Mequitta Ahuja (American, b. 1976), “Tress IV,” 2008,
waxy chalk over graphite on paper. Gift of funds from Sheila Morgan 2010.17.
I came home recently to find, on the rocking chair that sits by our mail box, a large envelope enclosing Master Drawings from the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the gorgeous and insightful catalogue accompanying the “Marks of Genius: 100 Extraordinary Drawings” exhibition currently on view. The MIA’s drawing collection includes everything from “…an artist’s sketch that reveals the thrilling moment of artistic creation to a finished pastel that rivals the pictorial qualities of a painting,” writes Kaywin Feldman, the museum’s director and president. When I read this, it struck me that Feldman was using painting as a standard for drawing, which brought to mind questions I often think about in the studio. Namely, “What makes a painting a painting, and what makes a drawing a drawing? Are they kin or rival?”
My work in “Marks of Genius,” Tress IV from 2008, is described in the book as an example of drawings that are, “…for all intents and purposes, paintings.” In the same essay, curator Rachel McGarry explains how, historically, drawing started out as a hidden part of an artist’s process but over time came to also include drawings that were considered complete artworks. The Return of the Young Hunter, 1775, by Jean Baptiste Greuze is an early example of a drawing that was made to be exhibited. It has the finish and refinement of a painting.
The seated father in The Return of the Young Hunter is said to resemble a statue that Greuze probably saw in Rome. The father’s posture is relaxed but commanding. McGarry points out that his clothes are so casual that, at the time, he would have been considered only partially dressed, and that this casual chic extends to the style of the room. Again providing a historical context, McGarry tells us that while Greuze’s work had its admirers, it came to be seen as overly “moralizing” and “sentimental.” Yet, drawings such as this, with its visually engaging space, light, narrative, and as McGarry points out, its mix of the everyday with the character of classical art, give us much to value and appreciate.
Jean-Baptiste Greuze (French, 1725–1805), “The Return of the Young Hunter,” c. 1775, pen and black ink, brush and black and gray wash, heightened with white, over graphite, on brown paper; laid down on ivory paper with framing lines in pen and brown ink. The John R. Van Derlip Fund 70.13.
My interest in the work is that The Return of the Young Hunter is a drawing that functions like a painting. We can clearly see what materials Greuze used (paper, pen and ink, etc.), and we can see where he made adjustments to his composition—a common feature of drawing—but the complexity, detail, and refinement of the picture as well as its range from dark to light, which gives the work a sense of an even wider span of color than brown, together make The Return of the Young Hunter function like a painting.
I have noticed this same thing—the boundary between painting and drawing seeming to dissolve—in my own recent work. My colored-pencil on paper drawings, such as Statues, 2014, are also drawings that function like paintings. Statues, part of a larger series, was inspired, perhaps like Greuze, by artistic encounters in Rome, but I have addressed history in a very different way from Greuze. With clear admiration, Greuze used the classical style to valorize the family, which further valorized classical art itself. In my work, a self-portrait, I show the artist in an encounter with Western art history. She stands at the high center of the composition, also like a statue (not casual chic but completely nude), but my subject, in relation to the same artistic heritage, displays a different attitude: curiosity and irreverence.
Mequitta Ahuja, “Statues,” colored pencil on paper
Mequitta Ahuja uses the word “Automythography” to describe her work as an artist. She has received numerous awards and fellowships, including a 2009 Studio Museum in Harlem residency and a 2014 Siena Art Institute residency in Siena, Italy. Mequitta currently lives and works in Baltimore. Her work will be featured in the upcoming exhibitions “Iconoclasts” at the Saatchi Gallery in London and “State of the Art” at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas.
Ahuja participates in the MIA’s “Marks of Genius” Drawing Studio on Thursday evening, August 7, as part of the “The Artist Is In” series. The evening begins with Ahuja describing her mesmerizing methods in Pillsbury Auditorium at 6:30 p.m., free with admission to the exhibition.