Drawing Dialogues: Selections from the Sol LeWitt Collection

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Drawing Dialogues: Selections from the Sol LeWitt Collection

THE D R AWI N G CENTER

The Drawing Center April 15 – June 12, 2016 Main Gallery, Drawing Room, and The Lab

Drawing Dialogues: Selections from the Sol LeWitt Collection

Curated by Claire Gilman and BĂŠatrice Gross

D R AW I N G PA P E R S 12 6

Essays by Claire Gilman and BĂŠatrice Gross

“Ideas cannot be owned. They belong to whomever understands them. The piece takes physical form and becomes an object. This object may be possessed.

‘A work of art,’ said Gertrude Stein, ‘ is either priceless or worthless.’” —sol lewitt

Curators’ Acknowledgments

This exhibition begins and ends with the one and only Sol LeWitt.

Sadly, we never had the opportunity to meet LeWitt, but working with his collection offers another kind of introduction, one that seems equally true given that he was a man who eschewed the limelight but who committed himself unequivocally to the art and artists he admired. It has been a privilege working with the extraordinary material that comprises the collection and experiencing the community LeWitt was part of through the many wonderful artists that make up Drawing Dialogues—and how fitting to approach a collection that is rooted in curiosity and exchange through the collaboration of two curators. We deeply value the experience of working together, learning from each other, and sharing insights and knowledge. Finally, it seems particularly fitting to host this show at The Drawing Center given that a handful of works from the LeWitt Collection was included in its 1999 survey Drawn from Artists’ Collections organized by Jack Shear and former Drawing Center director Ann Philbin. It is with great pleasure that the institution revisits the collection seventeen years later, this time in depth.

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This show could not have happened without the dedication of several key individuals and institutions. First and foremost, we owe profound gratitude to the incomparable Janet Passehl, Curator at the LeWitt Collection, whose enthusiasm, meticulousness, and patience with our many requests were boundless.

Thanks also to John Lavertu, Assistant Registrar, for his help with images and catalogue information, and John Hogan, The Mary Jo and Ted Shen Installation Director and Archivist for Sol LeWitt Wall Drawings at Yale University, for expertly guiding us through the wall drawings. Finally, this exhibition would not have been possible without the kind support and generosity of Carol and Sofia LeWitt. We deeply appreciate all they have done to make this show a reality.

In addition to the LeWitt Collection, we are grateful to Naomi Antonakos, Ellen Davis, Lawrence Weiner, and The Museum of Modern Art, New York, who have lent works to the exhibition.

Several galleries, museums, and individuals have also contributed invaluable support by providing reproductions of works for this catalogue and advancing our understanding of the works in the LeWitt Collection. We are especially grateful to Paula Cooper Gallery, and we would also like to thank Alexander and Bonin; Alice Aycock; Charles Bernstein; Agata Boetti; Dove Bradshaw; the John Cage Trust; Cheim & Read; James Cohan Gallery; the Hanne Darboven Stiftung; Peter Freeman, Inc.; the Nancy Graves Foundation; Hauser & Wirth; the Judd Foundation; Barbara Krakow Gallery; Lehmann Maupin; Montrasio Arte Milano; David Nolan Gallery; Pace Gallery; the Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation; Steve Reich; Frederieke Taylor Gallery; Tilton Gallery; and the Franz West Archiv.

The Drawing Center’s hardworking staff deserves recognition for their efforts in realizing this exhibition. Special thanks to Brett Littman, Executive Director, for his enthusiasm and support for this project; Tiffany Apostolou, Nora Gorman, Jessica Lin, Eloise Maxwell, Rachel Schwartz, and Allie Wilkinson, Curatorial Interns, and Jessica Mann, former Curatorial Assistant, for their invaluable help at various stages of the project; and, above all, Amber Moyles, Curatorial Assistant, who stepped in when this show was

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already underway and effortlessly took the reins. Amber met the many intricacies of this exhibition with diligence, creative thinking, and ever-present goodwill and for that we are endlessly grateful.

Thanks also to Joanna Ahlberg, Managing Editor; Peter J. Ahlberg, AHL&CO; Dan Gillespie, Operations Manager; Molly Gross, Communications Director; Margaret Sundell, Executive Editor; Alice Stryker, Development Director; and Olga Valle Tetkowski, Exhibition Manager.

Finally, we are incredibly appreciative of the steadfast dedication of The Drawing Center’s Board of Trustees and the exhibition funders who have supported this show and its accompanying catalogue: Marian Goodman Gallery; Agnes Gund; Wynn and Sally Kramarsky; the Kraus Family Foundation; Mickey Cartin; Christie’s; Carol Saper; the Evelyn Toll Family Foundation; Kathleen Irvin Loughlin; Steve Henry and Philip Shneidman; William and Donna Acquavella; Paula Cooper Gallery; Gabriella de Ferrari; Tony and Gail Ganz; Rhona Hoffman Gallery; Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron; Leon B. and Cynthia H. Polsky; Emily Rauh Pulitzer; Richard Roth; Michael & Nancy Rosen Blackwood; and Pat Steir. Sol LeWitt is remembered by all for his abounding generosity, and it has been amazing to witness the generosity his memory inspires in others.

