How To Draw Cotton How To Draw Hay

Alex Hay Ground Drawing (1968)

A cofounder of the Judson Dance Theater in 1962, Hay was heavily involved in emerging performance art and avant-garde dance in the 1960s, and these interests carried over to his work in more traditional media. To create Ground Drawing the artist saturated a piece of cotton cellulose paper with liquid, and so allowed it to dry over a patch of ground in Venice,California, transferring the earth'south bumps and irregularities to its surface. He then painstakingly traced each indentation, visually emphasizing the earth's physical unevenness and indicating the precise degree of each bump's incline. Hay'southward intense focus on an anonymous patch of footing draws our attention to the intricacies of the easily overlooked and ephemeral.

Gallery label from 2007.

Additional text

To create Ground Cartoon the artist saturated a piece of cotton cellulose paper with liquid then immune it to dry over a patch of ground in Venice, California, transferring the earth'due south bumps and irregularities to its surface. He so painstakingly traced each indentation with a pencil and indicated the precise degree of each incline, creating a circuitous pattern of lines and angles. The random means deployed to generate this drawing—a kind of map of the earth'southward surface—are like to those he used in the dance and motion-based works he performed with New York's Judson Trip the light fantastic toe Theater from 1962 to 1964.

Gallery label from On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century, Nov 21, 2022-February 7, 2022.

Medium: Pencil on paper
Dimensions: 68 i/4 10 38" (173.4 x 96.5 cm)
Credit: Commission on Drawings Funds
Object number: 784.2006
Copyright: © 2022 Alex Hay
Department: Drawings and Prints

We have identified these works in the following photos from our exhibition history.

Live/Piece of work: Operation into Drawing

Jan 31–May 21, 2007

xi other works identified
Live/Piece of work: Performance into Cartoon

Jan 31–May 21, 2007

4 other works identified
Live/Work: Performance into Drawing

Jan 31–May 21, 2007

seven other works identified
Live/Work: Functioning into Drawing

Jan 31–May 21, 2007

vii other works identified
On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century

November 21, 2022–Feb vii, 2022

2 other works identified
On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century

Nov 21, 2022–Feb 7, 2022

1 other work identified
On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century

November 21, 2022–Feb 7, 2022

1 other piece of work identified
On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century

Nov 21, 2022–Feb 7, 2022

1 other piece of work identified
A Trip from Hither to In that location

Mar xv–Jul thirty, 2022

vii other works identified
A Trip from Here to There

Mar xv–Jul thirty, 2022

three other works identified

How we identified these works

In 2022–19, MoMA collaborated with Google Arts & Culture Lab on a project using machine learning to identify artworks in installation photos. That projection has concluded, and works are now being identified by MoMA staff.

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