Three sets of figurative drawings by three generations of artists–Robert Barnes, Barbara Rossi, and Robert Lucy–are being shown at The University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art. All three are alums of the School of The Art Institute of Chicago (where Rossi now teaches), hence the setting, and all have “explored drawing’s expressive or narrative potential through unified cycles of drawings, ranging from four to eleven works.”
Serial Drawings reunites ten drawings by Barnes that are based on Ezra Pound’s epic poem Cantos (1961), of which William Carlos Williams said “[Pound] discloses history by its odor, by the feel of it—in the words; fuses it with the words, present and past, to MAKE his Cantos. Make them.” Also featured are Rossi’s series Very Rich Hims and Hers (1970) and Lucy’s suite Sea Fashions (2002–03). Serial Drawings: Robert Barnes, Barbara Rossi, Robert Lucy is on view at the Smart Museum of Art, July 1-August 31, 2014.
Robert M. Barnes, Canto I, From the series of eight drawings based on Ezra Pound’s Cantos, 1961, Pastel on laid paper. Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago, Gift of Allan Frumkin, 1996.58a. © Robert Barnes.
