Drawing Degree Zero: The Line from Minimal to Conceptual Art (Refiguring Modernism) - Hardcover

Lovatt, Anna

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0271082437 ISBN 13: 9780271082431

Publisher: Penn State University Press, 2019

Synopsis

Drawing Degree Zero examines a pivotal moment in the history of drawing, when the medium was disengaged from its connoisseurial associations and positioned at the forefront of contemporary art. From Mel Bochner&;s seminal exhibition Working Drawings and Other Visible Things on Paper Not Necessarily Meant to Be Viewed as Art of 1966 to the Museum of Modern Art&;s major survey Drawing Now ten years later, Anna Lovatt documents this period of restless artistic experimentation and fierce political ambition.

Traditionally considered a preparatory or subsidiary practice, drawing&;s notational, provisional, and incidental qualities accrued new value in the context of post-Minimal and Conceptual art. Considering the work of Bochner, Sol LeWitt, Rosemarie Castoro, Dorothea Rockburne, and Richard Tuttle, Lovatt explores the strategies these artists used to confound long-standing presumptions about drawing, rendering it systematic rather than autographic, public rather than private, and conceptually rigorous rather than manually dexterous. Drawing Degree Zero argues that these artists pursued a neutral, anonymous mode of inscription analogous to Roland Barthes&;s concept of &;writing degree zero.&;

A lively examination of the resurgence of interest in drawing, Drawing Degree Zero highlights the medium&;s ability to foreground issues of authorship, process, location, and participation that remain fundamental to contemporary art. Scholars and art aficionados will welcome Lovatt&;s insights.

About this title

About the Author

Anna Lovatt is Assistant Professor of Art History at Southern Methodist University. She is the editor of Michelle Stuart: Drawn from Nature.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penn State University Press
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0271082437
• ISBN 13: 9780271082431
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240