Claire Gilman Senior Curator, The Drawing Center Béatrice Gross Guest Curator

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“The arbitrary, the capricious, and the subjective”: A Brief History of the LeWitt Collection

Béatrice Gross

In a dazzling sequence of 124 grids of nine black-and-white snapshots taken in 1979 and published a year later as an artist’s book, Sol LeWitt wittingly offered his Autobiography in the guise of a virtually comprehensive inventory of the contents of the New York Lower East Side studio-loft in which he had lived and worked since 1960 [PL. 73, Front/Back Matter]. An artist’s self-portrait of some sort— arguably the only, indirect, oblique sort possible for LeWitt, who notoriously shied away from personal publicity and cameras (he appears there in one single image, barely recognizable, sitting on the floor in a corner, face down)—the taxonomic account seems to celebrate what the conceptual artist aimed to exclude as much as possible from his art: “the arbitrary, the capricious, and the subjective,” to quote from his 1967 “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art.”1 1

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Sol LeWitt, “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art” in Artforum, Vol. 5, No. 10 (June 1967): 80.

This methodic index of disparate objects—tools, fixtures, clothing, plants, furniture, knickknacks, correspondence, notebooks, scraps of paper, etc.—includes a fragmentary catalogue of the artist’s particularly rich library of books, records and cassettes, ephemera pinned to mood boards, and, last but not least, art works, his own but also those of others. Revealing elements of the cultural and artistic materials LeWitt had surrounded himself with (evidence of what he was then reading, listening to, and looking at), these sections at the core of this deadpan domestic reportage suggest potential sources of inspiration and influence. Above all, they afford a fascinating glimpse of the burgeoning art collection LeWitt had assembled. Hung on the walls or placed on shelves and tabletops, varied art forms cohabitate, everything from Japanese prints and calligraphy to paintings by Gene Beery to sculptures by Arman and Loren Calaway to photographs by Eadweard Muybridge and Nina Raginsky.

At the time, composed of an already impressive several hundred works, the collection continued to rapidly and consistently grow.

In 2007, the year LeWitt passed away, it comprised an astounding 4,500 pieces by 750 artists, making it probably one of the most extensive contemporary artist’s collections. Before addressing some aspects of the subtle question of artistic influence, a brief survey of the character and evolution of such a prodigious ensemble appears necessary, following as faithfully as possible the serendipitous trail of LeWitt’s collecting career.

Unsurprisingly, minimal and conceptual art lie at the heart of the LeWitt Collection, with a strong concentration of works on paper, notably remarkable holdings by William Anastasi, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Alighiero Boetti, and Hanne Darboven. The collection, though, covers a wide range of media. Alongside drawing (Ree Morton, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, Dorothea Rockburne), prints (Art & Language, John Baldessari, Agnes Martin), photography (Victor Burgin, Jan Dibbets, Hamish Fulton), manuscripts and typescripts (Carl Andre, Robert Barry, Dan Graham), mail art (Eleanor Antin, Gilbert & George, On Kawara), and musical scores (John Cage, Philip Glass, Steve Reich), it also features important painting (Mel Bochner, Robert Mangold, Pat Steir) and sculpture (Jackie Ferrara, Eva Hesse, Donald Judd), as well as innumerable artist’s books.

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Beyond the central period of the 1960s and the 1970s, the collection’s time scope extends all the way to the early 2000s (Dove Bradshaw, Jane Logemann, Ningura Napurrula, Shirin Neshat), transiting through the 1980s and 1990s (Tony Cragg, Jenny Holzer, Louise Lawler, Lorna Simpson, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Franz West, Heimo Zobernig), while also going back in history to the late nineteenth century with Japanese prints (Utagawa Hiroshige, Katsushika Hokusai, Utagawa Yoshiiku) and the early-twentieth century with vintage photography (Eugène Atget, Karl Blossfeldt, August Sander).

To adopt yet other angles of analysis, the collection gathers widely-acclaimed artists (Dan Flavin, Gerhard Richter) as well as lesser-known practitioners (Richard Haas, Henry Pearson); goes from massive three-dimensional pieces (Ulrich Rückriem, Ursula von Rydingsvard) to modestly scaled preparatory drawings (Jo Baer, Lee Lozano); and presents a relatively high number of works by female artists (in addition to the women abovementioned, one may also cite Berenice Abbott, Lynda Benglis, Lucinda Childs, Laura Grisi, and Hannah Weiner). Every facet of the collection was potentially of equal importance to LeWitt personally, as he tended to disregard conventional hierarchies validated by art history or sanctioned by the art market.

LeWitt’s extraordinary repository of art, in all its daunting volume and diversity,2 may have found its first impetus simply in its owner’s propensity, not to say compulsion, to acquire art without the restrictions of a pre-set strategy or designated focus. Described by close relatives and friends as a natural born collector (already as a child he avidly collected stamps, then moved on to old vernacular postcards and photo albums found in flea markets), LeWitt didn’t constrain or channel his acquisitive temperament with a programmatic approach.

The circumstances of life, mostly of his artistic career, freely presented him with an infinite number of opportunities to discover new art of diverse sensibilities.3 A highly subjective and rather incidental

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The collection also includes important groupings of furniture by Gerrit Rietveld and Josef Hoffmann, as well as thousands of music recordings, mostly of the classical kind.

If many works in the collection appear to share LeWitt’s conceptual preoccupations, even more seem to demonstrate markedly different artistic sensibilities than LeWitt’s.

assemblage, the collection as a whole reflects first and foremost LeWitt’s relentless curiosity and fierce openness. It also constitutes, however, as if by chance (a theme and method favored by minimal and conceptual artists alike, after all), an invaluable chronicle of the birth of American and European radical art practices in the 1960s and 1970s, leading to an ensemble of works arguably no less significant than similar areas of collections in many major museums.

LeWitt purchased his very first artworks (late Edo-period wood block prints) in the early 1950s, when drafted in the Korean War [PL. 120]. The collection, though, truly started a decade later in New York as his emerging mature production began to flourish, and he developed new connections and relationships with fellow artists with whom he would exchange works—a common practice at the time, and, as a matter of fact, in the long tradition of artist’s collections over the centuries. Through barter or gifts, these alternative art transactions took place usually in a spontaneous manner and attest not only to artistic but also to personal, social, and economic histories.

