Animating the Page: Otto Piene and the Artist Sketchbook
Introduction
The Busch-Reisinger Museum at the Harvard Art Museums was gifted more than 70 sketchbooks kept by artist Otto Piene (1928–2014), thanks to the generosity of artist and poet Elizabeth Goldring Piene. Dating from 1935 to 2014, the largely unpublished sketchbooks reflect interdisciplinary, cross-media experiments from his long career in the Boston area and abroad, including both realized and unrealized projects. A pioneer in multimedia and technology-based art, Piene was long interested in optical perception and kinetic forces, resulting in a body of work that emphasizes collaboration and the intersections of art, science, and nature. The diverse themes and approaches in this special collection aim to open new pathways of research into Piene’s individual artistic practice as well as the multivalent nature of the sketchbook.