HEIZER TRANSPARENCY

I ran across a series of etchings by Michael Heizer.  When I first saw them, my thought was, well, this is at least moving toward transparency.  There is an overlapping of shapes.  And it is as if the shapes were asking to be turned into forms.

When shapes ask to be turned into forms, that’s what I do.  I tried to liberate the shapes on the etching so as to give them form.  I tried to set them free.  They were asking to be set free, don’t you know.

To be clear, I absolutely find Heizer’s etchings to be interesting.  I wouldn’t have made a drawing from this etching if I was not interested in it on some level that I don’t understand.

And then there is the age old Transparent Drawing question, why was Heizer content to provide an arrangement of two dimensional shapes, when he could have provided an arrangement of volumes?

Or to ask this in the most basic way I can, why is this etching enough?

Let’s talk values for a second.  In the calculus of these pages, a drawing that resolves volumes has a higher value than a drawing that does not.  While Heizer’s etching suggests volume, that simply is not going far enough.  I am not saying that my drawing is better than the etching.  There are probably a million ways in which the etching dataset could be volumized.  That’s not the point.

Working with volumes is what Heizer does.  So why would the drawings not address volumetric concerns and assemblies?  I don’t pretend to have the answer to that question.  If I did, we would be describing a completely different history of western art.

1.  I found the etchings in the retail part of the Gagosian website. While I have absolutely no right to use this screen shot, I included it anyway.