On Line

November 21, 2010–February 7, 2011

The Joan and Preston Robert Tisch Exhibition Gallery, sixth floor

On Line explores the radical transformation of the medium of drawing throughout the twentieth century, a period when numerous artists subjected the traditional concepts of drawing to a critical examination and expanded the medium's definition in relation to gesture and form. In a revolutionary departure from the institutional definition of drawing, and from the reliance on paper as the fundamental support material, artists instead pushed line across the plane into real space, thus questioning the relation between the object of art and the world. On Line includes approximately 150 works that connect drawing with selections of painting, sculpture, photography, film, and dance (represented by film and documentation). In this way, the exhibition makes the case for a discursive history of mark making, while mapping an alternative project of drawing in the twentieth century. The exhibition includes works by a wide range of artists, both familiar and relatively unknown, from different eras of the past century and from many nations, including Aleksandr Rodchenko, Alexander Calder, Karel Malich, Eva Hesse, Anna Maria Maiolino, Richard Tuttle, Mona Hatoum, and Monika Grzymala.

The exhibition is organized by Connie Butler, The Robert Lehman Chief Curator of Drawings, The Museum of Modern Art, and Catherine de Zegher, Director of Exhibitions and Publications, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto.