On Paper

Paper delivered on Panel on Drawing
October 21, 1999 at the National Academy of Design, NYC

Most of the drawings I do are on paper, and paper tends to be white, and has corners and edges. The entire surface has to be dealt with. That white surface is continuous and highly malleable. It lends itself to various structures. Space can be read into it. Depending on what concept one brings to it, the paper is transformed. It becomes a spatial arena and to the extent that its entire surface is dealt with, it is convincing. For example, the idea of perspective can be accommodated on paper, the space receding, pulling the surface of the paper back steadily. A world seen through a window - an absolute. I'll speak more of this later.

I wish to talk about an entirely different way of engaging that white sheet of paper - to bring to it a completely different idea about the way the world is structured. Let's say I draw a single line on a fresh sheet - immediately the sections of the paper on either side of the line assume different positions. The one on the left may appear to recede somewhat while the one on the right seems to advance. They take on a sense of weight and mass. In order to judge where these segments of paper are in relation to each other; I must move my eyes. The focus is quite small. So that there is eye movement even in the small area of a sheet of paper. Depending on how the eyes move, the position of the two sections on either side of the line, may reverse - the advancing one falling back, the other one coming forward. If I draw a second line, the situation becomes very complicated. The dance of the interstices as they shift and move becomes quite intricate. Things get very lively. If all goes well, and I manage to keep control of the thing, all the pieces of the paper move and shift in a coherent way. The eyes moving through the drawing along various paths are given a number of readings. The structure that the drawing reveals is profoundly different from that which a perspective schema projects. It is fluid and ever changing, and it produces a sense of volume in a completely different way than that of perspective, volume which resides in and arises from this ongoing continuum.

In perspective, space is in a steady state - it goes back relentlessly unchanged by the events which may happen in it. That marvelous floor in DeKooning's words, "Before man had learned to dies in the sky yet." It assumes the centrality of the onlooker in the world. However, if one accepts the shifts of things which our eyes register looking out at the world, the space is no longer absolute as perspective would have it. It takes on a compelling and convincing ambiguity. In drawing in this mode - everything becomes tense, and the drawing seems to expand. Sad to say, this doesn't happen very often - at least in my case. At some point in the evolution of the drawing, the readings become confused - parts may contradict each other and movement in the drawing is stalled. Time is jammed. The coherence of the space is lost and the drawing goes flat.

In painting, of course color is involved - the integrity of the surface of the piece of paper and it's solid color is not there to participate in the activity I've been describing. The painter must choose colors - their locations, their amount, and how they go together in order to achieve the tension and fullness of which I speak. The condition, or better, the event that I am attempting to describe can happen whether working from nature or not although clues for its complex relationships arise from an empirical examination of the world out there. The drawing can be abstract or representationalMondrian and Matisse come to mind as artists working in this mode. A drawing with all the richness of this relative and ambiguous structure cannot be arrived at rationally. It happens mysteriously - a result of a kind of harmony in the making. It can't be designed. It happens intuitively and is a final expression. This ambiguous, ongoing continuum reflects, I believe, something of our experience, of our difficulty incoming to terms with ourselves and with nature, and the swift fragmentation of our lives.