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Identification and Creation

Object Number
1995.44
People
Mel Pekarsky, American (Chicago IL born 1934)
Title
Desert Book
Classification
Drawings
Work Type
sketchbook
Date
1980 - 1986
Culture
American
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/293435

Physical Descriptions

Medium
Various media, including graphite, colored crayon, watercolor, felt-tipped pen on cream laid paper
Dimensions
actual: 25 x 31 x 4 cm (9 13/16 x 12 3/16 x 1 9/16 in.)
Inscriptions and Marks
  • Signed: graphite, l.r.: (MP)
  • inscription: Some pages have watermark: rooster and shield.

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
[G. W. Einstein Company, Inc., New York, New York], sold; to Harvard University Art Museums, 1995.

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Margaret Fisher Fund
Accession Year
1995
Object Number
1995.44
Division
Modern and Contemporary Art
Contact
am_moderncontemporary@harvard.edu
Permissions

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Descriptions

Description
Total of 190 pages of cream laid paper with approximately 96 drawings.
Commentary
Label text for "A Decade of Collecting: Recent Acquisitions of Prints and Drawings, 1940-2000," June 3rd-August 27th.

Mel Pekarsky
American, b. 1934
Landscape, from Desert Book, 1980–86
Graphite
Margaret Fisher Fund
1995.44

In this remarkable sketchbook of approximately ninety-six drawings, Mel Pekarsky explores the beauty and mysteries of the desert’s empty vastness. The allover compositions of his large-scale independent drawings—based on aerial photographs of desert landscapes—and the far more intimate depictions found in this sketchbook sustain a remarkable balance between abstraction and representation. Calling his drawings "environmentally political," Pekarsky has become obsessed not only with recording the desert’s vastness but also conveying its fragility and vulnerability:

The desert is vast, but fragile and vulnerable. It’s beautiful, rapidly and
constantly changing: neat. I try to bring this back, not as a souvenir or
picture, but as icon and metaphor. I’m interested in surface, in the precision
of chance, in the controlled gesture, and the quiet intensity of nature’s
violence here.

(Edward Saywell)

Publication History

  • Mel Pekarsky, drawings from three decades, exh. cat., G. W. Einstein Company, Inc. (New York, NY, 1995), repro., cat. no. 19

Exhibition History

  • Mel Pekarsky, G. W. Einstein Company, Inc., New York, 04/01/1995 - 05/26/1995
  • A Decade of Collecting: Recent Acquisitions of Prints and Drawings from 1940 to 2000, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, 06/03/2000 - 08/27/2000
  • Under Cover: Artists' Sketchbooks, Harvard University Art Museums, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 08/01/2006 - 10/22/2006

Related Works

Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of Modern and Contemporary Art at am_moderncontemporary@harvard.edu