This circulation of art among a certain intellectual and emotional community represented the continuation, through different means, of the exchange of ideas among peers, as well as tokens of their friendship and mutual respect.

LeWitt first encountered some of the artists he collected through day jobs. He was introduced to Hesse in the late 1950s presumably at a work party organized by the architect I.M. Pei’s office, where LeWitt was then employed. In the early 1960s, he met Beery, Flavin, Scott Burton, Robert Mangold, and Robert Ryman at The Museum of Modern Art where they all had “flunky jobs,” to quote Lucy R. Lippard, who herself worked at the museum’s library; LeWitt was at the night desk. His earliest acquisitions, made in this context, notably include two small monochrome paintings, one by Ryman, one by Mangold, and sculptures by Hesse.

Quickly, however, it became mostly exhibitions, in both commercial galleries and museums, along with the Manhattan art world at large, that fueled LeWitt’s network and, by extension, his collection. In 1964, for instance, through Graham, LeWitt met Flavin, who included the latter in a group show that very year, and this is

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where LeWitt first met Baer. In 1965, LeWitt had his first solo exhibition at the short-lived John Daniels Gallery (run by Graham), where LeWitt saw his first sale go to the collector-couple Herb and Dorothy Vogel. In 1966, Hesse introduced Bochner to LeWitt (who in turn introduced her to Nancy Holt and Smithson). In 1968, through Seth Siegelaub’s Xerox Book project, LeWitt, Barry, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Kosuth, and Lawrence Weiner got to know each other. Although famously private and reserved, LeWitt was equally known for his kind attention and hospitality. He visited his peers on an almost daily basis in their studios, where many works were swapped, and made his Hester Street loft a social nexus, where many artists informally gathered to discuss each other’s works and lives.

In the 1970s, the LeWitt Collection grew at an increasing pace, both in size and range, as the artist became the subject of an exceptional number of exhibitions and started to travel widely, both in the United States and abroad.4 For the most part thanks to his rapidly numerous European dealers, starting historically with Konrad Fischer (Düsseldorf), Fabio Sargentini of L’Attico (Rome), Yvon Lambert (Paris), and Marilena Bonomo (Bari), LeWitt crossed paths with many European artists such as the Bechers, Boetti, Dibbets, Jannis Kounellis, and Mario Merz, among others. They soon befriended each other and traded works, giving early on a decidedly international inflection to LeWitt’s collection. (This accentuation further increased when the artist moved to Spoleto, in Umbria, in the early 1980s, with Carol Androccio, his soon-to-become wife and collecting partner.)

The role of gallery owners in the acceleration of LeWitt’s collecting practice became crucial, as he often extended his barter system to his dealers (a much less usual modus operandi in the history of artist’s collections). In other words, in place of monetary payment for the sale of his work, gallerists often compensated LeWitt in kind with pieces by other artists culled from their inventory. It may have started in some cases as a necessity; some galleries, in their first years, simply 4

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This extraordinary exposure didn’t go unnoticed by friends such as Chuck Close who remembers amusingly counting in each Artforum issue how many shows LeWitt had every month.

couldn’t manage otherwise.5 But it soon became a rather generalized principle much enjoyed by LeWitt, who quite early in his artmaking career showed little interest in having a flush treasury for the sake of it (not to say that the artist wasn’t attentive to the fair and clear conduct of business). Thanks to such arrangement, LeWitt acquired, for example, works by Art & Language, Sander, and Juan Muñoz through Konrad Fischer; by Shirazeh Houshiary through Nicholas Logsdail of Lisson Gallery (London); and by Morton through Annemarie and Gianfranco Verna (Zurich). Back in New York, he obtained works by Bochner through Ileana Sonnabend; by Alice Aycock through John Weber; and by Glenn Ligon through Max Protetch.

In the meantime, LeWitt also acquired works through straightforward purchases—again, not because he was seeking particular pieces or obeying pre-determined goals, but still mostly in a rather impulsive manner, out of sheer appreciation, and often also as a way to actively encourage and support other artists. For example, he was the first person to acquire the work of sculptor Ferrara, in 1975, and composer Reich was able to purchase the glockenspiels and marimbas he needed to complete Drumming, 1970–71 [PL. 99], through the sale to LeWitt of his scores [PLS. 97–98].

Perhaps for practical reasons (the several hundred works he owned were becoming difficult to store in his modest apartment; accurate cataloguing was scarce; loan requests started to abound…), but undoubtedly mainly because LeWitt very much cared that his already by then substantial collection be accessible to a broader audience, in 1976, he placed it on long-term loan at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum, in Hartford, Connecticut.6 Overseen there by curator Andrea Miller-Keller, the ever-growing LeWitt Collection (packages and crates would continuously arrive, sometimes without much warning or detailed documentation) served from then on and through the mid 1990s as an invaluable resource for the museum.

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In conversation with Jonathan Monk and Hans Ulrich Obrist, LeWitt remarked: “Instead of taking the money, I’ll take the art. Sometimes it’s either the art or nothing [laughing].”

From an early age, LeWitt had been well acquainted with the Wadsworth Atheneum, where, over thirty years earlier, his mother had brought him to visit the galleries and take drawing classes.

Works were included in group exhibitions; LeWitt’s collection inspired solo presentations (as part of the Matrix series) of artists such as Antin, Lozano, and Ian Hamilton Finlay; and, starting in 1982, received a dedicated exhibition space and program at the Wadsworth Atheneum, becoming probably one of the first permanent displays of conceptual art in a North American museum.

