Sol Lewitt: A Synopsis

By: Nick Pericle

@nickpericle

This is Sol.

- Born September 9, 1928

- Born to Jewish immigrants from Russia

- Went to art classes as a child

- BFA from Syracuse University in 1949

- Served in Korean War

- NYC in 1953

- Studied at the school of visual arts and worked at Seventeen magazine

- 1960 started working at MOMA

More on Sol.

- At the MoMA he worked with a lot of other people including Robert Ryman, Dan Flavin, Gene Beery, and Robert Mangold

- He taught at NYU

- He taught at the School of Visual Arts

- In 1980 he went to Spoleto, Italy

- He returned to the states in the late 1980s , and lived in Chester Connecticut

-- He died at 78 from cancer

complications

Why Sol?

• Regarded as a founder of Minimal and Conceptual Art.• “I wasn’t really that interested in objects. I was interested in

ideas.”• Conceptual art is an intellectual, pragmatic act.• The IDEA itself could be the art.• Just as an architect creates a blueprint for a building and then

turns the project over to a construction crew – an artist can conceive a work and then delegate it’s production, or never make it at all.

• He loves two and three-dimensional works• Wall drawings, towers, pyramids, geometric forms, and

progressions

Visual Art

• Lines, basic colors, simplified shapes

• He would take these and apply them in different ways

• Sometimes mathematical, and sometimes architectural

• Neither predictable or logical

• The directions for producing a work of art became the work itself

Visual Art

• Lines, basic colors, simplified shapes

• He would take these and apply them in different ways

• Sometimes mathematical, and sometimes architectural

• Neither predictable or logical

• The directions for producing a work of art became the work itself

If you see his work in the gallery…

• He gives instructions to the gallery (draw this many lines, do this, etc) and they actually execute on the art

• It’s very systematic way of drawing a ‘blueprint’ and then letting people actually implement the art work.

• LeWitt challenged some very fundamental beliefs about art, including the authority of the artist in the production of the work

Wall Structure Blue

Wall Structure Blue

Oil and pigment on canvas and wood.

It imitates traditional painting with the red bulls-eye in the center that calls attention to an imagined narrative and to the symmetry imposed by convention

He got this from Jasper Johns’ target pieces, which LeWitt saw at the MoMA.

Jasper Johns’ Target (inspiration for wall structure blue)

Standing Open Structure Black (1964)

Standing Open Structure Black (1964)

The shape is abstract.

It is 96 inches tall

It is supposed to resemble a skeleton, with solemn dignity and shock value

It is very simple

The simplicity challenges the notion of completeness

Serial Project #1

Serial Project #1

This project is supposed to represent more the idea than the form.The idea is supposed to obey certain rules, and the form will show once those rules have been completed. This is made with baked enamel on steel and aluminum.

“The aim of the artist would not be to instruct the viewer but to give him information”

Buried Cube Containing an Object of Importance but Little Value (1968)

Buried Cube Containing an Object of Importance but Little Value (1968)

These are photographs. They refer to the process.

This work is supposed to help you know that this process took place. If you didn’t have these photos, you would never know.

“The execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.”

Inverted Six Towers

Four Sided Pyramid

Splotches

Can you spot Sol?

Two of his works

Sol.

• He reduced art to a few basic shapes

• The idea is what matters

• The idea is the art

• “He didn’t dictate. He accepted contradiction and paradox, the inconclusiveness of logic.”

• “Why not?”

• “A life in art is an unimaginable and unpredictable experience.”

Sol.

Sol.