Currently on view in the third-floor drawings galleries, Exquisite Corpses: Drawing and Disfiguration includes five works that belong to this titular category of collaborative creation. The “exquisite corpse” was a parlor game played by Surrealist artists and poets in Paris in the 1920s. Read more

Keith Haring. Untitled. 1982. Ink on two sheets of paper, sheet: 72 x 671 1/2" (182.9 x 1705.6 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of the Estate of Keith Haring, Inc. © 2012 The Keith Haring Foundation

The monumental 1982 Keith Haring drawing Untitled is not often on view, so its inclusion in the Museum’s current installation Contemporary Galleries: 1980–Now seems like an ideal opportunity to think about how this artist’s iconic visual language fits into the larger story of 20th-century art. Read more

Robert Ryman. Classico 5. 1968

My colleagues in the Department of Drawings and I are often asked about our criteria for defining what a drawing is. The short answer is that a drawing is typically defined as any unique (non-print) work of art with a paper material support. Taking this question one step further, I often think: Why did the artist use paper and not, for instance, a canvas? In what ways do the materials used by an artist lend themselves to the work, and how do they play out in the composition itself? Read more