Richard Tuttle

44th Wire Piece

1972

44th Wire Piece is part of a series of 48 wire works that reflects Richard Tuttle’s thinking about the relationships between drawing and sculpture. To install the work, Tuttle enters a meditative state in order to recall the length and width of the line necessary to create a given piece. After drawing that line in one fluid motion directly on the wall, he then unspools a filament of florist wire, anchoring one end to the drawn line’s point of origin with a small nail. Tuttle traces the line’s trajectory with the wire filament, fastening its other end to the wall at the end of the line. The final work is a line that exists in three dimensions, with the shadow cast by the wire making a third linear element.

Richard Tuttle (b. 1941, Rahway, New Jersey; lives and works in New York and New Mexico)
44th Wire Piece, 1972
Wire and template for pencil line
47 x 22 x 11 1/4 in.
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Gift of Lannan Foundation