Thinking on Paper

Through March 2

Memorial Art Gallery, 500 University Ave.

Wednesday-Sunday 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Thursday until 9 p.m. | 276-8900 | mag.rochester.edu

It's safe to say that the casual observer has no idea what goes into the average work of art. Reactions typically fall into two categories: "My kid could do that" or "I could never create something that complicated or detailed." Few realize that art takes time, and artists rarely get it right on the first try. Before a piece gets to a gallery, it has likely gone through multiple drafts and revisions that viewers never get to see. The current exhibition at the Memorial Art Gallery's Lockhart Gallery changes that.

"Thinking on Paper: Preparatory Drawings from the Collection of the Memorial Art Gallery" features roughly a dozen works from the museum's permanent collection, exhibited along with the sketches and studies that led to their creation. It's an enlightening experience that pulls back the veil of the creative process and shows that good art takes a whole lot of time and hard work, and perhaps a little bit of good luck.

The first work that grabs our attention is Ralston Crawford's "Whitestone Bridge." In addition to the finished oil painting - which seems to have been used as a cover of Fortune Magazine, based on the flag on top - the show also includes several sketches and the photo of the bridge that Crawford used for inspiration. By including the supplemental materials, the museum gives a better sense of the work Crawford did. This wasn't a simple reproduction. Crawford shifted the perspective of the photo to the right, moving the bridge's tower from the center of the picture to the left, and then he added a side of bridge that was totally out of the picture frame. The change in perspective makes for a more dynamic, visually interesting piece.

George Bellows' study for "Evening Group" reveals a fascinating understructure that's almost completely invisible in the finished product. The accompanying card explains that Bellows was interested in exploring color theory, specifically Hardesty Marratta's work involving diagonals. This is clear in the final painting's pointed sails and tents, but Bellows' charcoal drawing shows just how embedded the experiment was in the piece as a whole, as a barely perceptible diamond grid covers almost the entire picture.

Oddly enough, I found that some of the sketches resonated more than the finished works. Jerome Witkin's "Breaking the Pose" is a gorgeous work that reflects both classical realism and its 1980's time period. But the two charcoal model drawings included here exhibit a life and energy that was lost in translation into the final painting. The unbroken, thick curves and scribbled hair in the model studies have a wild kineticism that's appealing in a totally different way than the polished finished product.

The exhibit also includes several sketches of sculptural works. It's fascinating to see how artists approach creating a 3-D object in a two-dimensional medium. The three enormous brush drawings that go along with Hilda Morris's "Mountain Piece" at first look totally unconnected, like abstract Japanese characters. But if you compare them to the displayed maquette - a tiny reproduction of the final sculpture - you can see that each drawing shows the edge of a different viewpoint of the finished bronze work.

Meanwhile, David Smith's ink and tempura study of "Big Diamond" takes a more traditional approach, flattening his complicated work onto a page. It doesn't do the final sculpture justice, as the sketch lacks much of the vibrancy and interest in the final piece. But it helps to show just how skilled a sculptor must be to fully realize his vision from one medium to the next.

The centerpiece of the show is arguably Carol Acquilano's "The Field by the Tree at the Lake." The color woodprint was Acquilano's patron print for the MAG in 2006 and was selected to be the image on the University of Rochester's holiday card this year. Looking at the lovely, vibrant image you'd have no idea how much work went into each of the 130 prints in the run, but the helpful placards make it abundantly clear. The show includes the final print as well as five preparatory works that led up to it: two acrylic color studies featuring vastly different compositions, a small compositional study, a second graphite study in which more detail was added to the image (mostly to give the work more vertical elements to balance the many horizontal lines), and a watercolor study that demonstrated how the various colors would combine when laid on top of one another.

Next the placards explain the process of reduction woodcutting, a baffling, almost maddeningly complicated art form. It's nearly impossible to encapsulate (although the MAG placard writer does a brilliant job), but suffice it to say that the endeavor requires each color being added separately, every print in the series colored in one day, and then the woodblock left to dry a week, then carved away for each additional color. The consequence is that if you make a single mistake, you're screwed - there's no going back, no fixing the problem. (That's why they call it a "suicide block," apparently.)

Acquilano happened to be at the show when I visited, and she was excited that the exhibit gave art fans a window into her process. She says that she makes tons of preparatory material for her pieces (this print, incidentally, took four months to create), but never expected to see any of it framed or hanging in a museum gallery. That's exactly where this show succeeds - showing that each step in the artistic process is as fascinating as the final project itself. 

Thinking on Paper

Through March 2

Memorial Art Gallery, 500 University Ave.

Wednesday-Sunday 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Thursday until 9 p.m. | 276-8900 | mag.rochester.edu