Bill Radawec's Crackup Press

Selected Press

Art in America

Feb, 2003

Bill Radawec at Shaheen Contemporary - Cleveland

Thomas McEvilley

Bill Radawec was living in Los Angeles when the big earthquake of 1994 hit. His apartment developed

cracks in the walls at about 40 places. He decided to make an art work of the earthquake damage.

Ascending a ladder, carrying a drawing board, he drew each of the cracks in detail and measured the

depths of the various parts of each fissure, which were between one and five millimeters deep. He

marked the corresponding parts of each drawing with a number, 1 through 5, to indicate the depth of

the fissure at that exact point. Then he took sheets of paper one millimeter thick. On the first one he drew

the uppermost layer of a crack and cut it out with an X-acto knife. Putting another sheet underneath that

one, he drew the parts that were one millimeter deep, and cut them out. Then, with another sheet, he

drew the parts that were two millimeters deep, cut them out, and so on. The drawing was done with pen,

pencil and Wite-Out. Finally each crack was represented by a stack of five sheets that replicated it in

three dimensions. In each case the uppermost sheet was painted the color of his walls at the time, a pale

tan. The 40 or so obsessive drawings were then framed. The result is a series of trompe I'oeil

representations of earthquake damage rendered so precisely and convincingly that, upon seeing them,

one at first thinks the artist removed the sections of plaster and framed them. Even upon close inspection

they do not reveal themselves as representations, but seem real. The glimpses of damage are esthetically

appealing. Each drawing turns out to have a particular allure that is unique. Yet, despite their credibility

and charm as drawings, they clearly partake of the spirit of conceptual art. In fact, they treat a classical

theme of conceptual art that might be called the problem of the wall. In the 1960s and early `70s,

conceptual artists in general regarded the wall with suspicion, as the site of painting, which seemed

polluted by its long-standing complicity with the market system. Earlier, Duchamp had responded to this

feeling by placing his works on the floor or hanging them from the ceiling, avoiding the ideologically

saturated wall. In the early conceptualist period many variations on this theme were rung, by William

Anastasi, Lawrence Weiner and others. Radawec has produced an elegant variation on this theme 30

years later, when many of the concerns of classical conceptualism are being reinvestigated. His version

has traits that show the passage of years and the softening of the austere, earlier principles. Radawec's

works, for example, are made by hand rather than by a mechanical method; being drawings, they

represent the most traditional of art-school disciplines; they are framed like more traditional art works,

although they show only the wall itself; and so on. This elegant and intelligent show encapsulated a good

swath of recent art history. The fact that the works show earthquake damage--and in fact enshrine it--

suggests the deep damage that the quake of conceptualism wrought to the tradition of the artist's hand

and its touch. Yet, with an ironic circularity that is another classical conceptual theme, they represent this

deep fissure in art history through the very qualities of drawing, hand and touch that the original

conceptualists hoped to destroy forever.

Studio 360

Nov 9, 2002 (Show #347)

This Week Cover Story

Natural Disaster

Kurt Andersen and writer Sebastian Junger talk about why our culture is drawn to the menace, and

beauty, of natural disaster.

Hurricane

The photographer Clifford Ross has spent several years chasing down Hurricanes along the East Coast.

Waist-deep in the stormy water, Ross captures the moment when the waves turn from ominous to

terrifying. Produced by Michael Raphael. Goto Clifford Ross' web site

See the photographs by Clifford Ross

Earthquake

The 1994 Northridge Quake in California killed 56 people and caused $20 billion in damage. As scary

as the ‘94 disaster was, one artist, Bill Radawec in Los Angeles found the aftermath in his apartment

building inspiring.

Produced by Matt Holzman.

Studio 360 is a co-production of Public Radio International and WNYC New York Public Radio, and is

supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the

Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation.

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