Through the Looking Glass: Drawing and Transparency in the 1970s
The Menil Drawing Institute 2021–22 Pre-Doctoral Fellow, Filippo Bosco, delivers a lecture addressing transparency as a material and conceptual device in the drawing practices of the 1970s. The use of transparent and translucent supports like glass, vellum, or tracing paper changes both the habitual perception of lines on a surface and the understanding of what exactly drawing is. A variety of works from American and European artists like Barry Le Va, Dorothea Rockburne, Mario Merz, and Remo Salvadori is articulated in the light of contemporary critical debates, categories of architecture theory, and possible congruences with more recent practices (such as Houston artist Joseph Havel’s work). As a literal breaking through the opacity of the sheet, transparency enigmatically disentangles the performative acts that constitute a drawing and expands its spatial and social dimensions