TRANSFORMING CHRONOLOGIES: AN ATLAS OF DRAWINGS, PART TWO

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York

by Alejandra Villasmil

The formal analogies in MoMA´s drawings collection are revealed in this two-part exhibition organized by the Venezuelan Luis Pérez-Oramas, Adjunct Curator of the institution´s Department of Drawings. The exhibition is based on the premise that, like an atlas of images, a collection of drawings may be structured according to the formal coincidences between the various works, a curatorial approach that goes beyond the traditional chronological model. For the first part of this exhibition, Pérez-Oramas conceived three groupings –Faces, Movement, and Tectonics–, which are completed in this second part by three other categories: Digital, Figures, and Constructions. Like some kind of biologist or anthropologist classifying species and findings, the curator proposes in Digital couplings dictated by basic or organic forms such as spirals and concentric circles, starting out from the image of a fingerprint by Piero Manzoni, through the sketches of Spiral Jetty, to Robert Smithson´s monumental earthwork. Geometric abstraction, sequencing and repetition as accumulation methods provide the link in this group, in which Gego, Henry Pearson, Giuseppe Penone, Mira Schendel, Eva Hesse, Carlos Silva, Dan Flavin and Ellen Gallagher.stand out. The Figures segment, which features masters of Modern Art such as Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí and Latin American masters such as Roberto Matta and Arturo Herrera, reveals the graceful similitude between drawings by the French artists George Rouault and Jean Dubuffet, whose execution is separated by a time period of almost fifty years. Also amazing are the concomitances that Pérez-Oramas discovers in works aligned with Suprematism, Constructivism and Minimalism. In this way, an untitled drawing by the Dutch artist Bart Van Der Lek dated 1917 finds resonance in Hélio Oiticica´s Metaesquema (1956), and grid patterns used as formal resort travel in time and space in the works of Sol Le Witt, Stanislav Kolibal, Waltercio Caldas and Félix González-Torres. Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt) (Venezuelan, born Germany. 1912-1994) Untitled, 1963. Ink on paper 30 x 22” (76.2 x 55.9 cm.) The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchase, 2001. © 2006 Fundación Gego Bridget Riley (British, born 1931) Scale Study for Cataract Series, 1967. Gouache and pencil on graph paper 41 x 28 1/8” (104.1 x 71.3 cm.) The Museum of Modern Art, New York Joseph G. Mayer Foundation Fund in memory of René d’Harnoncourt, 1969 © Bridget Riley

Hélio Oiticica (Brazilian, 1937-1980) Metaesquema, 1956 Gouache on board 20 1/2 x 18 1/8” (52.1 x 46 cm.) The Museum of Modern Art, New York Purchased with funds given by Patricia de Cisneros in honor of Gilberto Chateaubriand, 1997 © 2006 Projeto Hélio Oiticica Bart Van Der Leck (Dutch, 1876-1958) Untitled, (1917) Gouache and pencil on paper 17 5/8 x 22 1/2” ( 47.7 x 57.1 cm.) The Museum of Modern Art, New York Gift of Constance B. Cartwright, 1973 © 2006 Bart Van Der Leck Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York BEELDRECHT, The Netherlands