Bowdoin College Museum of Art

Preview image of work. charcoal on off-white wove paper, Untitled 9988

1988.7

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Untitled

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Artist

Joel Shapiro (New York City, New York, 1941 - )

Title

Untitled

Creation Date

1979

Century

20th century

Dimensions

22 1/4 in. x 21 1/4 in. (56.52 cm x 53.98 cm)

Object Type

drawing

Creation Place

North America, United States

Medium and Support

charcoal on off-white wove paper

Credit Line

Museum Purchase, Goerge Otis Hamlin Fund

Copyright

This artwork may be under copyright. For further information, please consult the Museum’s Copyright Terms and Conditions.

Accession Number

1988.7

Rather than serving as preparatory studies for his geometric sculptures, Shapiro’s drawings inform the intellectual and emotional content of his work as, he explained in 2008, a “means of defining what the sculpture was about, as clarification of thought.” This untitled charcoal drawing delineates a quadrangle’s interior and exterior space in relation to the paper’s edge and at the same time suggests a dynamic reorientation of the viewer’s perception from two to three dimensions. Shapiro’s artwork ""is" space and "stands" for space,” as Roberta Smith argued in 1982 in regard to his sculptures. The charcoal marks in this drawing--the smudges, the gray dust, and the erasure marks--leave traces of Shapiro’s hand, revealing the process by which he conflates flatness with layered expressions of depth.