Mark di Suevro: Untitled (1983)

The faded off-white paper, curled at the edges from age, glows in the soft gallery lights. Any respectable museum curator would place Mark di Suvero’s piece in a hall of paintings, with the rest of its two-dimensional brethren. Yet the layers of broad brushstrokes and ink linework interlock, weaving together like the layers of a metal sculpture. My left brain tells me “black gouache and silver felt pen,” but the right screams “wrought iron and polished steel.” 

This should not surprise me. The artist, after all, built his reputation as a sculptor of scrap metal, not an abstract expressionist painter. His name graced the informational placard for the Peace Tower, a colossal steel sculpture he constructed in 1966 to protest the Vietnam War. Critics from every country extol his command of metal, and his works grace sculpture gardens on both sides of the Atlantic. Perhaps di Suvero painted this as an ode to his preferred medium: ink and paint masquerading as layers of iron and steel. 

I begin at the back with the layer farthest from my eyes, the foundation. Broad strokes in translucent black gouache paint, wavy lines and arcs flowing like water. Each stroke melds into the next, reminding me of the scrolls of traditional Korean calligraphy that hang in my grandparents’ living room. Though these brushstrokes lack a defined form, they exude a breezy preindustrial grace, like a vast plain criss-crossed with shallow streams. 

I move my focus to the next layer of di Suvero’s sculpture-on-paper, the main body. Another lattice of gouache brushstrokes, a darker matte jet-black compared to the watery hues of the strokes beneath. At the center of this layer, a bold vertical line dominates the painting, like a welded iron column. Rigid rectangular strokes branch off from this central axis, resembling smokestacks rising over Meiji-period Tokyo, the ladders and catwalks of an industrial-era factory in London, or the scaffolding around a New York skyscraper at the turn of the century. 

Now for the final layer, the crowning piece of the sculpture. Here, the artist has switched to the stainless steel sheen of a silver felt pen. A few deft lines add to the scaffolding, connecting different parts of the sculpture with a computer algorithm’s flawless efficiency. I see the Louvre pyramid, the Gateway Arch, the Tokyo Skytree, all shining glass and metal. The modern age has arrived: stylish, minimalist, inhuman. 

For millennia, artists have turned to sculpture in order to portray depth and multidimensionality in an authentic way. I find it fitting that Untitled (1983), a sculptor’s attempt at painting, also captures a breathtaking level of dimensionality. Length, width, and depth, of course… and something of the fourth dimension as well, a journey through time. 

Did Mark di Suvero intend that I react in this specific way? With near-certainty, no. A billion people viewing this painting would respond in a billion different ways. The amorphous lines of ink and paint provide no easy interpretations, no correct answers, no neat labels. I view this piece through a particular lens, tinted by my personal interest in history and architecture. Just a single viewing angle, one dimension to the painting among an infinite continuum… but this one is mine, authentically mine.