Line: Making the Mark December 12, 2014–March 22, 2015
Brice Marden, Hydra, Summer 1990, I of V, 1990, ink, gouache, and watercolor on Arches Satine wove paper, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Museum purchase funded by the Charles Engelhard Foundation in honor of Louisa Stude Sarofim. © 2015 Brice Marden / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Josef Albers, Segments, 1934, linoleum cut on Japanese paper, edition 7/35, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Museum purchase funded by the Trustees of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in honor of Mr. Alvin S. Romansky. © 2015 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Jasper Johns, Cicada, 1979, screenprint in colors on laid paper, artist’s proof 1/10, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Museum purchase funded by the Alvin S. Romansky Prints and Drawings Accessions Endowment Fund. © Jasper Johns/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
Sol LeWitt, Untitled, from the series Work from Instructions, 1971, lithograph, edition 20/25, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Museum purchase funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and an anonymous donor. © 2015 The LeWitt Estate / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
With the advent of Modernism in the 20th century, line became its own definitive subject for artists, who no longer used it merely for representational purposes. Line: Making the Mark presents examples created since that historic shift by artists including Louise Bourgeois, Jasper Johns, Willem de Kooning, Sol LeWitt, and Barnett Newman.
The exhibition explores the sundry ways that artists are making marks, whether directly or indirectly. Artists may press pencil directly to paper or brush ink right onto a surface; or they may create their work indirectly, through the printmaking process—first drawing on stone, carving into wood, or etching into metal, and then transferring the marks to paper or other media.
Line: Making the Mark features some 50 drawings and prints from the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Among the other artists represented are Josef Albers, Brice Marden, Sam Messenger, Joan Mitchell, Robert Motherwell, and Richard Serra.
This exhibition is organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.