Dizzying drawings for a magnetic Field

Since coming to the Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG) in 1979, Richard S. Field has organized or supervised more than 60 exhibits and contributed an immense amount of scholarship to modern art history and criticism. In honor of his retirement from his position as curator of prints, drawings, and photographs this year, YUAG has collected over 20 works from some of Field's friends and admirers into an impressive exhibit entitled "Contemporary Prints and Drawings Acquired in Honor of Richard S. Field." The exhibit occupies a small space on the fourth floor of the Gallery.

KATHERINE ALDRICH/YH Look closely: the canvases aren't blank.

Were this exhibit not in honor of Field, it could have been called "Variations on White." In viewing the 20 or so works, one is overwhelmed by the emptiness of the prints. This monochrome abstractness unfortunately emerges as the only aesthetic common ground to most of the prints. Thematically, though, there's a stronger unity, especially among the work in series. The individual pieces range from sublime and compelling to simple and elegant.

The two pieces which greet you at the entrance to the exhibit—Henry Pearson's Untitled and Brice Marden's Untitled (Boogie Woogie)—are not necessarily meant to be viewed together, but they offer an excellent general commentary on the variations of abstraction present throughout the exhibit.

Boogie Woogie is an incredibly intricate etching in which diagonal, horizontal and vertical lines of differing thickness and length are inscribed above a square grid. The effect of the print is dizzying and offers an intense visual contrast between the orderliness of the grid and the disordered energy of the lines.

Mel Bochner's Ten to 10 (Zones) is also impressive, but more for its intellectual effect than its visual effect. The print has a pale yellow background that is mostly covered by a large, plum-colored, off-center circle. Ten maroon dots migrate in 10 steps from a spoke-like formation entirely within the confines of the circle to a formation of the Arabic numeral "10" entirely outside the circle. The colors look beautiful together; the circle seems to embody the chromatic unity between the colors of the dots and the background. What is most striking about the print is its inability to be divided into sections. The migrations of the dots do not begin at any normal axis of the circle (that is, at 0, 90, 180 or 270 degrees), and the circle itself is off-center. While the action of the print is orderly and makes sense in its progression from a conceptual to numerical framework, the visual imagery remains irregular. Like Marden's work, Bochner's print explores the interaction of order and disorder, and the contrast between these approaches reflects the diversity of abstraction that is "Contemporary Prints and Drawings."

Art

Contemporary Prints and Drawings Yale University Art Gallery through Sun., Apr. 16

One of two series in the exhibition, Brice Marden's 12 Views for Caroline Tatyana also plays with the theme of order by varying the shading schemes of eight individual bridge-shaped frameworks. In the four final frames of the series, each of the shading schemes is paired with its chromatic complement. The individual designs are notable for the intricacy and patterning of the etched shading; there is a striking variety in hue within each uniform structure. When the shadings are paired, these subtle details come alive.

The exhibit also includes prints by Yale faculty members like Jessica Stockholder, whose collage Turning Paper #61 is strangely located on the first floor of YUAG rather than with the rest of the prints on the fourth floor.

While "Contemporary Prints and Drawings" lacks the unity that typical thematically or artistically organized exhibits possess, the individual works are, for the most part, provocative and well-executed. Despite its smallness and its lack of coherence, the exhibit is certainly worth checking out for some interesting examples of contemporary prints.

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