Artist Statement
In 1963 I did drawings in India ink that I called Constellations. I did them blind, closing my eyes and listening to Wanda Landowska's recording of the Well-Tempered Clavier, not following the sound, but just doing it as a period of time so I would know when to stop. I did 96, one for each Prelude and one for each Fugue. The drawings were made of dots. I found that if I didn't look where I was putting the dots, it turned out better than if I did look.
By 1964 I was doing gestural line drawings with graphite in a lead-holder. They ranged in dimension from 11" x 8" to 45" x 35". My intention was to forget drawing, to forget art history, to forget art, to forget myself, if possible. I have continued this work to the present and have found that the distancing ability improves steadily. The activity affords minutes or hours of greatly appreciated tranquility, and I am left with an object which is a kind of literal record of what my hands and arms were doing during that interval.
About the Artist
William Anastasi is one of the founders of both Conceptual and Minimal Art - relevant works were made before the movements were named. These works, starting in 1961, include
Relief and
Microphone, among the earliest examples of Conceptual Art. Between 1963 and 1966, we have
Sink - a clear demonstration of entropy - and
Issue and
Trespass - important forerunners to an entire class of works involving deconstruction.
Sink (which combines his Conceptual and Minimal approaches) and
En Route, are among the earliest forays into Minimal Art. Holding that after Duchamp there was no earthly reason why a blind man could not be an artist, his unsighted drawings were also started in 1963. His 1966/67
Six Sites broke the ground for an entire genre of exhibitions under the rubric Site Specific. Underlying his practice is his sense that the only thing that interests him about taste is that it is always changing.
