Bruce Conner, “Inkblot & Felt-Tip Pen Drawings”

by David S. Rubin

Michael Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles, California

Continuing through April 25, 2026

Bruce Conner, “NEON NIGHT, WICHITA, KANSAS,” 1963, ink on paper, 26 1/8 x 20”. All images courtesy of Michael Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles.

The Beat Generation is currently having a moment in Los Angeles. Although the timing is partly coincidental, Marc Selwyn Fine Arts is exhibiting works on paper by Jay DeFeo, Parker Gallery and The Box are presenting a major Wally Hedrick retrospective, and Michael Kohn Gallery is showing Verifax collages by Wallace Berman and drawings by Bruce Conner. Conner was something of a renaissance man in that he was proficient in several mediums. Although best known for his macabre assemblages made from detritus and his pioneering experimental films, the latter of which are on view in a tangent exhibition at the Marciano Foundation, Conner devoted much of his artistic practice to drawing.

Conner’s initial preoccupation with the medium can be traced to 1963, when he became intrigued with a new kind of pen that had just hit the market — the Pentel water-based felt tip “magic marker.” In one of his first attempts at working with it, Conner produced “NEON NIGHT, WICHITA, KANSAS” (1963), a black-and-white composition of rigorous, gestural hatching. Named for the city where the artist spent his youth, the imagery evokes images of trees or foliage and the movement of nature’s forces, yet it also emphasizes the autonomous pen marks, analogs in ink to the visible brushstrokes in DeFeo’s ultra-thick, highly textured oil paintings of the late 1950s.

Bruce Conner, “UNTITLED (JULY 24, 1965),” 1965, felt-tip watercolor pen on Rives RFK paper, 10 x 10”.

Like many of his Beat contemporaries, Conner was interested in exploring his spirituality, which stemmed in part from a transcendent experience he had as a child. In the 1960s a good place to engage in spiritual pursuits was Mexico, where he lived in 1961-62 and shot footage for his 1967 film “LOOKING FOR MUSHROOMS.” In addition to exploring psychedelics, he also learned about the mandalas and related cosmologies of ancient Aztec and Mayan cultures. His Mexican sojourn was pivotal in shaping his drawing practice.

By 1965, Conner had developed a methodology of making a drawing a day using automatism, the process favored by Surrealists and Abstract Expressionists of working spontaneously, with no predisposition of what the final composition might look like. Created organically through meditative mark-making, “UNTITLED (JULY 24, 1965)” (1965) sports a wood grain pattern like those in Max Ernst’s frottage drawings made by rubbing sheets of paper placed over floor surfaces.

Bruce Conner, “UNTITLED,” 1972, ink and Yes glue on paper, 22 1/8 x 20”.

Due to the strong contrasts between the drawn marks and the undulating crevices of white paper, Conner’s drawing is activated by optical vibrations, which for him signified states of higher consciousness. They would have been right at home in “The Responsive Eye,” a landmark Op Art exhibition held the same year at the Museum of Modern Art. Additionally, Conner’s inclusion of the drawing’s date in the title bears a striking parallel to the work of his New York-based contemporary On Kawara, who was by then making a daily painting of each day’s date.

Bruce Conner, “INK BLOT DRAWING,” c. 1992, ink on paper, 23 x 6”.

Perhaps the most significant examples of Conner’s felt-tip drawings are the mandalas, such as “UNTITLED” (1972), where an abstract field of energy made through repetitive mark making is contained within a circle, with areas separated by concentric rings formed by leaving areas of the white paper unarticulated. While contemporaneous with the conceptual targets of Jasper Johns and the formal ones by Kenneth Noland, Conner’s mandalas are spiritual and cosmic. From a Jungian perspective, they represent a visualization of the totality of the self. On a metaphysical level, they suggest the infinite and the sublime, which more closely aligns them with the painted abstract “zips” of Barnett Newman or the translucent planes of paint saturation by Mark Rothko.

In 1975, Conner developed another approach to meditative drawing that he would continue through his later years. Beginning with a blank sheet of paper, he would make several accordion folds to create vertical registers. Then, he would apply small droplets of liquid ink within each column, folding it over and then opening it so that a bilateral inkblot, akin to the familiar Rorschach test, would be formed. The blots could then be tweaked further using a pen or a brush.

Most of the examples on view here were made during the final decade of Conner’s life, at which point he often attributed them to “Anonymouse,” “Anonymous,” or “Emily Feather,” pseudonyms that reflected his objection to the art market’s tendency to emphasize an artist’s name over their work. It is probable that he used his real name simply for the drawings that he liked the most, which could explain why he used it for the striking, if not mesmerizing “INKBLOT DRAWING” (c. 1992) and “INKBLOT DRAWING (DECEMBER 4, 2000)” (2000). In both examples, the extreme verticality of each column, along with the crystalline ink impressions, suggest Gothic ecclesiastical architecture, the Garden of Eden, or heaven’s “Pearly Gates.” In that respect, Conner’s ink blot drawings seem to be in perfect harmony with the work of the American modernist Joseph Stella, whose paintings of gardens are also cathedral-like, and the 19th century French playwright Victorien Sardou, whose automatic drawings of the “celestial residences” of historical figures, which were purportedly created through “dictation” from spirits, possess a similar structure and delicacy.

Bruce Conner, “INK BLOT DRAWING (DECEMBER 4, 2000),” 2000, ink on paper, 6 1/4 x 11”.

Drawing served Conner well as a vehicle for communion with the cosmos, ultimately resulting in a personal visual language that is accessible to anyone through its sheer beauty and open-ended interpretability.

David S. Rubin is a Los Angeles-based curator, writer, and artist. As a curator, he has held positions at MOCA Cleveland, Phoenix Art Museum, Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans, and San Antonio Museum of Art. As a writer he has contributed to Art and Cake, Art in America, Arts Magazine, Artweek, ArtScene, Fabrik, Glasstire, Hyperallergic, and Visual Art Source. He has published numerous exhibition catalogs, and his curatorial archives are housed in the Smithsonian Archives of American Art.

For more information: www.davidsrubin.com.