David Weiss: Works, 196801979 | The New Yorker
Jan 09 2015
In collaboration with Peter Fischli, Weiss, who died in 2012, produced sly, unpretentious art works whose humor disguised their critical bite. (You may know the pair’s crowd-pleasing Rube Goldberg-machine of a movie, “The Way Things Work.”) Before the two Swiss artists joined forces, in 1979, Weiss made cartoonish drawings and abstract paintings of connected lines, which this significant exhibition showcases for the first time in the U.S. Dozens of works on paper, some finished and others mere sketches, include witty views of Giacometti-like figures puffing on cigarettes. In 1975, Weiss published a book of delicate drawings of storm-soaked Zurich. He then offered a special edition—copies that had been left outside in the rain. Through Feb. 22.