Line 1000 Meters Long
Manzoni considered the two-dimensional surface of painting and drawing not as something “to be filled with colors and forms” but as a place “of unlimited possibilities” in which a line could exist “beyond all problems of composition and size,” he wrote. The line in this work is more than half a mile long, but in theory, Manzoni believed, such a line could stretch to infinity. One of many similar drawings by the artist, Linea m 1000 is invisible, contained in a generic canister; in this way the work anticipated the Conceptual art of the 1960s, in which the idea—in this case, line—was more important than the form of the artwork.
Carol Rama
1938
Nassos Daphnis
1970