Charcoal on paper, 80″ x 117″ (203.2 x 297.2 cm);
A dancer and choreographer associated with New York’s Judson Dance Theater from 1962 to 1964, Brown experiments with space, gravity, and the inversion of the body’s hierarchies. Interested in daily activities and the distribution of weight, she was an essential contributor to the invention of postmodern dance, a style that emerged from the movement experiments of the early 1960s. Earlier in her practice she made small, notational drawings to represent movement; now she makes large performative drawings using her whole body, merging movement and mark-making. This monumental drawing is related to Brown’s most recent choreography project, for an opera. It is a byproduct of a dance she performed on the surface of the paper while moving a stick of charcoal with her feet.

Gallery label from On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century, November 21, 2010-February 7, 2011