The collection also became the object of important survey exhibitions, the very first one in 1981, curated by John T. Paoletti at Wesleyan University, and, again, from 1984 to 1986, co-organized by Miller-Keller and curator John B. Ravenal for Independent Curators Incorporated, who circulated the show to multiple venues.

In the 1990s, LeWitt and his family, who had returned a few years earlier from Italy and moved to Chester, Connecticut, withdrew their collection from the Wadsworth Atheneum, whose accommodations had come to be challenged by the collection’s colossal scale.

The collection was then consolidated in a state-of-the-art warehouse the LeWitts purchased near them in Chester, placing at its helm Janet Passehl, as its curator and registrar. (An artist herself, Passehl is also represented in the collection, as are a number of LeWitt’s artistcollaborators, be they long-time assistants, like Kazuko Miyamoto or Anthony Sansotta, or one-time drafters, like Matt Mullican or Christian Marclay.) A generous loan policy enabled many works to travel and be included in numerous international exhibitions, notably major traveling shows such as LeWitt x 2 organized by Dean Swanson from 2006 to 2007 at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art and, more recently, Sol LeWitt as Collector: An Artist and His Artists, curated by the author at Centre Pompidou-Metz in 2013.7 Between a continued loyalty to his peers, an ongoing curiosity for younger artists, and increased opportunities and resources, LeWitt sustained without interruption what could only be called an exceptional collecting career—in some ways, however, a side effect of his even more striking and influential artistic career. A self-effacing, 7

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LeWitt x 2 travelled to the Miami Art Museum, Weatherspoon Art Museum (Greensboro, North Carolina), and Austin Museum of Art; Sol LeWitt as Collector travelled to Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina in Naples.

deeply modest man, LeWitt always expressed a strong reluctance to any public acknowledgment of his artistic achievements as personal accomplishments, wishing for the attention to steer away from him and onto the art instead. But then the art itself takes us sometimes back to LeWitt and his life. No longer situated in the peripheries of genetic research or provenance history, biographical information can become powerfully visible when personal inscriptions and dedications are an integral part of the work: Kawara’s painting from the Today series (1966–2003), MAY 22 1967—the date the two artists first met; Flavin’s white square untitled (to dear, durable Sol from Stephen, Sonja and Dan), 1970 [PL. 38]; Dibbets’s Different Shutter Speeds at Sol’s and Mimi’s, 1971—a thank you piece after the Dutch artist stayed at the Hester Street apartment LeWitt shared at the time with Mimi Wheeler;8 or Boetti’s 1988 embroidery celebrating LeWitt’s sixtieth birthday and his family, Per Sol, Carol, Sofia, Eva LeWitt, Oggi il nono giorno nono mese dell’anno mille novecento ottantotto (For Sol, Carol, Sofia, Eva LeWitt, Today the ninth day of the ninth month of the year nineteen hundred and eighty-eight) [PL. 22]. And yet, the meaning of these art pieces, all belonging to seminal series or bodies of work by each of these artists, far exceeds the anecdotal or sentimental added value of the friendly tributes they contain.

An eclectic treasure trove, the collection formed itself in a rather accidental, almost anarchistic way, offering in the end a kaleidoscopic view of the art of LeWitt’s time and place, with unequal significance with regard to LeWitt’s own artistic production. On the one hand, a number of artists in the collection had an indisputable influence on LeWitt as an artist, an impact that he repeatedly and gladly acknowledged: Flavin, Hesse, Kounellis, Muybridge, Clarence John Laughlin.

On the other hand, many artists or movements presumably as decisive for LeWitt’s art barely or don’t appear at all in the collection: constructivism, the Bauhaus, Josef Albers, Jasper Johns, Frank Stella…

A form of influence can safely be stated, though, that of his collecting on other collectors. LeWitt’s early enthusiasm for Aboriginal painting inspired Australian collector John Kaldor. His unabated and unbiased 8

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Incidentally, Dibbets’s photographic study features Hans Haacke’s Condensation Cube (1963–65), an early component of LeWitt’s collection.

acquisitive practices were inspirational for lifelong friends such as the Vogels or Robert Mangold, another artist-collector. LeWitt appears to even have turned many people in his surroundings into involuntary collectors, distributing drawings on paper quite liberally. For instance, after he officially discontinued his $100 Drawings series, as the market quickly disobeyed his instruction that the ripped or torn papers, cut-out maps, and other small drawings that constitute this body of work remain throughout time at the constant price indicated in their title, LeWitt nonetheless continued to send, presumably by the thousands (he was also an avid mail writer), ink drawings from the series on postcards to countless friends and acquaintances, many of whom were artists—the resulting correspondence, with its chain of gifts or counter-gifts, carefully preserved, forming yet another fascinating aspect of the LeWitt Collection.

Leaving to further study a more detailed analysis of potential crosspollination between the artist-collector and the artists he collected, and setting aside the collective subtleties (and individual anxieties) of the crucial question of artistic influence, we will contend for now that the creative consequences of LeWitt’s massive collecting commitment must remain as oblique as the life narrative it sketches, however informative and fascinating its documentation may be. In other words, Sol LeWitt shouldn’t be understood as the main signifier of his collection, his identity as a seminal and prolific artist providing mainly an additional context of interpretation. Or better yet, the LeWitt Collection should be taken as an exhilarating pretext to look anew or discover artworks of various kinds, without giving way to the pitfalls of speculative criticism and disguised hagiography.

