Wild Grape

Wild Grape is a carefully rendered pencil drawing of the namesake plant, likely of a vine found by the artist. The drawing is an exercise in linework alone, with no shading, color, or contours present. Due to the interplay between parts and whole, each element of the plant possesses its own distinct sensibility. No leaf is alike in its warp and serration, while the central vine and its offshoots vary in texture and solidity. In this ode to nature, even the cluster of young grapes appears as variations on the circle. Through the use of line and detail, Kelly presents the vine as an object of contemplation. While the possible layers of interpretation—is this a formal experiment, an exercise in visual fidelity, a paean to beauty, or an homage to nature’s bounty and innovation?—are many, the subject matter at hand is resolutely straightforward and modest.

Known for his language of Minimalist abstraction, Kelly’s presentation of a thing as it is begins from a place of astute, sustained observation. The latter was born largely from the artist’s interest in plant life, which he drew for decades alongside his experiments bridging painting and sculpture. As he once said, "The drawings from plant life seem to be the bridge to the way of seeing that brought about the [abstract] paintings in 1949 that are the basis for all my later work."[1]
[1] Ellsworth Kelly, "Notes of 1969," in Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz, eds., Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists’ Writings, 2nd rev. and expanded edition by Kristine Selz (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), p. 119.