Light and Flow: Liliane Lijn's Crossing Map Drawings

American-born Liliane Lijn in a pioneering and visionary artist, whose richly varied contributions to contemporary art span more than six decades. After living in Paris, New York, and Athens, she made London her home in the mid-1960s, becoming known while still in her early twenties for her mesmeric kinetic and light-based sculptures, Passionately exploring scientific and Buddhist perspectives on reality, she made energy- or what she called "atomic truth"- the subject and medium of her art.

In the early 1980s, Lijn continued with her light-based work but also wanted to create a new imagery of the feminine spirit, for herself and for other women. This publication looks at this pivotal period within Lijn's evolution, focusing on her 1983 artist book, Crossing Map, and specifically its 150 or so original drawings, which have not been discussed in the literature on the artist. Reflecting Lijn's vision of life as flow, these intriguing and beautiful images slip seamlessly across the volume's pages like a visual score. Part autobiography, part science fiction, and part reflection about human relationships, Crossing Map is an ambitious, though until now little studied, tour de force.

Published through the Drawing Institute, a center of research based at the Morgan Library & Museum on the occasion of the 2023 Thaw Lecture. The Drawing Institute is supported by a generous endowment gift from Eugene V. Thaw.