Ruth Asawa: Line by Line

Interned by executive order as a Japanese-American during the Second World War, Ruth Asawa went on to transform approaches to sculpture. A new exhibition at Christie’s explores the extraordinary talent of the artist who ‘drew in space’

Ruth Asawa’s story is one of extraordinary creativity in the face of adversity. Born in California in 1926, her life was shaped, like her art, by social and political impositions; by unjust restrictions on her liberties and supposed inalienable rights.

As a teenager in the early 1940’s, Asawa and her family were sent by Executive Order to an internment camp with approximately 120,000 fellow Japanese Americans. Under the tutelage of professional artists also held captive, Asawa began to make art, finding in it a sense of liberation at a time when the government had stripped her of her civil liberties.

Despite the suffering she endured, Asawa exhibited great humility and, 50 years after the event, felt little resentment, saying: ‘I hold no hostilities for what happened; I blame no one. Sometimes good comes through adversity. I would not be who I am today had it not been for the internment, and I like who I am.’

Following the close of the Second World War, in 1947, Asawa set off on a tour to Mexico, where she was captivated by the looped-wire baskets used in markets to sell eggs and other produce. Intrigued by the material’s potential as an artistic medium, she began to loop and twist wire, using continuous lines to create three-dimensional forms that appeared to play with space in which they hung.  

Asawa continued her formal artistic education at North Carolina’s Black Mountain College, studying alongside a group of artists who would grow to be amongst the 21st century’s most influential. ‘The late 1940s and early 1950s at Black Mountain were the now legendary institution’s most glorious years,’ comments Robert Storr. ‘Refugee Bauhaus master Josef Albers was at the centre of Black Mountain’s program, bringing diverse talents to the remote community both as teachers and as students.’

Black Mountain’s illustrious teaching staff included Merce Cunningham and Buckminster Fuller; Willem and Elaine de Kooning would later join the summer faculty, along with Franz Kline, and artists Robert Rauschenberg and Cy Twombly were amongst the student body. The institution’s Modernist and Bauhaus currents became a visible influence in Asawa’s practice, with the Bauhaus notion of transparency — allowing the viewer to conjure imagined spaces — a prominent aspect of works that cut and shape space.

Installation view, Ruth Asawa: Objects & Apparitions, Christie’s, 6–31 May 2013. Artwork: © Estate of Ruth Asawa

Other aspects of the school influenced more than just Asawa’s visual language: Whilst there, the artist churned buttermilk daily, the activity forming part of a communal commitment to working for the ‘greater good’. The creed was one that Asawa continued to live by, even after leaving Black Mountain for a new life in San Francisco. Christie’s specialist Jonathan Laib comments: ‘Her art, her family, her garden, her activism—each seemingly grew to fuller capacity due to the existence of the other, not in spite of it’.

For Laib, Asawa’s works represent a ‘new sculptural invention,’ leaving flat canvas to explore the idea of ‘drawing in space’. ‘The wire served a purpose in assisting to explore space within and without,’ says Laib. ‘It was an “experiment” that created sculptures of a most articulate and stunning visual revelation…Stringing them from the ceiling in defiance of gravity revealed yet another great leap of faith and imagination’.

Discussing her practice in 1995, Asawa said: ‘My curiosity was aroused by the idea of giving structural form to the images in my drawings. These forms come from observing plants, the spiral shell of a snail, seeing light through insect wings, watching spiders repair their webs in the early morning, and seeing the sun through the droplets of water suspended from the tips of pine needles while watering my garden.’

‘Throughout her life Asawa drew,’ says Laib. ‘Many of her most celebrated drawings were created during her stay at Black Mountain College or slightly thereafter during her early days in San Francisco. Overlooked are her botanical and figurative drawings made from direct observation. Seldom shown, these works deserve a closer look and greater consideration within the larger context of her artistic life’.

Featuring works from across artist’s career, Line by Line explores the interplay between Asawa’s two dimensional and sculptural work, whose concern with space has prompted comparisons to the Spatial Concepts of Lucio Fontana and the revolutionary hanging mobiles of sculptor Alexander Calder.

‘What is so surreal about Asawa’s work is the very fact that her art was every bit as outrageous as that of other, equally obsessive artists, such as Yayoi Kusama for example, but she maintained a nuanced life of modest responsibility,’ comments Laib. ‘Imogen Cunningham has taken many incredible photographs of Ruth. In nearly all she is working or caught in a rare moment between taping her fingers and bending more wire. She exudes a calm presence in these photographs, but do not be fooled. She was an adamant defender of the arts and arts education’.

‘Contemplating her oeuvre with even a fraction of the concentration that she devoted to creating it makes our minds supple,’ comments Robert Storr. ‘The time is right for Asawa to return to our attention’.

Ruth Asawa: Line by Line is at Christie’s in New York 9 September – 3 October, and Christie’s in Tokyo 16 October – 6 November. All artwork © Estate of Ruth Asawa.

 

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