November 10* – November 19, 1965
Art Gallery, Eugenia Fuller Atwood Library
1965 BEAVER NEWS
“Powerful Contemporary Art Featured in Campus Display” by Susan Wood
The “Drawings by Contemporary American Artists” show currently in the Eugenia Fuller Atwood Library gallery until November 19, offers, through its various styles, new insights into the unfortunately too frequently held notion that drawing is merely a restating of nature in terms of the pencil.
World of His Own
Drawing, however, is an artistic expression, and an artist does not copy but rather utilize the world around him via selection – of iconography, of formal values, and of techniques – to formulate a world of his own: a synthesis of his visual experience and his personality.
The value of this exhibit is that it discloses many facets of drawing. Included are two examples of fine draftsmanship, “Classique” by John Lear, and “Nuts on a Plate” by Dan Miller, the former in pencil and the latter in ink. Yet it is in “Curtain” by Jack Bookbinder, which has the element of emotion added to realistic interpretation, that drawing becomes more expressive. It is this delving beyond visual perception of a subject as such that makes the rest of the show so fresh in its approach.
Depiction of Emotion
“Nursing Mother and Child” by Harvey Dinnerstein relates a tenderness with pencil; but a pencil that is soft and reduces its lines to fundamental forms. The inclusion of details, in fact even the whole body, is not deemed necessary to depict the emotion. Talent does not require exact rendering to evidence itself. It is shown in the artist’s ability to communicate a thought with so few specifics.
“Low Tide” by Oliver Nuse, “Wood” by George Bunker, and “Figure” by Rudolf Staffel also minimize the literal; however, not for the concern of emotion, but for the investigation of formal values.
Although tree stumps can be readily recognized in the foreground of “Low Tide,” the artist, in his strong ink and wash style, treats his background in a more abstract manner. He finds the basic shape of a pine tree enough to suggest its existence without attempting to define individual boughs. The same attitude is apparent in “Woods” where the chalk emphasizes vertical shapes of a forest and not specific tree species.
Expression: Shapes, Line
The charcoal “Figure” shows more realism, but in depicting human anatomy Mr. Staffel extends beyond the muscles into the pure joy of geometric shapes emerging from the human form. This zest for the expressive is further developed in “Girl with Flowers” by Bragio Pinto and “Drawing” by William Hayth, for their subjects are subordinated to a pattern of shapes and lines.
As evidenced in the varied styles, technical involvement is also creatively expressed. “Irish Boy” by Rhoda Medary with its economy of line creating a character essence; “Classical Head” by Ben Wolf with its one, continuous line gracefully defining a form; and “The Great Tree” by Leonhard Lahrer with its nature shapes and straight lines developing together in perfect harmony culminate this concept.
* Date is estimated.
