When the Seattle artist team known as Lead Pencil exhibited Arrival at 2 a.m. in 2007…
the piece reminded a lot of people of Mariele Neudecker’s The Internal Slipping Out of the World at Large from 2000.
Much talk ensued, with little in the way of conclusion. Since then, other examples of the form have continued to circulate, suggesting that Lead Pencil cannot borrow what is already widely distributed.
(Grand Central Station, anonymous, probably from the 1950s, from Corbis)
Hirschfield:
I have been using monofilaments to investigate the phenomenon that results from the creation of ephemeral planes that pass through, divide, and ultimately become an integral aspect of the space in which they exist.
He’s interested in changing space without occupying it, or, as Wallace Stevens put it in Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird:
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
Fred Sandback is the master of ephemeral planes.
Since his death, Alyson Shotz has been coming up fast on the inside rail.
Painters have a stake here too.
What Wayne Thiebaud said years ago, that art is more about likeness than difference, still holds true and is worth remembering the next time a confluence is understood to be a copy.
On a larger scale, my thoughts and memory gravitate towards the Brooklyn Bridge which has the unique ability to speak simultaneously of massive organic strength while exibiting a delicate sensibility that can rival those lighted filaments. I’d recommend the dew of a Sunday morning but others might prefer a well lit Friday night. Did Thiebaud ever paint the Brooklyn Bridge?
And monofiliment is such a sexy medium, how could anyone resist its call?
Maybe I should stop holding out.
13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird is one of my favorite poems. The “moment after”, the spaces around, the rests and pauses are what frame the art. Harold Pinter did more with the word “Pause”, than most people do with the entire OED. I love your comparisons of the light in all the different pictures. But which part is the pause?