Joshua Neustein

Joshua Neustein, Partially Erased US Flag
Erasures, 1971-1973, 16mm black and white film

Partially erased U.S. Flag

2017
Drawing

Erasures

1971-1973
16mm black and white film
http://joshuaneustein.com


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Joshua Neustein lives and works in New York

“So it sounds like with this exhibition at the Israel Museum and also generally, you’re seeking an expanded definition of drawing.

It is going to be an expanded definition. I’m going to have 72 works in that show. There will be 5 videos as drawing, including one you saw, Making and Erasing. In that video, I sometimes make and erase a scribble, other times I make and erase the alphabet, then I make and erase sentences, then I make and erase iconic symbols like the swastika, the dollar sign, the Star of David, the cross.

Do you still make erased drawings?

I make erased drawings but I don’t erase these fancy symbols. But I will – I have a few left from making the film that I didn’t throw away. You know artists collect everything, like ants. In other words, I don’t edit myself historically. Some things I just lose interest in. But the carbon copy drawings are different.

Those are the first works I saw by you. They’re made from carbon sets, those sheets of blank paper interspersed with carbon paper, and you cut, fold, tear, and mark the different layers.  You’ve been making these for a long time.

Yes, since 1968.

When you started making them, carbon paper was still being used to make copies of documents. And all this time that you’ve been making these drawings, what that paper is has changed – it’s now obsolete. Has that changed the way you thought about what you’re doing with the carbon sets?

Too late. Too late. The nostalgia aspect of it I keep hearing from other people. But of course I’ve been working with them for such a long time. I have these boxes of them. I did one this week. It’s an ongoing practice. Something comes up. There may be a statement by Donald Judd, by Ad Reinhardt, or somebody in Israel. Then I’ll make a carbon copy drawing that addresses that statement.

You make a drawing that responds to a statement, in language.

Language is more of a driving engine in my work than meaning. And that goes back to Hans Kohn. He says that when a newspaper describes somebody, you always see an adjective that describes that person. Take a newspaper article and read the adjectives, the participles that are attached. Even the physical description of, say, politicians is very biased, it’s triggered, it’s loaded.

It’s already telling you what you need to think.

So when I describe a drawing, the language is very important. I’ll make a scribble on a piece of paper, I’ll erase a square, and I’ll write at the bottom ‘Erased Square.’ There’s a contradiction between the language and the act and what you see. ‘Erased Square’ implies some kind of obliteration of the square when in fact the square was created by the erasure. And then I take the rubbings from the erasure, and put them into a glassine envelope, so it puts the erased square into an envelope, which is then attached to the drawing.

The scribble is still there, in the shreds of the eraser.

My premise is that I don’t change anything, I just move it or shift it around.”

– Interview with Joshua Neustein by Catherine Craft, nashersculpturecenter.org, 2012