Female I

Kazuko Miyamoto

1979 · Ink and graphite on tracing paper · Modern and Contemporary Art

This drawing, delicately subtle and pressed to the limits of saturation, reveals a dense network of parallel and overlapping lines that play with and against one another across the surface. Related to this drawing is a 1974 construction of the same name in which Miyamoto wrapped cotton thread around nails hammered into the wall and the floor, resulting in a tension between the two-dimensional and the three-dimensional, the opaque and the transparent. Both the drawing and the string construction imply gestural actions—pulling, pushing, hanging, stringing, balancing—and reflect Miyamoto’s interest in bodily traces, where the female form referenced in the title is not overtly evident, but subtly implied.

Artist

Kazuko Miyamoto

Date

1979

Medium

Ink and graphite on tracing paper

Department

Modern and Contemporary Art

Credit line

Purchase, Gifts of Mrs. Oscar Miestchaninoff and Theodore J. Edlich, by exchange, 2018