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| William Anastasi exhibition at Marlborough Art Gallery |
Art takes on many forms and derives meaning from the world around them. The artist becomes a vessel, transforming lived experiences and perceived realities in order to create. With every artist, the notion of art inevitably evolves breaking rules of the past while shaping new conventions that are in tune with the intimate reality of the artist. William Anastasi’s works are an example of how a painter and visual artist working in New York in the 1960s and 1970s renews the artist’s commitment to redefining what art represents in the modern world.
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| William Anastasi |
William Anastasi is best known today for his ‘unsighted’ drawing techniques that are often referred to as his ‘Blind drawings’. This marks a very interesting moment in the world of visual art as Anastasi sought to perceive without depending on sight. In other words, he tries to create a visual work of art by limiting his own visual intake. In 1977 when William Anastasi begins to visit another popular American artist and theorist John Cage he often used to take the subway and on those subway rides he begins to create drawings by letting his hand move with every movement of the subway train uninhibited by the limitations of his own sight. This according to most commentators leads to a rigorous artistic period in his life that lasted over fifty years where he creates thought-provoking sketches using purely ‘unsighted’ drawing techniques.
Read also: Tom Otterness
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| Marlborough Art Gallery |
While the ‘Subway Drawings’ described above and similarly the ‘Walking Drawings’ were both channeled by the motion of his own movement, his ‘Resignation Drawings’ are impressions that were formed by repeatedly drawing the figure eight over and over again on a sheet of paper. The ‘Pocket Drawings’ are a remarkable example of how art can be created by very limited intervention by the artist. Here Anastasi folds a piece of paper and places it in his pocket along with a pencil stub. The movement and the organic interaction between the pencil stub created impressions on a folded piece of paper, and just like how many artists in the world recreate images that they once visually perceived, here Anastasi is able to capture a sense of movement in an image rather uniquely.
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| William Anastasi’s art for sale |
William Anastasi’s unique relationship with the art created by the movement of various forms is a result of inspiration from artists who have perfected abstract or conceptual art. What is most interesting about artists like Marcel Duchamp, who according to William Anastasi has played quite an influential role in shaping his artistic compass, is that through their abstract and conceptual artwork they not only question the boundaries and the rule book artist relies on but turn the rules into a discourse.
The William Anastasi exhibition at Marlborough Art Gallery is a dialogue on the very conventions of art. The gallery has also put up William Anastasi’s art for sale for enthusiastic collectors. Visit the gallery website to browse through some of the artist’s works.
See also: Red Grooms art for sale
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