Untitled,

1963

Dark voids and hypnotic, illusionistic recesses are the hallmarks of Lee Bontecou’s oeuvre. In this untitled drawing, an oculus with a shadowy center is bisected by a series of three smaller voids. At once corporeal and mechanical, the circular work suggests spinning propellers and speeding planes. Bontecou came of age during the Second World War, and her practice responds to the anxiety and excitement, common in the 1950s, about nuclear proliferation and space exploration. While on a Fulbright scholarship in Rome between 1956 and 1958, Bontecou started to employ state-of-the-art industrial machinery for the most elemental of artistic pursuits: drawing. Such is the case with <em>Untitled</em>, comprised of graphite and the soot from a portable acetylene torch, which the artist released onto the canvas by reducing the torch’s oxygen flow. The layers of soot were then manipulated through erasure and scraping. What results is an unusual collaboration between artist and machine.