A Page from the Drawing Papers Archive

This page from Drawing Papers 78 features L’Homme XXVI: Hallucinations, Arture 385 created with handmade pigments and ink on paper by Yüksel Arslan in 1988.

The 2008 exhibition Yüksel Arslan: Visual Interpretations presented a 50 year survey of Arslan’s work, providing an intimate glimpse into his thinking, interests, and obsessions. For many decades, Arslan mined  the depths of the unconscious mind, bringing together Western and Eastern aesthetics and philosophy in finely wrought works that he calls “Artures”. Serial in format, the hundreds of drawings he produced dealt with subjects as varied as schizophrenia and the eroticism of de Sade, Bataille, and Artaud, as well as visual interpretations of artists, poets, writers, scientists, musicians, and philosophers that have influenced his thinking. Arslan’s working process included the use of self-made and antique tools and the production of his own colors using ancient methods of combining raw pigments with his own saliva, blood, urine, and other organic materials like honey, earth, and egg whites.

The Drawing Papers are a series of publications documenting The Drawing Center’s exhibitions and public programs and providing a forum for the study of drawing. For more information on Drawing Papers 78  please click here.

Sowden House, East Hollywood (1926). Known locally as the “Jaws House,” this is Loyd Weight’s most exotic design. It is built around an inner courtyard which today is dominated by a giant cactus. 🌵

Freestyle, Tim Street-Porter, 1986. 📚

Our freshwater fish: an overview of the native fish fauna of mainly biological and fisheries economic aspects 

by Emil Walter,.Germany

City & Country Home Magazine, October 1985.

A Page from the Drawing Papers Archive

This page from Drawing Papers 86 features an untitled ink on paper drawing created by Unica Zürn in 1966.

The 2009 exhibition, Unica Zürn: Dark Spring, presented approximately 50 ink and watercolor works on paper by the late German artist and writer, spanning from the early 1950s until her tragic suicide in 1970. Already an established writer and poet, Zürn began her drawings after encounter with Surrealism in 1953.  The Surrealist automatist technique, to which Zürn aligned herself, purposed a strategy of mark making that strived to be free of rational control and so to articulate the repressed content of the unconscious.

Part whimsical cartoons, part intricate portraits, Zürn’s chimerical fantasies make for drawings that are deeply revelatory yet playfully imaginative. 

“The Dog, the Tomcat, the Cat and the Hen”, a Russian folk song. Here’s roughly what’s going on:

“The Dog is in the kitchen baking pierogi. The Tomcat is in the corner grinding crumbs. The Cat is by the window sewing a dress. The Hen wearing boots is sweeping the kitchen.”

Illustration by Yury Vasnetsov (postcard from 1985)