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拍品专文
Ruth Asawa, born in California in 1926 to Japanese-American immigrant farmers, developed early in life an intimate relationship to nature. During a trip to Mexico in 1947, she learned a basket crocheting technique from the indigenous people. It was this looping technique that she developed while at Black Mountain College to make her tied-wire, biomorphic forms – an innovation strongly encouraged by her mentor, Josef Albers. “I was interested in it because of the economy of a line, making something in space, enclosing it without blocking it out…it’s still transparent. I realized that if I was going to make these forms, which interlock and interweave, it can only be done with a line because a line can go anywhere” (R. Asawa, quoted by D. Martin, “Ruth Asawa, an Artist Who Wove Wire, Dies at 87,” New York Times, August 17, 2013).
For most of her career, Asawa’s imagery tended toward naturalistic, botanical and arboreal configurations and motifs. In addition to her looped wire forms, she began tying, bunching and bending strands of wire to achieve a new dimension of abstract and geometric forms. Simultaneously malleable and stiff, wire was Asawa’s material of choice. A simple material, wire was readily available in the immediate postwar period and came in a variety of metals, finishes and thickness. Strong and solid, yet flexible and transparent, wire allowed Asawa to extend line drawings into three-dimensional space.
From three different decades of Asawa’s career, Untitled (S.513), Untitled (S.330) and Untitled (S.724), executed in the 1950s, 1960s and 1980s, respectively, are woven, crocheted or knotted wire transforming line into form, creating volumes and contours around space. Each work is made from a continuous length of copper wire through a process Asawa describes as one of intuition in conversation with materials. “You don’t think ahead of time, this is what I want. You work on it as you go along. You make the line, a two-dimensional line, then you go into space, and you have a three-dimensional piece. It is like drawing in space” (R. Asawa quoted by J. Yau, “Ruth Asawa: Shifting the Terms of Sculpture,” Ruth Asawa: Objects & Apparitions, New York, 2013).
For most of her career, Asawa’s imagery tended toward naturalistic, botanical and arboreal configurations and motifs. In addition to her looped wire forms, she began tying, bunching and bending strands of wire to achieve a new dimension of abstract and geometric forms. Simultaneously malleable and stiff, wire was Asawa’s material of choice. A simple material, wire was readily available in the immediate postwar period and came in a variety of metals, finishes and thickness. Strong and solid, yet flexible and transparent, wire allowed Asawa to extend line drawings into three-dimensional space.
From three different decades of Asawa’s career, Untitled (S.513), Untitled (S.330) and Untitled (S.724), executed in the 1950s, 1960s and 1980s, respectively, are woven, crocheted or knotted wire transforming line into form, creating volumes and contours around space. Each work is made from a continuous length of copper wire through a process Asawa describes as one of intuition in conversation with materials. “You don’t think ahead of time, this is what I want. You work on it as you go along. You make the line, a two-dimensional line, then you go into space, and you have a three-dimensional piece. It is like drawing in space” (R. Asawa quoted by J. Yau, “Ruth Asawa: Shifting the Terms of Sculpture,” Ruth Asawa: Objects & Apparitions, New York, 2013).