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Drawing Dialogues

Claire Gilman

Drawing Dialogues: Selections from the Sol LeWitt Collection is a show about one artist’s passion and curiosity, and it is a celebration of community and exchange. It is a presentation of a singular vision and a coming together of objects that complicate aesthetic and philosophic notions of singularity. Above all, it is a portrait of an individual defined by and through the artists with whom he surrounded himself and whose work shared the same anti-egoistic mentality that he himself practiced and pioneered.

Sol LeWitt’s status as one of the most significant American artists of the postwar era is well established. What is less known is that LeWitt was not only a practitioner of art but also its avid collector: during his lifetime he amassed some four thousand pieces by approximately seven hundred and fifty artists. The majority were LeWitt’s friends and peers. The collection embraces art from other periods and cultures, including objects by figures who are only now securing their reputations; nonetheless, it is American and European conceptual art that

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forms the heart of LeWitt’s collection and that this exhibition explores through the lens of drawing specifically.

Why drawing? Indeed, an exhibition could profitably focus on a broad range of media in LeWitt’s vast collection, including painting, sculpture, and, in particular, photography. One answer is that the collection manifests extraordinary diversity in drawing, ranging from classic examples of conceptual drawing from the movement’s key players to less familiar gestures by under-known artists that investigate the parameters of mark-making in unexpected materials and formats. With diagrams for musical scores

by Steve Reich and Philip Glass joining fiber works by Kazuko Miyamoto and language pieces by Pat Steir and Carl Andre, the collection presents an expansive perspective on drawing that provides an instructive model for contemporary artists seeking to liberate the medium from rigid categorization.

But there is more to it than this. Drawing is not simply a crucial component of the collection LeWitt assembled; it is also vital to the aesthetic principles that ground the conceptual movement at the collection’s core. With the exception of a few Japanese prints purchased during his military service in the Korean War, LeWitt began collecting in the early-to-mid 1960s, trading pieces with friends in New York who were likewise interested in an active exchange of ideas. Artists within the community supported each other by exhibiting together, writing about each other in journals, and exploring and testing new concepts. For LeWitt and his peers, dialogue was the antidote to the insulated egoism typical of abstract expressionism, and drawing the alternative to its assertion of the autonomous self-sufficiency of paint on canvas. It is no coincidence that the LeWitt Collection, built upon a ready flow of working sketches, diagrams, and the like, was initiated at a moment when drawing was coming into its own as an independent art form.

As Bernice Rose has eloquently outlined, the elevation of the sketch had already begun under abstract expressionism as the notion of unfinish gained acceptance. But it was really in the 1960s, with the emergence of conceptual art, that the value of drawing’s status as a place for ideas to be proposed and worked through (rather

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than resolved) was confirmed.1 In his 1967 essay “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art”—the first text to give the new art its own name— LeWitt observed: “If the artist carries through his idea and makes it into visible form, then all the steps in the process are of importance.

The idea itself, even if not made visual is as much a work of art as any finished product. All the intervening steps—scribbles, sketches, drawings, failed work, models, studies, thoughts, conversations—are of interest.”2 Lawrence Alloway has likened LeWitt’s broad purview, and the expansive understanding of drawing that accompanies it, to the Renaissance notion of disegno wherein drawing involves the engendering of things prior to and apart from any final realization.3 Drawing in this sense is the projection of the artist’s thought process whether embodied or retained as pure idea; it is a moving out into the world in search of answers that can take many forms and encompass an array of objects and intentions. In other words, disegno is as much a methodology or philosophy as it is a medium or technique. LeWitt and his peers embraced drawing as a contemporary version of disegno not only by elevating the sketch to the status of legitimate art object, but also by emphasizing drawing’s processual logic and bringing it to bear on other media, including both painting and sculpture as well as more experiential genres like installation and performance.

Fundamental to this new outlook was the concept of seriality.

In LeWitt’s case, his interest in serial or permutational systems drew inspiration from the nineteenth-century English photographer Eadweard Muybridge, whose work LeWitt encountered shortly after moving to New York City in the early 1950s [PL. 88].

In Muybridge’s sequential photographs of humans and animals in motion, LeWitt perceived an alternative to the inward focus on the self in abstract expressionism as well as to a certain tautological tendency within minimalism, a movement that LeWitt otherwise admired and with which he is sometimes associated. Muybridge’s 1

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Bernice Rose, “Sol LeWitt and Drawing,” in Sol LeWitt, ed. Alicia Legg (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1978), 35ff.

Sol LeWitt, “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art,” Artforum, Vol. 5, No. 10 (June 1967): 83.

Lawrence Alloway, “Sol LeWitt: Modules, Walls, Books,” Artforum, Vol. 13, No. 8 (April 1975): 38–44.

photographs presented narrative in its most elemental form; that is, narrative conceived purely as temporal progression. In LeWitt’s words, “narration was a means of getting away from formalism: to get away from the idea of form as an end and rather to use form as a means.”4 Where Muybridge used humans and animals as his “plot” devices, LeWitt employed the nondescript line and cube. For LeWitt, although abstract, the line and cube were eminently realist (versus formalist) motifs in that they represented themselves and nothing else.5 LeWitt subjected these forms to predetermined, processual systems, the most elaborate being the one employed for Incomplete Open Cubes, 1974, in which the artist developed in drawing, sculpture, and book form a sequence of open-sided cubic structures, each missing between one and nine sides. Through such works, he sought to overcome both formalist and symbolic meaning by highlighting instead shifting appearance and location in space. When one system came to its conclusion, there was always another to pursue in seemingly endless proliferation. As LeWitt observed, conceptual art did not eradicate meaning; it simply located meaning—or “content” as he called it—within the unfolding logic of the situation at hand.

