I went to see Rachel Whiteread’s drawings at Tate Britain and generally enjoyed the exhibition although the work didn’t excite me as much as I thought it was going to. The way she isolates objects is very much a sculptural approach and I am not sure I saw much that was spontaneous – the little booklet refers to the drawings on paper as a “spontaneous and intimate counterpoint to her sculptures.” Full marks to the writers of the booklet for banality in this statement: “While her casts contain the imprint of other lives, Whiteread’s works on paper are the marks of her own hand and trace her own thoughts.”
It strikes me that too much effort was being made to compare the drawings with the sculptures in such a way as to elevate the drawing practice.
