Yardstick

After seeing Willem de Kooning’s first New York art exhibition, Pat Passlof longed to study with the pioneering Abstract Expressionist. As serendipity would have it, de Kooning was a last-minute faculty replacement at Black Mountain College’s 1948 summer session, where the young Georgia-born artist was enrolled. The Dutch modernist’s influence on Passlof is evident in Yardstick, where strong, sinewy black lines cut through patches of muted color. In order to create the canvas’ roughly textured surface, Passlof used brushes and palette knives to laboriously add and remove layers of paint. Unwilling to reduce the size of her composition to accommodate BMC’s small studios, Passlof opted to work in a campus horse stall. At summer’s end, Passlof moved to New York to begin private studies with de Kooning, later becoming his studio assistant.