Al Held
American, 1928 - 2005Drawing Number One (The Philadelphia Project), 1975–76
Not on view
Pencil on paper
Dimensions42 × 140 in. (106.7 × 355.6 cm)
Gift of Gary Lipton, 2003.13
In the late 1960s, Held began splitting the picture plane with suggestions of deep space and three-dimensional form. His array of cubes, cylinders, and other geometric structures recede and project in a variety of impossible configurations. The multilayered arrangement of forms in Drawing Number One (The Philadelphia Project) visually addresses a philosophical concern of Held's—whether “multiple and contradictory truths can exist in the same place at the same time.”
