Lee Bontecou

This drawing is taller than I am (and also wider, should you be wondering) and constructed from three pieces of canvas stitched together and mounted on a round stretcher.  It is the first thing you view when  you walk into the exhibit of drawings by Lee Bontecou currently at the Princeton University Art  Museum.

I was already familiar with Bontecou's sculptures. I found them mysterious and spooky, and a little ooky, too, not unlike some object you might find hanging on the wall of the Addams family's parlor. She welds the pieces together and adds fabric, molded plastic and found objects, and often favors sharp pointed teeth made out of saw blades. 

She's American, born in 1931, the same year as my mother, and she is still producing art.  

The drawings are very expressive emotionally. Pousette-Dart, star of yesterday's post, is also expressive but in a more spiritual way. Bontecou is more visceral, illustrated by this large drawing. it's hard not to feel the fierce threat of the talon shapes and dread the possible route through them to the light beyond. Fear.






I wouldn't dismiss the element of spirituality as well in some pieces, especially ones based on a circle form. However, she seems to be playing more often with ideas about the relationships, hostilities and threats that exist between the natural world and the civilized, man-made world.

I played the favorites game with my companion, and I chose this one. It suggests a place, maybe in the future, maybe on another planet. I said I liked the round shapes. Yes, I preferred them to the talons.

The blacks she is able to achieve on her paper are accomplished by passing a welding torch over it leaving a deep black soot. Bontecou uses this in drawings much like you would use charcoal, but it is even blacker.

It's an amazing exhibit.
I recommend it and invite you to see it before it's gone.