The egalitarian ethos at the heart of LeWitt’s serial method—a method in which no single element is privileged over any other and in which every element or situation is ripe for exploration—represented more than an aesthetic methodology. It defined his attitude toward creativity and knowledge in general. Indeed, LeWitt repeatedly refused to treat conceptual art as an official movement as indicated by his insistence that conceptual be spelled with a lowercase “c.” In doing so, he asserted the approach as merely one

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LeWitt, interview with Andrew Wilson, Art Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 164 (March 1993): 261.

LeWitt on the line: “Obviously a drawing of a person is not a real person, but a drawing of a line is a real line.” LeWitt, interview with Andrew Wilson, 261. LeWitt on the cube: “The best that can be said for either the square or the cube is that they are relatively uninteresting in themselves. Being basic representations of two- and three-dimensional forms and shapes. They are standard and universally recognized, no initiation being required of the viewer; it is immediately evident that a square is a square and a cube, a cube. Released from the necessity of being significant in themselves, they can be better used as grammatical devices from which the work may proceed. The use of a square or cube obviates the necessity of inventing other forms and reserves their use for invention.” LeWitt, “The Square and the Cube,” Art in America, Vol. 55, No. 4 (July–August, 1967): 54.

method among many while embracing the free exchange of ideas and forms between artists.6 “I believe that ideas, once expressed, become the common property of all,” he notoriously maintained in response to an accusation in the magazine Flash Art that his work copied the formal attributes of other artists including his friend Jan Schoonhoven. “My art is not one of formal invention, the forms I use are only the carrier of the content. I am influenced by all Art that I admire (and even Art I don’t admire). … We artists, I believe, are part of a single community sharing the same language.”7 Drawing as disegno was at the core of this anti-egoistic, investigative spirit both for LeWitt and for many of the artists whom he admired and alongside whom he worked. And it is drawing in its myriad forms—and in all its incompletion, humility, and openness to the world—that the collection, and The Drawing Center exhibition, foreground.

Which brings us to the work on view. Not surprisingly, paramount among the many models of drawing on display is serial notation.

There are classic examples of numeric and linguistic accumulation by established conceptual artists like Hanne Darboven and Mel Bochner—the latter of whom was vocal in redefining drawing and its implications for art in general—but there is also work by less mainstream figures such as Schoonhoven, the Italian artist Franco Bemporad, and American artists Jackie Ferrara and Ruth Vollmer, both of whom LeWitt supported early on.8 Whereas Ferrara and Vollmer adopted a kind of obsessive rationalism, abstracting geometric forms in infinitely flexible applications [PLS. 37, 112], Schoonhoven’s resolutely handmade grids introduce personal vagary [PL. 102]. In his wild cross-hatchings there is a bodily dimension seen also in the work of artists as diverse as Italians Alighiero Boetti, 6

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Consider as one of many statements on this subject, the conclusion to “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art”: “I do not advocate a conceptual form of art for all artists. I have found that it has worked well for me while other ways have not. It is one way of making art: other ways suit other artists. Nor do I think all conceptual art merits the viewer’s attention. Conceptual art is only good when the idea is good.” LeWitt, “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art,” 83.

LeWitt, “Comments on an Advertisement Published in Flash Art, April 1973,” Flash Art No. 41 (Milan, June 1973): 2.

LeWitt was the first person to purchase work by Ferrara (three sculptures and a drawing), and LeWitt authored an early essay on Vollmer: “Ruth Vollmer: Mathematical Forms,” Studio International, Vol. 180, No. 928 (December, 1970): 256–57.

Jannis Kounellis, and Mario Merz; LeWitt’s close friend Eva Hesse; and the second-generation conceptualist, Charles Gaines.

In Untitled, 1960, Kounellis’s stuttering number seven appears convulsed by a desperate urge toward communicative clarity [PL. 61], while Boetti’s embroidered grid, Per Sol, Carol, Sofia, Eva LeWitt, Oggi il nono giorno nono mese dell’anno mille novecento ottantotto [For Sol, Carol, Sofia, Eva LeWitt, Today the ninth day of the ninth month of the year nineteen hundred and eighty-eight], 1988, carries within itself the seeds of its own undoing—it is enough to pull one thread [PL. 22]. For its part, Gaines’s Walnut Tree Orchard Drawing, Set Z, 1975–2014, foregrounds the arbitrary nature of classificatory systems as the bare branches of a walnut tree are translated first in a photograph and then in two varyingly gridded drawings [PL. 39].

Much of Gaines’s work betrays a subtle political consciousness that is also evident in projects by Hans Haacke and Adrian Piper, the latter of whom has explicitly credited LeWitt’s serial method with providing the groundwork for her later investigations into race and gender relations. For Piper, to go from exploring all the possible variations of an eight-inch square on a two-dimensional page (A Number of Variations on the Area of an 8” Square, 1968) to considering her own politicized body moving in time and through space was a logical step, one that embraced seriality’s claim that meaning is something situational rather than inherently given [PL. 92].

In keeping with LeWitt’s expansive vision, seriality is only one of many strategies that the artists in Drawing Dialogues employ against the self-contained object. Chance operations, as manifest in the work of William Anastasi and John Cage, expose the artistic act to locational contingency with drawing on a portable surface being the privileged means (consider Anastasi’s Without Title (Subway Drawing: 2.8.94, 19:05), 1994, and Pocket Drawing, 2002 [PLS. 2, 4]), while artists like Enrico Castellani and Shirazeh Houshiary exploit the porous quality of paper to dissolve the boundary between the concrete object and the viewer’s perceptual field [PLS. 23–24, 53].

