Donald Sultan
Appoggiaturas

Part of a series that brings together writers and artists who complement and illuminate each other's work. The collaborative efforts are presented in two volumes, one by the artist and the other by a writer. Each uses his or her own medium to express a common interest.

The "La Vue / Le Texte" series brings together writers and artists from Europe and America who complement and illuminate each other's work. This series presents these collaborative efforts in two volumes, one by an artist and the other by a writer. Each participant uses his or her own medium to express a common interest. This examination by the French writer Philippe Sergeant of the works of the American artist Donald Sultan presents five different appoggiaturas or "accompaniments" to the paradoxes, and their resolutions, that surface in Sultan's work. Sergeant comments on the frame and the limits it presents, the history of seeing (inescapably necessary yet necessary to escape), the logical and mathematical questions posed by Sultan's constant use of the square, the problem of the will of the artist, considered historically and grammatically, and the space that Sultan has carved out for himself between figuration and abstraction. Donald Sultan is one of the leading younger artists working in New York. Philippe Sergeant is a novelist, dramatist and essayist.

First appoggiatura - the boundless and the finite
second appoggiatura - history of the eye
third appoggiatura - the equation
fourth appoggiatura - in despite of
fifth appoggiatura - resemblance.