David Jeffrey: 9.10.90, 1990

This drawing clearly builds up a grid, yet its verticals and horizontals are distorted rather than straight. Furthermore, since both lines and intervals are of varying breadth, the grid they form is irregular rather than modular. These effects are the result of subjective and arbitrary artistic decisions, and the personal touch they imply is reinforced by the suggestion of craft. With its irregular pattern, its horizontal patch at the bottom, and two “holes,” the drawing comes close to representing a piece of woven fabric, thus embodying the bugbear of modernist abstraction; decoration.

Notes:

1. See David Jeffrey, “Artist’s Statement,” in The New Generation, exhibition brochure, Elaine Benson Gallery (Bridgehampton, New York, 1988), no pagination.
2. Unpublished artist’s statement, 1991, from collector’s file.

Citation:
Text by Christine Mehring, from "Drawing is another kind of language": Recent American Drawings from a New York Private Collection (Harvard University Art Museums, in association with Daco-Verlag Gunter Bläse, 1997; reprinted 1998). ©1997 President and Fellows of Harvard College.