Russell's Tentative Signs, 1951, ink on paper, 22" x 30". This drawing is featured in the current exhibition and book Americans in Paris, Artists Working in Post-War France, 1946-1962, which opens at NYU's Grey Art Gallery in March 2024, and will travel to the Addison Gallery of American Art later this year.
19 Notes on a Personal Calligraphy in Drawing by Alfred Russell (undated, early 1970's)
1. A mass, a surface of lines, meaningful lines.
2. "meaningful"—"representing, "symbolizing" forms, geometric, natural, physical and organic. Hieroglyphic, cuneiform, alphabetics-Islamic. Similar—crosses, stars.
3. Structures— architectural vaults, masonry. Arches, etc. human forms, animal, vegetable and diagrams.
4. Groups—parallel lines—fields-tesselations, mosaic, crystallography.
5. Topalogical structures. Themes
6. Surface—the surface-sheet of paper, panel canvas, wall is the ultimate surface of a "graphic activity" and improvisation and intuitive organization of the marks, matter, bits of information making up the surface.
7. Activation of a surface. Accents here and there, finding, inventing movements, densities, expansions and contractions. Spacing. Fragmentation. Stretching.
8. Black India Ink—lines, marks, dots, from thin to thick—in about six or seven steps-but in a random order as needed.
9. Most important blending, interconnections, overlapping, spacing—finding new mutations, new flux—kinetic surface activity. Stimulate optical "effects." Light, chiaroscuro atmosphere.
10. Textural modifications—blending pigments-washes.
11. No Form, mass, symbol structure should jump out of the surface. No formula, device, mannerism, technique should dominate.
12. This surface becomes a total metaphor, a poetic, timeless, directionless, "non dimensional" becomes a silent orchestration.
13. Its meaning is "tentative form", metaphoric sign—tentative sign.
14. At any stage of work, one may wash over, paint over, scrape, glaze, change orientation. Reverse.
15. Step 14 is the one that requires courage but in time one learns to profit from this almost total obliteration of a long process of work. A large brush of dry pigment (dry brushing) over drawing—then picking out by rubbing off some of white so that certain areas reappear—permit a new attack. New relationships are suggested.
16. Important—the work should be interrupted, set aside, forgotten and then taken up again and again. It is "finished" when you are— or it completes itself.
17. Color—black and white and grey are quite capable of accomplishing the whole spectrum. Once this is understood—color, not just color wheel colors but organic and mineral—the whole range of colors can become part of the "total surface."
18. Generally, the initial surface should be white. Once however, your surface generating method has developed—then your surface can be prepared. master drawings, Mantegna, Primaticio, Leonardo, Filippino Lippi, Daniel da Volterra, are examples of drawing on "effective prepared surfaces"—that is their prepared surfaces permitted them to extend and quicken and aid their invention.
19. Devices—Techniques— Holding pen or brush and moving paper. Transformations—parallel. Rotations, glide, reflection, etc. "use of Mirror", wetting, sandpapering, blotting, rubbing. Scraping. Blending. Superimposition, printing, stamping.
©2024 the Joan Silverman Russell and Alfred Russell Estate