TitleLocus Series #5
Artist
Dorothea Rockburne
(b. 1932)
Date1972
MediumAquatint with oil paint and graphite on white Strathmore Rag paper, from a series of six prints
DimensionsSheet size: 40 x 30 in.
Framed: 47 1/8 x 37 1/8 x 3 1/2 in.
Edition7/42
SignedSigned lower right in graphite: "Rockburne 72 / 7/42".
SubmissionNA diploma presentation, September 22, 2004
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number2004.28.5
Label TextThe work of Dorothea Rockburne defies categorization. It has been called Minimalist, post-Minimalist, and Conceptual, but ultimately it transcends the inherent constraints imposed upon it by these classifications. Rockburne was born in Montreal, Canada and followed a traditional art curriculum at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Montreal and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts School, where she learned painting, sculpture, printmaking, and life drawing. At the age of eighteen, she enrolled in the experimental Black Mountain College where she studied painting with Franz Kline, Esteban Vicente, Philip Guston, and drawing with Jack Tworkov. Black Mountain was rigorously interdisciplinary and Rockburne's course of study also included music with John Cage, dance with Merce Cunningham, and mathematics with Max Dehn. The entire experience would have a forceful and lasting impact on her future work, in particular Dehn's ideas on topology, surface mapping, and set theory. By the mid-1950s Rockburne was living in New York and first showed at the E.A.T. (Experiments in Art and Technology) exhibition at Leo Castelli Gallery in 1966 that included Larry Rivers, NA, Lee Bontecou, NA elect, Cy Twombly, NA elect, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, NA, and many others. In the late 1960s the artist was creating large multipaneled paintings on metal, often using a wrinkle-finish paint. Toward the end of the decade, however, Rockburne's interest in mathematical concepts led her to incorporate ideas of set theory and the golden section into her work, not as a subject, but more as a creative tool. These elements were used to create her seminal series, "Drawing Which Makes Itself" (1972), which was first installed at the Whitney Museum's American Drawings exhibition in 1973. The series involved the notions of the self (through its reflexive nature), displacement, exceeding external limits, and creating a continuous surface, and served as an important precedent for later works. Rockburne's desire to incorporate a continuous surface into a larger dynamic, or cosmic, view led to the creation of the "Locus Series."
"Locus Series" is inherently topological and the folds of the prints function in a similar capacity to drawn lines. The series is intended to be shown as one entire work in six sections. The circular rhythm of the spine creates a 180-degree concentric motion through the group, indicating a continuous surface, and thereby creating the "locus." The prints recall not only the artist's drawings, but also contain an element of inherent corporeality. Drawing and working on paper have always been essential to Rockburne's work. Her understanding of drawings has been partly based on childhood experiences of skiing through fresh snow and responding to the brightness of the line and its location within the larger topology. "Locus Series" was created by folding the paper, inking portions of it with an oil-based ink, and printing them in their folded state. The oil paint was then polished after printing, creating an extremely subtle and nuanced surface. For the artist, folding paper is a physical way to experience algebra and other mathematical concepts, and this series is an important achievement in the artist's oeuvre combining her systemic approach with drawing and mathematics.
