a clear and consistent
stuffed pieces made as props and costumes for seen is represented in the see-er, as if the brain method as to material and technique, for