Untitled Passages by Henri Michaux

Untitled Passages by Henri Michaux was curated by The Drawing Center's director Catherine de Zegher, and Geneva and Paris-based independent curator Florian Rodari. It was the first New York museum exhibition of works by Henri Michaux (1899–1984), since a retrospective took place at the Guggenheim Museum in 1978. The exhibition took its name from the Michaux's extensive body of untitled drawings and from his book of poetic writings, Passages. Through an investigation of Michaux's graphic works in tandem with his poetic practice, the exhibition addressed his research into the passages between "writing" and "drawing." The show included over 120 works on loan from major public collections in Europe and the United States, including the Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; IVAM, Valencia; Musée des Beaux Arts, Valence; and The Museum of Modern Art, New York, as well as notable private collections including that of Claude Berri.

Born in Namur, Belgium, Michaux made drawing a highly significant component of his work. The prolific nature of his practice as a draftsman, which included experiments with a wide range of styles and materials, indicated that drawing did not merely accompany his words, it formed a symbiotic partnership with them. As the artist and writer experienced the limitations of language, he turned to drawing to undermine the established linguistic order, which he transformed into "non-sense." In contrast to the Surrealists, who attempted to disregard the linguistic system through experiments with automatic writing, Michaux accepted the system of language, yet eroded it from within by blurring the distinctions between writing and drawing.

Despising all that was static and blindly accepted, the artist devised numerous strategies in his early years to counter inaction, both in his personal life and in his writings. He traveled worldwide and, in 1922, left Belgium for Paris, which became his permanent city of residence. Beginning in the 1920s, Michaux took up drawing, and it was through this activity that he sought to delve into the wellspring of the unknown and the spontaneous. Whether thrown onto paper or flung from the pen, his use of ink, followed later by watercolor, was fluid, direct, and shapeless; these qualities allowed the artist to gain access to his emotions and give fuller expression to their remarkable subconscious power.