Rackstraw Downes: Drawing as Part of the Process
New York Studio School of
Drawing, Painting & Sculpture
8 West 8 Street
New York NY 10011
212.673.6466)
April 29 to June 12, 2004
A version of this
essay appeared in The New York Sun, Thursday, June 3, 2004.
By MAUREEN
MULLARKEY
Rackstraw Downes
Beehives on the Casa Piedra Road, Presidio,TX. Site 1, No.1 2002
graphite on gray paper, 9-3/8 x 12-1/2 inches
photographs by Christian Carone, Courtesy New York Studio School
Does drawing matter
anymore? It is a common question made all the more pointed by the absence
of drawing in exhibitions of contemporary representational artists.
All the early Modernists were great draughtsmen. Yet today, few painters
draw and fewer still exhibit their drawings. Rackstraw Downes is one
of a select minority that includes the most enduring painters of our
day.
If drawing is seen
merely as skill in copying something, then cameras and projection devices
can do an end run around it. And certainly, a knowledgeable painter
can make efficient use of photographs, as did Manet and Degas. But if
drawing is grasped in its fullest sense, as a means of understanding
and interpreting what you see, then it remains as critical today as
it was for the artists of Lascaux. As the title of this exhibition suggests,
drawing is not secondary to Downes' painting but an integral part of
the process.
On display are seven
series of drawings, fifty-seven works in total. All are unframed and
hinged to the walls end-to-end as they might be in Downes' own studio.
The installation is intended to underscore their role as exploratory
studies, not independent works of art (though many of them are). This
is as much a tutorial in the discipline of observation as an exhibition.
It is not the object on paper that matters; it is the artist's own decision
making- mental acts of selection and refinement-that is the true subject
here.
Consequently, motifs
appear in multiples, each one a variation that turns on some distinct,
if subtle, consideration. Beehives along a road, for instance, are drawn
from six vantage points, each one providing a different compositional
rhythm. Hives are blunt structures. Pictorial interest is dependent
on observing them in the right sequence. Downes probes the effect of
them in a static line, in clusters from alternative angles, or close
up in a triangular format. Every change of position ensures a change
in design which, in turn, requires alterations in emphasis. The ensemble
illustrates what the artist phrases "the ever-shifting balance
between schema and nature."
Downes works on
site. His paintings begin and end in the landscape where, in his words,
"you learn about the site as you proceed." You can see the
consequence of that-so different from starting with a fixed idea-in
his approach to the golf cage at Chelsea Piers. He begins his studies
from within the cage, looking out at the boats of the marina. Gradually,
concentration shifts from the scene to the structure. Attention focuses
on the arc of it until, in the sixth and last study, the cage becomes
a simple abstract convexity. What began as nondescript housing for sports
practice transforms into an architectural wave, curving gracefully in
space.
What to accentuate,
distill or omit is not something the mechanical eye of a camera can
decide. Ten drawings of stacked pipe sections at a water-main project,
eight studies of substations along an electrical grid or three interior
views of a staircase from the same difficult perspective are illuminating.
Each page repeats the same motif while Downes sifts for the principal
note, the dominant feature, mass or directional line that takes us to
the heart of the whole. Some details are clarified, others muted, each
variant registering a shift of concern. Here, textural interest or a
rhythmic balance of parts; there, placement of a ground line or vanishing
point.
Rackstraw Downes
The Golf Cage 2000
graphite on light tan paper, 25-1/2 x 34-5/8 inches
There is a moral
dimension to this exhibition that waits to be noticed. Downes' commitment
and sheer stamina in revisiting troublesome terrain is no small lesson.
Nothing substantial in art can be had without long effort. There are
no short cuts to high achievement, something quite different from celebrity.
In a culture increasingly confused by the two, such an exhibition is
eloquent in its appeal for a humble love of the labor of art making.
Sound drawing derives
from more than manual dexterity. It is rooted in qualities of mind.
John Ruskin, in "The Elements of Drawing," advised his readers
that learning to draw would enable them to "understand the minds
of great painters" and to "appreciate their work sincerely,
seeing for yourself . . . not merely taking up the thoughts of other
people about it.." The Studio School benefits more than its students
with this show.
