Pisa II
Artist: Al Held (1928-2005)
Key Words
Abstract, Movement, Shape, Pattern
About the Artist:
Al Held (b. 1928), born in Brooklyn, grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant and the East Bronx. A
streetwise New Yorker and Navy veteran, Mr. Held embodied a number of contradictions in his
art and life. He was a high school dropout who became a professor at Yale University. He was
well schooled in the classical tradition of Western art yet worked in an abstract style that
suggested the time-warp universe of space flight. Without using computers, he brought a
mathematical precision to the exuberant, loosely disciplined abstract expressionist style.
Mr. Held would spend as much as three years on one of his large-scale works, which sometimes
measured more than 30 feet in length. Without belonging to any particular school of painting, he
touched on several styles, from abstract expressionism to op art, illusionism, minimalism and
hard-edge.
Anything but self-revelatory, Mr. Held's art was built on visual liveliness and density for its own
sake. He used straight edges, masking tape and multiple coats of evenly applied paint to create
works with intersecting lines, overlapping circles, triangles and other geometric figures. With
subtle splashes of color and illusions of three-dimensional depth, the paintings could, in the
words of one critic, be "disorienting to the point of vertigo."
Writing in Art News magazine in 1988, critic Nancy Grimes called Mr. Held's work "a
refreshing alternative to Abstract Expressionism's tormented vision of an imperiled self."
He struggled in his early years, holding down blue-collar jobs while finding his artistic voice.
But when he developed his geometric form of abstraction -blending the randomly dripped
paintings of Jackson Pollock with the meticulously ordered canvases of Piet Mondrian -- Mr.
Held found a formula that served him well.
"The best abstract painting transforms its formal qualities into metaphors for truths unavailable
to direct perception," he said.
He recently had completed an underground mural in the New York subway system at East 53rd
Street and Lexington Avenue and was working on other murals in Florida and elsewhere. Busy
until the end, Mr. Held could command more than $1 million for his more monumental works.
He felt proprietary about his paintings long after they were completed and would oversee a team
of artists whenever his murals needed touching up.
About the Art: Pisa II, 1983
Pisa II is a work that exemplifies the intersection of mathematics and art. The painting was
created during a time when abstract art was gaining prominence all over the world, particularly
in America. While other artists took a more relaxed and spontaneous approach to abstract art,
Held used mathematic precision and elements of geometry to create a dizzying array of colors
and shapes.
Held used rulers, compasses and other mathematical tools to create Pisa II. Notice the
interlocking geometric shapes. These shapes weave a form that resembles a solid structure, but is
mathematically impossible to build. The colors are designed to show viewers how math can be
used to create pieces full of movement and excitement. Held's pieces were often large in scale
and their popularity is partially based in mathematic tricks and tools used to create a fun, if
complicated series of abstract figures.
Questions:
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Describe the piece.
What do you see?
What colors do you see?
What colors do you see first?
What kinds of lines do you see?
What kinds of patterns and shapes do you see?
How do you think the artist created these shapes so precisely?
Studio Experience
Materials:
1 18x12 construction paper, 1 9x12 construction paper, 1 black marker, glue, construction paper
crayons.
Look at Held's painting. It is not a real object, it may be just an idea instead. Painting ideas is
called abstract art. We will try and do some "abstract art" too.
1. Glue the smaller colored paper onto the larger one. It can be place anywhere but it should
be straight.
Example:
2. With a pencil draw a stick rectangle shape (like in Held's art), a circle a
square or a triangle (geometric shapes) anywhere on the smaller paper.
3. Draw spokes (like a bicycle) from the geometric shape to the edge of the smaller paper.
Continue this all around the shape. Some spokes can go all the way to the edge of the
larger paper too, but you must make two in a row. Make your "spokes" large enough in
between to draw inside later.
4. Go over your spoke lines with a black marker. Fill in your geometric shape with marker.
5. Using construction paper crayons fill in between two spokes by repeating different lines
or shapes to make a pattern. Skip a space, then fill-in the next two spokes with a pattern.
Continue until the art is completed.