SOL LEWITT. WALL DRAWINGS FROM 1968 TO 2007
TEXTS ON WALL DRAWING BY SOL LEWITT “WALL DRAWINGS,” 1970
“DOING WALL DRAWINGS,” 1971
I wanted to do a work of art that was as two-dimensional as possible. It seems more natural to work directly on walls than to make a construction, to work on that, and then put the construction on the wall. The physical properties of the wall, height, length, color, material, architectural conditions and intrusions, are a necessary part of the wall drawings. Different kinds of walls make for different kinds of drawings. Imperfections of the wall surface are occasionally apparent after the drawing is completed. These should be considered a part of the wall drawing. The best surface to draw on is plaster, the worst is brick, but both have been used. Most walls have holes, cracks, bumps, grease marks, are not level or square and have various architectural eccentricities. The handicap in using walls is that the artist is at the mercy of the architect. The drawing is done rather lightly, using hard graphite so that the lines become, as much as possible, a part of the wall surface, visually. Either the entire wall or a portion is used, but he dimensions of the wall and its surface have a considerable effect on the outcome. When large walls are used the viewer would see the drawings in sections sequentially, and not the wall as a whole. Different draftsmen produce lines darker or lighter and closer or farther apart. As long as they are consistent there is no preference. Various combinations of black lines produce different tonalities; combinations of colored lines produce different colors. The four basic kinds of straight lines used are vertical, horizontal, 45° diagonal left to right and 45° diagonal right to left. When color drawings are done, a flat white wall is preferable. The colors used are yellow, red, blue and black; the colors used in printing. When a drawing is done using only black lines, the same tonality should be maintained throughout the plane in order to maintain the integrity of the wall surface. An ink drawing on paper accompanies the wall drawing. It is rendered by the artist while the wall drawing is rendered by assistants. The ink drawing is a plan for but not a reproduction of the wall drawing; the wall drawing is not a reproduction of the ink drawing. Each is equally important. It is possible to think of the sides of simple threedimensional objects as walls and draw on them. The wall drawing is a permanent installation, until destroyed.
The artists conceives and plans the wall drawing. It is realized by draftsmen, (the artist can act as his own draftsman.) The plan (written, spoken or a drawing) is interpreted by the draftsman. There are decisions which the draftsman makes, within the plan, as part of the plan. Each individual being unique, given the same instructions would carry them out differently. He would understand them differently. The artist must allow various interpretations of his plan. The draftsman perceives the artist’s plan, then reorders it to his own experience and understanding. The draftsman’s contributions are unforeseen by the artist, even if he, the artist, is the draftsman. Even if the same draftsman followed the same plan twice, there would be two different works of art. No one can do the same thing twice. The artist and the draftsman become collaborators in making the art. Each person draws a line differently and each person understands words differently. Neither lines nor words are ideas, they are the means by which ideas are conveyed. The wall drawing is the artists’s art, as long as the plan is not violated. If it is, then the draftsman becomes the artist and the drawing would be his work of art. But art that is a parody of the original concept. The draftsman may make errors in following the plan without compromising the plan. All wall drawings contain errors, they are part of the work. The plan exists as an idea but needs to be put into its optimum form. Ideas of wall drawings alone are contradictions of the idea of wall drawings. The explicit plan should accompany the finished wall drawing. They are of equal importance. First published in Art Now, vol. 3, no. 2, New York, June 1971, n. p.
© LeWitt Collection, Chester, Connecticut
SOL LEWITT. WALL DRAWINGS FROM 1968 TO 2007
3. THE WORK AND CAREER OF SOL LEWITT Sol LeWitt (1928-2007) was born in Hartford, Connecticut (United States). He studied fine arts at Syracuse University (New York State), then at the Cartoonists and Illustrators School (now School of Visual Arts) in New York City. He worked as a graphic designer at the architectural practice of I.M. Pei, and as a night receptionist at the Museum of Modern Art, where his co-workers included artists Robert Ryman, Dan Flavin and Robert Mangold, and the critic Lucy R. Lippard. LeWitt was first associated with American Minimal art from which he would soon distance himself. LeWitt defined the principles of his practice in his influential “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art,” published in 1967 in Artforum, along with another seminal text “Sentences on Conceptual Art,” published in 1969 in 0 To 9.
1989: Wall Drawings 1984-1989, Kunsthalle Bern 1992-1995: Sol LeWitt: Drawings 1958–1992, Haags Gemeentemuseum, The Hague [traveling to the Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, Paris, and the Musée de Picardie, Amiens, France, among other venues] 2000-2001: Sol LeWitt: A Retrospective, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. [traveling to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York] 2006-present: Sol LeWitt Drawing Series, Dia: Beacon, New York 2008-2033: Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), North Adams, Massachusetts
While the wall drawings, which he started in 1968 at the age of 40, constitute LeWitt’s most emblematic practice, his oeuvre also includes three-dimensional works (which he referred to as "structures"), innumerable drawings on paper, photographic series, prints, and artist's books. The different media which the artist explored are equally used as tools to work out similar or closely-related thought processes. An instance of this fluid correspondence between these different practices can be found in LeWitt’s contribution to Seth Siegelaub’s Xerox Book, a collaborative project in bookform from 1968, for which LeWitt proposed a system of twenty-four drawings combining straight lines in four directions. The same year, sections of this system were executed directly on the wall at Paula Cooper Gallery, including Wall Drawing #2, Drawing Series II (A) (24 drawings) which shows one of these four sections, and which has been realized anew at Centre Pompidou-Metz.
[SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS] 1968: Documenta, Kassel (also in 1972, 1977 and 1982) 1971: Guggenheim International Exhibition, New York 1976: Venice Biennale (also in 1980, 1988 and 1997) 1979: Whitney Bienniale (also in 1987) 1981: Mise en pièces, mise en place, mise au point, Chalon-sur-Saône, Maison de la culture / Dijon, Le Coin du miroir, France 1982: Murs, Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, Paris 1995: 1965–1975: Reconsidering the Object of Art, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
LeWitt’s first solo show was held at John Daniels Gallery in New York City in 1965. He would go on to show his work in numerous galleries, museums, and at art events worldwide, including:
1999-2000: Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin, 1950s-1980s, The Queens Museum of Art, Queens; MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts 2004: Singular Forms (Sometimes Repeated): Art from 1951 to the Present, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
[SELECTED ONE-PERSON EXHIBTIONS] 1970: Sol LeWitt, Gemeentemuseum, The Hague
2007: Le Mouvement des images, Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, Paris
1975: Prints, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam 1978-1979: Sol LeWitt, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (traveling to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Montreal; Krannert Museum of Art, University of Illinois, Champaign; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, California)
2009: In & Out of Amsterdam, The Museum of Modern Art, New York 2011: On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century, The Museum of Modern Art, New York
First published in Gregory Battock (dir.), “Documentation on Conceptual Art,” Arts Magazine, vol. 44, no. 6, New York, April 1970, p. 45.
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