"Drawing: A Broader Definition" at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Thursday, 18 October 2007 19:23

BOSTON, MA - The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, will present Drawing: A Broader Definition, on view October 27, 2007 – May 4, 2008 at the Trustman Galleries. This unconventional exhibition includes 66 drawings on a variety of surfaces (paper, ceramic, metal, cloth) produced by artists from diverse world cultures and ranging in date from 4000 BC to the 1950s.

The exhibition originated in speculation about how a brush drawing by the great Spanish artist, Goya, would look next to a brush drawing by the great Japanese artist, Hokusai, and resulted in a number of comparisons between objects such as ancient Maya and Greek ceramics, Cmonochrome paintings on silk and African loincloths, as well as drawings by Delacroix. The focus of the exhibition is a comparison of how artists in different times and places have inventively rendered the same subjects: the human figure, landscape, birds and animals, fish and flowers.

In addition to these thematic comparisons, the exhibition includes individual drawings on a variety of surfaces, such as White dish decorated with a green fish (1957) by Pablo Picasso and a batik Scarf (about 1918) by Marguerite Zorach. There are also drawings on Etruscan bronze mirror backs, African pygmy loincloths, Egyptian stone chips, and on expressive decorated ceramics both ancient and modern, from the West and East.

Complementing Drawing: A Broader Definition (and on view concurrently) is a selection of 10 large-scale contemporary drawings from the Museum collection––seven of them recent acquisitions––that will be on view directly outside of the Trustman Gallery. Drawing styles range from abstraction to ultra-realism and surrealism, and include a variety of media, such as watercolor, punctured paper and off-printing from inked rubber bands. The artists represented include American sculptors Roger Tibbetts, Heide Fasnacht, Richard Artschwager, and Tara Donovan; Irish artist Alice Maher; German painter Sigmar Polke; American painter Bill Jensen; and two artists currently focusing exclusively on drawing: Sandra Allen and Chuck Holtzman.

Visit The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston at : www.mfa.org