“Sorel Etrog to William Withrow, April 21, 1966”, box 13, folder 10, Sorel Etrog Fonds, Edward P. Taylor Library & Archives, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
Pierre Restany, “Sorel Etrog”, Munich, 2002, page 77
Florian Rodari, “Secret Paths, 1999-2000” in Ihor Holubizky (ed.), “Sorel Etrog: Five Decades”, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, page 103
Joyce Zemans, “The Links: Meditations on the Human Conditions,” in “Vancouver, 2008, page 8
Throughout the “Links” period of Etrog's work, the preoccupation of linking different parts of the body seamlessly was paramount for the artist. Deeply influenced by ancient carving and sculpture techniques, Etrog notes: “I was lucky to have discovered the Etruscan links which showed me how to join the multiple shapes organically. The Link created a tension at the point where they joined, where they pulled together or pulled apart.” Etrog was developing a new visual language of the body, wrapped in internal and external tensions with the use of the linking of body parts.
In a letter to the AGO director, William Withrow, Etrog wrote: “I am witnessing how these past immediate experiences are getting in my new work. I feel certain hardness; the fluid line is being replaced by the links. It gives a more mechanical look. Yet I want to believe that I still speak about the human condition.” “Petachon” uses Etrog's visual lexicon of links to create an abstracted face. Linking the sensory elements of the face—eyes, nose, mouth—Etrog plays with the mechanizing the organic. On the importance of these link elements, Florian Rodari writes: “Inasmuch as they are points of maximum energy, these nerve centres where the body hinges and joins do their work are by nature painful; they are nodes of increased vulnerability.”
So inspired by the possibilities of the link in his practice, Etrog wrote a short poem which begins: “Art linked to life. / Art linked to death. Temporary witnesses, / linked to one another: linked to the past / linked to the unknown.” An integral source of inspiration, the use of the link returned throughout the artist's work in sculpture, drawing and printmaking and has become quintessentially Etrog.
