Drawing in wire and iron rod

I was at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park today and as well as going to see the marvellous Bill Viola exhibition, spent some time looking at Anthony Caro's maquettes for sculptures. Some of them can be read as 3D drawings. Caro was influenced by the american sculptor David Smith. Smith's Hudson River sculpture is a 3D line drawing of a journey, and many of Caro's early linear sculptures have a landscape feel to them as well. 

David Smith: Hudson River

Anthony Caro: Emma Dipper

These (below) are a few of Caro's maquettes for sculptures photographed at the YSP. The small scale makes them much more accessible and above all achievable on a small budget. 

All the Caro maquettes above are no more than 3 or 4 inches wide. What makes them interesting is the use of various thicknesses of metal to ensure a constantly changing rhythm for the eyes. The less linear sections operate as punctuation points, giving the eyes focus points that can be used for orientation as you look through and around the forms. 

I've mentioned artists who draw in space before, and it looks as if there is a small revival of the practice, but with the added element of a more environmental approach, artists using the ability of the space frame format when used on a large scale to house other elements such as flat TV screens in amongst the framework. 

Neil Beloufa's The Office (2015) at the Mendes Wood DM booth at Frieze London

Beloufa has created a structure that allows the artist to include media outputs, connecting wires becoming part of the linear nature of the whole piece.

Picasso was as always prepared to experiment with different modes of drawing, his memorial to Apollinaire was designed to reflect a line of Apollinaire's writing, “the statue made of nothing, of vacancy” which he wrote when thinking of a monument to a poet. The sculpture represents this nothing-ness. Made with iron rods these pieces at one moment appear 3D but then revert to a perceptually flat image as the light changes and the black lines separate themselves out from their background.  

Picasso: Maquette for a memorial to Apollinaire

See also posts on Gego and Sara Barker  

If you get a chance to go to London, try and catch the Calder exhibition at the Tate.  See

Sara Barker who I have mentioned before in relation to 3D line drawing talks about her more recent work here:

There was an excellent exhibition at &model back in 2015 of the work of Nicola Ellis. See

Nicola Ellis

Picasso and Calder exhibition