Object Image

(Study for Order/Disorder/Ascension/Descension)

This drawing is a study for the enormous two-part mural commissioned for the Social Security building lobby in Philadelphia. Each of the final parts of the mural measures thirteen feet high and ninety feet wide, and special canvas had to be ordered from weavers in Belgium to accommodate this scale. The artist worked out arrangements of solid and broken lines that suggest volume and perspective. He then transferred the composition to a section of the canvas and added to the sequence of visual components until the entire mural was completed.

Abstract Drawings, 2012

Credit: Transfer from the General Services Administration, Art-in-Architecture Program...

1975
Pencil on paper
52.1 x 62.9cm
1977.47.49
Image and text: Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2023

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