The North American art historian, curator, and museologist Glenn D. Lowry (b. 1954), the current director of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, visited the exhibition of works by the German-born Venezuelan artist, Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt, 1912–1994) at the Museo de Bellas Artes [Museum of Fine Arts] in Caracas in the summer of 2000. He was amazed by the artist’s fascinating creations, and was particularly impressed by the Reticulárea (1969). This essay is constructed around the questions that Lowry would have asked Gego if he had had the chance. Lowry’s writing reveals a profound knowledge of contemporary art and suggests new and original ways to interpret Gego’s work. Among them is his idea that the Reticulárea is a network of digital pathways, in which the lines of the reticules transmit information to the viewer, which is reminiscent of the infinite variability of cyberspace. Another interesting aspect of this essay arises in one of the questions that Lowry—had he had the chance—would have asked Gego; that is, whether her work was “kinetic or static.” In search of answers, Lowry refers to recent studies by other researchers, such as Guy Brett in Force Fields, Phases of the Kinetic, and Teresa Grandas who “stresses Gego’s interest in movement.” Lowry himself makes a lucid comment on an essential facet of the work: the energy of Gego’s sculpture reveals her efforts to establish a continuum of forms in space. “But we should not forget,” he adds, “that her work also explores questions of tension and weight, density and transparency, and singularity and repetition, which are more reminiscent of poetry than kinetic space.” In his opinion, this is the most durable and original aspect of Gego’s work. An important issue mentioned in this essay is Lowry’s concern over what he sees as the self-absorption of developed countries in terms of contributions and development in other areas, such as Latin America.
This essay is among the documents chosen for the bilingual book Desenredando la red. La Reticulárea de Gego. Una antología de respuestas críticas / Untangling the Web: Gego’s Reticulárea, An Anthology of Critical Response, María Elena Huizi and Ester Crespin (organizers)—to be published by The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Fundación Gego, Caracas.