Design
The Ridiculous Mistakes Artists Make When They Try to Draw the U.S. From Memory
Cy Twombly left out New Mexico "because otherwise the map would look like underpants."
In the early 1970s, the Japanese artist Hisachika Takahashi asked 22 colleagues to draw a map of the United States. He wanted to know what other artists thought of the country he now called home, but he didn't speak very good English, so the drawings served as a form of universal expression. But the simple request also came with a catch: the artists had to do their drawings from memory.
Takahashi's little experiment has been resurrected as an exhibition called "From Memory: Draw a Map of the United States" that opened Friday at the Sean Kelly gallery in Manhattan.