No Title

1963

An ominous pencil sharpener with threatening serrated edges. This is what No title represents, a drawing made with graphite and pencil on paper by Lee Lozano in the early 1960s. A certain violence emerges from this pencil sharpener drawing, both in the vigorous line and in the choice of the motif: explicit orifice, teeth, serration, sharpened blade. The schoolboy's accessory, the inoffensive draftsman's tool, becomes here an hostile motif. Following in the footsteps of drawings representing hardware elements and trivial and provocative tools, No title is not devoid of a certain eroticism and a phallic character symbolizing the predominant virile power. The colors are screaming and the raw, aggressive compositions remind us of the comic books the artist loves.

Preserved within the Pinault Collection, No title was exhibited at Punta della Dogana during the "Slip of the Tongue" exhibition in 2015.

Exhibitions