NEW HAVEN, CT.- The Yale University Art Gallery presents What Is a Line? Drawings from the Collection, on view through July 22, 2007. What Is a Line?, a special exhibition on view in the Yale University Art Gallery’s recently renovated Louis Kahn building, presents more than sixty drawings that reveal the variety of ways in which artists have defined, challenged, and reflected upon the role of the line in drawing. A highlight of the exhibition, which includes work by fifty-three artists, including Carl Andre, Trisha Brown, Philip Guston, and Agnes Martin, among others, is an original wall drawing by Sol LeWitt, specially loaned by the artist.

What Is a Line? is being organized by a curatorial team of Yale students who are responsible for all aspects of the project, including exhibition design and interpretive materials, as well as installation of Mr. LeWitt’s drawing.

Organized thematically, What Is a Line? is divided into seven sections, each of which offers an answer to the broad question posed by the exhibition title. The first section, called “Space and Contour,” considers traditional challenges related to how best to create the illusion of three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface. Not surprisingly, artists have found unexpected, nontraditional solutions to the problem. Ellsworth Kelly’s Magnolia (1966) and Henry Elinson’s Untitled (1975) show the range of possibilities, as Kelly’s simple pencil outlines of a flower leave the viewer’s eye to complete volume, while Elinson uses felt-tip pen to express the topography of an abstract, seemingly mathematical shape. Other sections take on the constraints of drawing. “Frame and Boundary,” for example, explores the limitations presented by the four edges of a piece of paper, each in itself an immovable line. Jo Baer repeats the borderlines of the page in the drawing Agent (1962), while in May 13th, 2001 (2001), Julia Mangold similarly mimics the effect of the border.

The artists represented in “Text” pay homage to the complex connection between writing and drawing and also explore the tension between these two concepts: Where, for example, does writing end and drawing begin? Some artists, such as Cy Twombly, refuse to make the distinction, while others use line to explore or comment on texts. Jay Kelly, for example, uses short vertical lines to suggest the barcode—a different kind of text. In the drawings on view in “Grids and Networks,” line is used as both a mechanical, systematized form of organization and as a more flexible network showing the unique touch of the human hand. Philip Guston’s Untitled (1951), in brush and black ink, suggests both structured grid and the unstructured motion of the artist’s hand. Other sections of the exhibition include “Layer,” “Cuts, Impressions, and Incisions,” and “Gesture.”

Mr. LeWitt’s wall drawing underscores the diversity of effects possible when an artist stretches a line to its naturally expansive conclusion. The instructions for the drawing are simple: “131 lines of random length and direction, each drawn from the end of a previous line. They may cross.” The possibilities, however, are endless, teasing chaos out of structure.

The curatorial team of Yale students worked under the direction of Anna Hammond, Deputy Director for Education, Programs, and Public Affairs, and Pamela Franks, Curator of Academic Initiatives, both of the Yale University Art Gallery, as well as Christine Mehring, Assistant Professor of the History of Art at Yale.

This exhibition is made possible by the Florence B. Selden Fund, and the Jane and Gerald Katcher and the Nolen-Bradley Family Funds for Education, with additional support provided by Drs. Joseph L. Koerner, B.A. 1980, and Margaret L. Koster, and by Carol and Sol LeWitt in memory of Robert Rosenblum.