THE DAILY PIC (#1415): This 1969 photo, of the German-Venezuelan artist known as Gego installing her piece called Reticulárea, is part of the rediscovery of her important output that’s been underway for a few years now. One chapter in that rediscovery is playing out in a solo show now at Dominique Lévy gallery in New York
Gego’s trademark works are mostly built from skeins of wire, in the case of her sculptures (see the image below) or of gridded lines and marks in her works on paper. Looking at them by the roomful, it suddenly struck me that I’d seen their gestalt before – in weaving and textiles, and even in the strung looms that are used to make them.
I have to admit that I hesitated, at first, to link the work of an under-recognized female artist to the clichés of what has counted as “women’s work” in our culture; a daily column like this doesn’t afford me the leisure to find out if Gego herself was interested in such connections. (Although her title does translate as something like “net-work”.) Reconsidering my own hesitation, however, I realized that it would be more sexist to ignore the work’s evocation – or invocation – of textiles than to bring it up. To deny the link would be yet another belittling of the “lesser arts” that have traditionally been reserved for women. Why not insist on “wire-weaver” as a celebratory kenning for Gego? (Photo by Juan Santana, © Fundación Gego, courtesy Dominique Lévy Gallery, New York / London)
For a full survey of past Daily Pics visit blakegopnik.com/archive.
