Drawing plays a generative, often central role in the creation of sculpture, architecture and painting. But has the process changed over time? The sculptor Carl D’Alvia poses this question in “Drawings by Sculptors,” an exhibition he organized at Helena Anrather that features 91 works made over the past 50 years by more than 80 artists.
If nothing else, the show is a thrilling matchup of artists from different eras and ethoses. Kiki Smith’s “Transmission” (2016) sits next to Alan Saret’s “Swan” (2022), both suggesting energy and movement. Cool and camp attitude reign in Ken Price’s “High Country Meth Labs” (2015) and Danh Vo’s adjacent “2.2.1861” (2009), while the threesome of Huma Bhabha, Marguerite Humeau and Josh Kline suggests art transcending traditional “nature” as a modeling form, reaching toward the posthuman.
Several works bend the category of drawing, like Michelle Segre’s “Flaunt” (2022), probably best described as a drawing in space that includes yarn and bread balls; Richard Artschwager’s “Liebespaar (Lovers)” from 1998-99, made with rubberized horsehair; or Wells Chandler’s crocheted “Self Portrait as Turtle in Vest” (2023). Some works here are sketches, studies or technical diagrams for fabricating objects; some are provocations or impossible propositions, too fantastical to build.
Of course drawing has changed, in the same way that we now write on laptops or tell time on phones. Morphing between dimensions is also different in the era of 3-D printing and computer graphics. What this exhibition makes most clear is that drawing itself — however you define it — is still as vital as it was when Neolithic artists inscribed images and motifs on rock face. MARTHA SCHWENDENER
