‘It’s Like Practicing the Piano’: Watch Interdisciplinary Artist Joan Jonas Describe How Drawing Supports Her Other Creative Pursuits

For the artist Joan
Jonas—a virtuoso dancer, composer, and sculptor—drawing serves
as both a conditioned mode of practice, and sometimes as a final
product.

“It’s like practicing the piano,” she said in an exclusive
interview with Art21 back in 2014. “The first ones that I do
often don’t come out, so I have to practice and do it over and over
again until I get what I like.”

In the video, Jonas is shown in her Manhattan
studio preparing works to be featured in Robert Ashley’s
opera Celestial Excursions. She’s churning out reams
of paper covered in painted sketches of her dog Xena, as well as
her pet owl.

To challenge herself, Jonas uses long sticks affixed with
brushes to apply paint, distancing herself physically from the
canvas and increasing the abstracted elements of her work.

At the age of 83, Jonas is still producing work at an impressive
rate and mounting new international exhibitions.

Right now at the Thyssen-Bornemisza contemporary art center in
Madrid, “Joan Jonas: Moving Off the Land II,” is on view, and
reflects her continued interest in the ocean and her concern with
the delicate ecosystems that are contained within expansive
bodies of water. The work was first shown during the 2019
Venice Biennale, where it inaugurated a new venue called Ocean
Space.

Watch the video, which originally appeared as part
of Art21’s Art in the Twenty-First Century series, below.
“Joan Jonas: Moving Off the Land II” is on view at Museo Nacional
Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid through May 18,
2020. 

This is an installment of “Art on Video,” a collaboration
between artnet News and Art21 that brings you clips of newsmaking
artists. A new series of the nonprofit Art21’s flagship series Art
in the Twenty-First Century is available now on PBS. Catch all
episodes of other series like New York Close Up and Extended Play
and learn about the organization’s educational programs
at Art21.org.

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Interdisciplinary Artist Joan Jonas Describe How Drawing Supports
Her Other Creative Pursuits appeared first on artnet
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