FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The proliferation of voices in 21st century art continues to grow, with more artists, more art schools, more art “movements,” more galleries, more and bigger art fairs than ever before creating what some art lovers believe to be a frenzy of clashing visual noise. To succeed in this whirlwind, an artist’s work must too often scream for attention; each work a contender in a market-driven game of one-upmanship with every other artist in town. And yet...

The quieter heartbeat of art’s ageless legacy somehow endures. Underneath the latest “movement” and the “current rage,” away from the brouhaha surrounding the newest “art star,” the true artist’s need to connect with one’s deepest self and human experience thrives.

True, it thrives in the way that it must in this crowded 21st century, with a multiplicity of expressions: from the classical to the audacious, even to the rude. But no matter; what is important here is the survival of the human impulse of mark making, the passion to express one’s view of life and its mysteries by the most direct, most intimate method: drawing. Drawing was humanity’s earliest visual expression. It remains an enduring obsession and animates the works presented in the Morris Museum’s exhibition, TIMELESS: THE ART OF DRAWING.
The richness of expression in these galleries derives from what I believe are drawing’s inescapable requirements: skill, vision and courage. Though all forms of art involve acts of courage, expressions of vision, and, traditionally at any rate, at least a modicum of skill, only drawing requires all of these at once. While the various “-isms” of the Modernists, Post-modernists, Conceptualists and so on may be said to have redefined——or, according to some wits, even reduced- -much of what is currently accepted as art to a philosophy or an act rather than an expertise, where randomness is sometimes celebrated over cohesive vision, where control of the medium sometimes takes a back seat to concept alone, the act of drawing, of taking an instrument and guiding it across a surface in a direct and deliberate way, requires patience and skill.

The contemporary art of drawing is thriving in the Morris Museum’s “neighborhood” of New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Delaware. What was originally envisioned as an intimate survey of activity in the region grew into the large exhibition you see here as it became clear that there is quite a bit of talent in our neighborhood working in a variety of voices. As submissions came in, and work was seen in galleries and at studios, the definition of “drawing” itself needed expanding. Artists are taking chances with non-traditional media, or using materials from other disciplines. But all here embody the fundamental, timeless act of drawing. Thus, there are drawings in the classical traditions of portraiture and figure studies; there are realist drawings; abstract drawings; drawings that employ the full spectrum of shade, tone and color, others that find finality in minimal use of line; there are drawings rendered in almost childlike simplicity, but to devastating effect; drawings of emotional, sexual or gender ambiguity; drawings of deep tenderness, of sadness, of humor and joy.

Human experience in all its moods is expressed here, which is what an exhibition of art is supposed to do, what museums are supposed to do. Here at the Morris Museum, we are pleased to present this episode of the human adventure, an adventure that is timeless.
                                                                       
                                                                  ###