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Gego: exploding the field
Art Journal, Winter, 2007 by Monica Amor
This curators' publication (which contrasts with the young scholars' catalogue discussed first) also includes essays by Catherine de Zegher and Robert Storr. Within the small but growing circle of Gego's connoisseurs, de Zegher is known for having introduced Gego's work to an international audience in her seminal 1996 book and exhibition Inside the Visible: An Elliptical Traverse of 20th Century Art in, of, and from the Feminine. The latter proposed a provocative and parallel trajectory for modern and contemporary art that took into account the feminine as a site of singular aesthetic production. Here, de Zegher opens her essay with some heavy paternal figures (Alexander Calder, Rodchenko, Umberto Boccioni, Pablo Picasso, Georges Vantongerloo, Marcel Duchamp) to address the notion of drawing in space--a historically grounded pursuit that she does not account for and which remains to be addressed as a backdrop against which Gego's work operates. Her contemporary references instead include surprises such as the fascinating work of the Czech artist Karel Malich (whom Rottner and Weibel thought of pairing with Gego before settling on Vollmer), but this suggestive association, despite the two beautiful works by the artist illustrated in the essay, is not elaborated. There is not much of a concrete argument here. De Zegher provides a rough summary of Gego's work trajectory and then suggests several intriguing paths of investigation that draw little on close readings of the art but rely instead on various other interpretations and sources. The effect is patchy and scattered, despite the introduction of themes relevant to Gego's work such as "weaving" as medium and process, and the "informe." De Zegher's grand conclusion is that Gego's work "inspires social change and political commitment on a global scale" (73), an assertion that is not properly qualified in the essay. In addition, de Zegher's text problematically draws on translations, descriptions, and archival materials imported from recently published work on Gego that are nonetheless not cited in her essay. (10)
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Storr closes the publication's essays with a panoramic overview of the sculptural scenario of the postwar period and the status of geometric abstraction in the United States. He too relates Gego's work to prewar constructivism, but instead of engaging in the historicist account Ledezma details, he underlines formal correlations, processes, and use of materials. Comparisons are the backbone of Storr's essay, and while suggestive, they at times seem to respond more to Storr's own interests (Tony Smith, Brice Marden) than to a sustained analysis of the work. Pieces such as Kusama's Infinite Nets from the 1960s seem more pertinent in a discussion of Gego's webs, an often-over-looked association that I was happy to see here. Storr too lingers on Gego's drawings and linear manipulations, and his beautiful descriptions attest to his admiration for the work. Specifically, he refers to the Drawings without Paper (done in the 1970s and 1980s) and how they distance themselves from traditional notions of gesture, author, and subject despite their artisanal nature. He is closer to a materialist reading of the works: their "figurations and 'markings' are therefore able to foreground their own material reality against the equally material back-ground of the wall" (93). The latter, he concludes, is one of the "least appreciated but most graceful, surprising, and open-ended artistic enterprises of the second half of the twentieth-century" (93). This catalogue also delivers a detailed, illustrated chronology, with notations on Gego's technical developments, life, and statements regarding her work, compiled by Josefina Manrique, which is of great value. The volume's plates expand our enjoyment of Gego's work, since they include numerous two-dimensional works that are little known and have never been reproduced.
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