Inside Corner Two Triangles: Neon 1971

Stephen Antonakos made "Inside Corner Two Triangles: Neon" in 1971 with, well, I guess it's neon! The geometry is super straightforward, right? A few lines defining a corner and some triangles, but the feeling is more complex. It’s a sketch, so he's figuring something out. There's this push and pull, too. The neon lines are so precise, but the smudgy color underneath says, "I'm just a drawing!" Look at how the red bleeds a little around the edges of the lines. You get a sense of the artist's hand and a real sense of the way he wants us to think about the work, not as a finished object, but as a record of his thinking and a guide to our own. It reminds me a bit of Sol LeWitt’s wall drawings, which are similarly minimal, and similarly dependent on simple instructions. Both artists use simple forms to explore complex ideas.