Hunter Museum of American Art
Chattanooga, TN
(423) 267-0968
Left: original museum building containing historic collection, Right: extension wing housing contemporary collection and temporary exhibitions. Photos by John Hazeltine.
Large Drawings from the Arkansas Art Center Foundation Collection
The 40 works in Large
Drawings from the Arkansas Art Center Foundation Collection have one thing
in common: they are all works on paper in excess of 40 inches in width or
height. The exhibit spans a wide variety of media, style and expression
and includes drawings in pencil, charcoal, ink, pastel, watercolor, silverpoint,
acrylic, and oil. Most of the works date from the 1980s with a few from
the 1970s. All are drawn from the collection of the Arkansas Arts Center
which focuses, in part, on collecting works on drawings from 1600 to the
present. (left: Diane Edison, Self-Portrait Standing, 1991,
colored pencils on black paper, 40 x 30 inches)
As Ruth Pasquine, who wrote an essay for the catalog of this exhibit, points out, "Small drawings, like small paintings, are windows into another world that one peeks into or through; large drawings, like large paintings, gain in reality and presence as they approach or exceed human proportions. The large drawings included here are particularly challenging, not only because of the various ways that the artists have used and manipulated materials, scale and style, but also because of the aggressive, highly charged content. When an illusionistic approach is taken for portraiture or treatment of the figure, for example, the artist goes far beyond bland photographic illusionism toward an incisive psychological penetration; when abstraction is an issue, it is explosive."
Pasquine notes that the phenomenon of monumental drawing
in the eighties can be seen as the 
culmination of
a variety of forces and influences. In the fifties, the line, the essential
formal element of drawing, had been absorbed and mainstreamed into American
Abstract Expressionist painting. In the sixties, artists such as Robert
Rauschenberg continued to assimilate drawing forms into painting developing
more idiosyncratic painting styles. Experiments with printmaking, which
was undergoing a revival at this time, were particularly important for the
development of large drawings. For example, because artists drew with crayon
on lithography stones and plates, printmaking also brought renewed attention
to the autographic qualities of drawing. (right: Ira Korman, Sweet
Virginia, 1994, charcoal on paper, 47 1/2 x 28 1/2 inches)
In the seventies, led by Minimal and Conceptual
artists, drawing expanded in another direction with the use of drawings
to document site specific and installation projects. Monumentality in drawing
also became important in this period with Sol LeWitt's wall drawings and
the contributions of performance artists who created large drawings as backdrops
to enliven their productions. In the eighties, a renewed interest in painting
and subject matter generated a stylistic pluralism, while pressures from
the art market led artists to seek easier and cheaper means of reproduction.
(left: Robert Stackhouse, Inside a Passage Structure, 1986,
watercolor, charcoal and graphite on paper, 89 1/2 x 120 inches)
Artists in the exhibition include: Gregory Amenoff, Will Barnet, Joan Brown, Warrington Colescott, Lesley Dill, Tony Hepburn, Elizabeth Murray, Robert Stackhouse, Donald Sultan, Tom Wesselmann and Charles White. This exhibition is circulated by Smith-Kramer Fine Art Services.
Read more in Resource Library Magazine about the Hunter Museum of American Art.
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