Hammons's artworks are often created directly on city streets and vacant lots, rather than as objects predetermined to be shown in art galleries and museums. Basketball Drawing, composed on a sheet of paper ten feet high, is covered with dirt from the streets in Harlem by bouncing a basketball on it. An old suitcase is placed behind the drawing that has been framed and leaned against a gallery wall. An elegant gray minimalist field created in an anti-art material (dirt) and process (ball bouncing) brings the grit and exuberance of Harlem into the quiet confines of the museum and the framework of the system of the art world. (JB)

(Born in Springfield, Illinois, U.S.A. 1943, and lives in New York City, U.S.A.)

Basketball Drawing

2001
harlem earth on paper, found suitcase
294.64 x 116.84 x 30.48 cm
Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery
George B. and Jenny R. Mathews Fund, 2001
©David Hammons