Something similar happens in the work of Dan Flavin, Giulio Paolini, and Fred Sandback, wherein line extends into architectural and environmental space [PLS. 38, 90, 101], and in the photo-conceptual initiatives of John Baldessari, Richard Long, and Maurizio Nannucci, which document transient attempts to inscribe drawing

32

in the world via physical gesture (throwing a ball, laying sticks in the grass, walking through the city) [PLS. 13, 78, 89]. Drawing here becomes a kind of performance, its photographic documentation indicative of the original gesture’s elusive condition.

Underscoring drawing’s inherently provisional nature are the many plans and diagrams that populate the collection, only a small portion of which could be featured. These include diagrams for magazine and exhibition layouts (Haacke, Dan Graham, Barry Le Va, Robert Smithson), drafts of poems and essays (Andre, Graham, Piper, Steir), certificates and sketches for and after artworks (Anastasi, Stephen Antonakos, Robert Barry, Donald Judd, Lee Lozano, David Tremlett, Lawrence Weiner, Franz West), as well as hyperrealist drawings of impossible structures (Richard Artschwager, Alice Aycock). Joining these are musical scores by Glass, Reich, and Alvin Lucier, dance diagrams by Lucinda Childs, as well as performance-based work by Gilbert & George, West, Channa Horwitz, and Dorothea Rockburne, among others. A folded paper piece from Rockburne’s seminal Drawing Which Makes Itself series registers the bodily movements used in its construction [PL. 100], while Horwitz’s Sonakinatography I: Varied Movement for Multi-Media, 1969, is one of a series of drawings employing a notational system devised by the artist to mark time, movement, and rhythm [PL. 52].

In all these cases, relevant information resides outside the frame and in the process drawing opens onto other disciplines (music, dance, literature, architecture) while rejecting the authority of the static, fetishized object.

LeWitt’s presence is felt throughout Drawing Dialogues both in the personal references that appear here and there—in a Biro drawing given by Boetti to LeWitt’s daughter Sofia on her birthday [PL. 20]; in select examples of the numerous postcards LeWitt sent to and received from friends—and in drawings by LeWitt himself, placed in and amongst the other works on view. The inclusion of LeWitt’s own work in the exhibition presents the artist not as the source of inspiration for those around him, but rather, as a participant in the mutual resonances that undergird the collection and the artistic milieu from which it draws. To this end, two works deserve particular mention.

The first is Wall Drawing #1271, Scribbles 12, 2007, which belongs to

33

a series of wall drawings by LeWitt that was inspired by the play of light and shadow in the oeuvre of American photographer Clarence John Laughlin—one of whose images is also on view [PL. 63]. If any single body of work could be said to embody LeWitt’s egalitarian ethos it would be the wall drawings upon which he embarked in the late 1960s in an effort to bypass the market and produce something publically available and adaptable to multiple sites. LeWitt made his first wall drawing himself but soon entrusted their execution to skilled practitioners who applied his written instructions. In each case, LeWitt acknowledged the artisans alongside his own name and the drawing’s first place of execution. Embracing the handiwork of others and variations in architectural context, the wall drawings offer a model of collaboration and openness that reflects the spirit of the show as a whole. It is not incidental that when LeWitt started out he chose to make wall drawings rather than wall paintings. The hesitant pencil tracings of the earliest drawings, and the gradating marks that generate the luminous scribble works, resist confinement, delineating a specific area while simultaneously dematerializing their architectural supports and exceeding its physical boundaries [PL. 77].

The second work that merits special attention is Autobiography, a series of photographs presented in grids published in book form in 1980 [PL. 73, Front/Back Matter]. For this project, LeWitt created photos (typically arranged in a grid of nine to a page) documenting every item in the loft on Manhattan’s Hester Street where he lived for twenty years. The book is organized typologically with pages of kitchen utensils following spreads featuring shelves filled with books from his library; row upon row of records and tapes from his massive music collection succeeding grids detailing the architectural elements (doors, windows, etc.) of the loft itself. Among these many items are references to LeWitt’s artist peers in the form of exhibition cards, artist’s books, and magazine spreads as well as some of the actual prints and drawings that comprised his collection. Here, Gene Beery’s Joke Book, undated, faces off against what one presumes to be LeWitt’s passport; there, Steir’s Drawing Lesson Part 2, Color, 1978, confronts Muybridge’s motion studies.

As its title indicates, Autobiography tells LeWitt’s story. And that story is of an individual in dialogue with the things around him, the art and artists he admired, and the people with whom he was

34

engaged. Hung at what is both the entrance and the exit to Drawing Dialogues, the gridded pages from Autobiography reveal an artist and artistic community in which correspondence and exchange trump authorial privilege: a community of diverse individuals “sharing the same language.�

35

Plates William Anastasi Carl Andre Stephen Antonakos Richard Artschwager Alice Aycock Jo Baer John Baldessari Robert Barry Gene Beery Franco Bemporad Mel Bochner Alighiero Boetti John Cage Enrico Castellani Lucinda Childs Chuck Close Hanne Darboven HonorĂŠ Daumier Jan Dibbets Peter Downsbrough Sam Durant Jackie Ferrara Dan Flavin Charles Gaines Gilbert & George Philip Glass Dan Graham Nancy Graves Hans Haacke Eva Hesse Channa Horwitz Shirazeh Houshiary Ray Johnson Donald Judd Alex Katz On Kawara

37

Emily Kame Kngwarreye Jannis Kounellis Jacques Lacombe Clarence John Laughlin Barry Le Va Sol LeWitt Jane Logemann Richard Long Lee Lozano Alvin Lucier Robert Mangold Mario Merz Kazuko Miyamoto Ree Morton Eadweard Muybridge Maurizio Nannucci Giulio Paolini Henry Pearson Adrian Piper Sylvia Plimack Mangold Steve Reich Dorothea Rockburne Fred Sandback Jan Schoonhoven Robert Smithson Pat Steir Allyson Strafella Old Tutuma Tjapangati David Tremlett Georges Vantongerloo Bernar Venet Ruth Vollmer Lawrence Weiner Hannah Weiner Franz West Utagawa Yoshiiku

LIST OF WORKS

PL . 5

Carl Andre Unless noted otherwise, all works courtesy

Poem for Three Voices, 1963

of the LeWitt Collection, Chester, CT.

