Forty years ago, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York opened Drawing Now: 1955-75 (23 January-19 March 1976), a show that explored the shift of drawing from “a minor ‘support’ medium” to “a major and independent medium with distinctive expressive possibilities altogether its own”, as outlined by the curator Bernice Rose in the exhibition’s catalogue. This week Dominique Lévy Gallery in New York opened Drawing Then: Innovation and Influence in American Drawings of the Sixties, curated by Kate Ganz to mark the anniversary. It examines anew the medium, this time within the tumultuous context of the United States in the 1960s, with around 70 works by 40 artists, including Agnes Martin, Eva Hesse and Ed Ruscha. One highlight is a Sol LeWitt wall drawing that hasn’t been executed since its first presentation in 1969. Only about 20% of the works are on sale, with the remainder on loan from museums like MoMA and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the collections of artists, including Mel Bochner, Dorothea Rockburne and Jasper Johns (all represented in the show). The gallery has also published a catalogue with essays by Griselda Pollock, Robert Storr and others, artist biographies, archival material and a chronology of the 1960s to examine art alongside historical events and movements.
