DOWN AND ACROSS
A Cultural Serving
DOWN AND ACROSS
There are few activities we find as intellectually stimulating as working on a crossword puzzle. Stretching vocabularies, recalling references, and drawing connections between phrases and concepts are essential for every clue, and the experience runs the emotional gamut, from the joy of finding a fitting word to the devastation of realizing that all of your efforts have been thwarted by a single error.
In addition to the tried-and-true puzzles, artists have also waded into the world of wordplay, including the pioneering Nancy Holt. After entering the art world through the stunningly visual mode of concrete poetry, Holt created “Crossword Work” in 1966 for a groundbreaking group exhibition on abstraction curated by the inimitable Lucy Lippard. The puzzle, which expertly vacillates between the unconventional and functional and the high- and low-brow, is also an act of citation, with references to the autobiographical, Holt’s social and artistic circle, and the simple pleasures of everyday life. There are nods to baseball, tacos, Louise Bourgeois, weaving, fortune, and fate.
Although iterations of “Crossword Work” feature the answers, there are blank scans still in circulation, so slip onsomething comfortable, grab a quality pen, and try Holt’s unexpected design for yourself.
Vertiginous detour
“Vertiginous Detour” is both the name of an elongated suspended sculpture by Eva Hesse and the answer to 20 across in Holt’s crossword. Also created in 1966, the work features a round papier-mâché orb encased in mesh with fringe dangling from the web. The sculpture is known for diverging from and challenging the traditions of the form and embodies Hesse’s own questions about her practice and place within a traditionally male-dominated art world.
These dramatic woven waders similarly defy all conventions with their lightness and open weft. We imagine they’re the perfect accompaniment for vertiginous detours.
Further reading
Nancy Holt: Inside/Outside explores the broad reaches of the artist’s multi-disciplinary practice, which was deeply rooted in literary form and the human impulse to position oneself in the world.
In addition to curating the exhibition that presented Holt’s crossword, Lippard was also a longtime friend of the artist and is a prolific writer, with dozens of books to her name. I See/You Mean is the outlier of her oeuvre and a dizzying novel about a group of six friends who are both as intricately webbed and unraveling as Hesse’s mesh.
Written by So Textual
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