Dream Monuments: Drawing in the 1960s and 1970s presents drawings that challenge the conventional idea of the monument as a permanent, grand, or commemorative form. The provisional character of drawing helped artists envision forms in improbable scales and for impossible conditions, radically transforming the monument to have a new set of sensibilities. Scaled to the size of the page but enormous in ambition, these works rethink history while rendering environments at turns as absurd, surreal, and subjective.
The show takes its inspiration from the unrealized exhibition “Dream Monuments,” planned by Dominique and John de Menil. Letters, interviews, and notes indicate the potential directions the couple considered when developing their theme. The works constitute the foundation for a broader view of how artists grappled with the concept of monumentality during the 1960s and 1970s.
Dream Monuments is co-curated by Erica DiBenedetto, guest curator, and Kelly Montana, Assistant Curator at the Menil Drawing Institute.