FRED SANDBACK

Fred Sandback thought in transparency. He is considered a modernist / minimalist great. And there was definitely an interest in transparency, even if this was not explicitly stated by him.

He thought in architectural terms. He explored what might be called the three dimensional line in full scale. He used acrylic yarn to establish suggestions of planes in large spaces. These yarn installations have been at Dia Beacon for years. In this installation, some of the yarn segments might be 18 or so feet tall.

Although this photograph does not do justice, I took this at Dia Beacon back in January. The yarn is the vertical element just to left of center. If you look closely, you can see other yarn elements. If I am not mistaken, his yarn installation will be taken down in the near future.

He operated at full scale. Drawings were a key part of his process. As we can see from this example of Sandback, the basic structure appears to be some sort of room, likely a gallery, with walls of uniform height. And then toned planes, still of the same height, were introduced. There is no opacity. The entire form can be understood in one drawing.

“It’s a consequence of wanting the volume of sculpture without the opaque mass that I have the lines.” Source.

For my drawing at the top, I used his drawing above as a springboard. I first drew every line that he drew. Although I drew some of the lines with watercolor pens onto a wet piece of paper. Then I used his red and yellow planes as a point of departure. I wanted to escape the rigid verticality and the rigid height. So you might say that I flowered the two planes, blossomed them in their locations into curved and overlapping forms.

No opacity. Holistic volume. Lines as demarcation of planes. That’s all we need to get us to a transparent mindset. Sandback was in a Transparent Drawing state of mind long before I was.