Carbon copy of typewriting on paper 11 3/4 x 8 1/2 inches

COVER

Photograph of Sol LeWitt’s loft,

PL . 6

117 Hester Street, New York, 1968

Carl Andre

Black-and-white photograph

Layout for Show at Irving Blum Gallery, 1968

3 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches

Collage and graphite on graph paper

(Not in exhibition)

8 3/4 x 11 1/4 inches

PL . 1

PL . 7

William Anastasi

Carl Andre

Incision: Recipe for Circle Version, 1967

Questions and Answers, 1969

Graphite on vellum

Photocopy and ink on paper

14 x 12 inches

8 1/4 x 11 3/4 inches

Edition 1 of 3 PL . 8 PL . 2

Carl Andre

William Anastasi

STILLANOVEL, 1972

Without Title (Subway Drawing: 2.8.94, 19:05),

Typewritten manuscript, black binder, and

1994

plastic sheets

Graphite on paper

Ninety-eight pages, 11 x 8 1/2 inches each

7 1/2 x 11 1/2 inches PL . 9 PL . 3

Stephen Antonakos

William Anastasi

Timing for Neon – Marie’s First Neon, 1965

Drop Drawing, 1997

Crayon and graphite on graph paper

Graphite on paper

21 7/8 x 36 1/8 inches

22 x 30 inches PL . 10 PL . 4

Richard Artschwager

William Anastasi

Basket, Table, Door, Window, Mirror, Rug, 1976

Pocket Drawing, 2002

Ink and graphite on paper

Graphite on paper

22 1/2 x 28 1/2 inches

22 1/4 x 29 7/8 inches

230

PL . 11

PL . 15

Alice Aycock

Robert Barry

From the Story of the Industrial Revolution, 1979

Plan for Untitled Wallpiece, 1985

Graphite on vellum

Latex paint, silver pencil, and red pencil on

14 x 17 inches

paper (wall installation not exhibited/pictured) 13 5/8 x 14 7/8 inches

PL . 12

[Text on verso reads: “Plan for Untitled

Jo Baer

Wallpiece, 1985 Robert Barry / Dimensions

Untitled (Eight Drawings), 1964

variable depending on size of wall / General

Gouache on paper

proportions should be maintained / First

5 x 5 inches; 5 1/8 x 5 inches; 5 x 5 inches;

installed in Wadsworth Athenium [sic],

4 5/8 x 5 inches; 4 3/4 x 5 inches; 5 x 5 inches;

Hartford, Conn. 1985 / Sol LeWitt Col. /

5 x 5 inches; 5 x 5 inches

H 279 3/4”, W 203 1/2”, Words 2” high / Red oil crayon and silver pencil on blue

PL . 13

(Benjamin Moore BT-67 flat latex) wall”]

John Baldessari Throwing Three Balls in the Air to Get

PL . 16

a Straight Line (Best of Thirty-Six Attempts), 1973

Franco Bemporad

Twelve offset photographs (paper folio, title

Typewriting, 1970

page, and colophon not exhibited/pictured)

Typewriting on paper

9 3/4 x 12 7/8 inches each

11 x 8 1/2 inches

PL . 14

PL . 17

Robert Barry

Mel Bochner

Untitled, 1975

Measurement: 14’’ (Vertical), 1967

Ink and graphite on paper

Marker on graph paper

11 x 17 1/8 inches

14 x 17 inches PL . 18

Mel Bochner Drawn at Eye Level, 1971 Graphite on paper 6 x 6 3/4 inches

231

PL . 19

PL . 24

Mel Bochner

Enrico Castellani

Untitled (Postcard with Numbers), 1973

Untitled, 1985

(Postcard from Mel Bochner to Sol LeWitt)

Portfolio with two paper reliefs and

Marker on postcard

a poem by Bruno Corà

4 x 5 1/2 inches

Exhibition includes one paper relief, 21 1/4 x 24 1/2 inches

PL . 20

Published by Atelier Lafranca, Locarno (CH)

Alighiero Boetti

Edited by A.E.I.O.U., Roma

Sofia LeWitt, 1983

Edition of 100

Blue ballpoint pen on paper Two parts, 39 1/4 x 29 1/4 inches each

PL . 25

Lucinda Childs PL . 21

Mayday, 1989

Alighiero Boetti

Colored ink on graph paper

Order and Disorder, 1984

17 x 22 inches

(Postcard from Alighiero Boetti to Sol LeWitt) Ink on stamped and printed postcard

PL . 26

4 1/8 x 5 7/8 inches

Chuck Close Robert II, 1982

PL . 22

Ink on handmade white paper, press dried

Alighiero Boetti

30 x 22 inches

Per Sol, Carol, Sofia, Eva LeWitt, Oggi il nono giorno nono mese dell’anno mille novecento

PL . 27

ottantotto (For Sol, Carol, Sofia, Eva LeWitt,

Hanne Darboven

Today the ninth day of the ninth month of the

Zeichnung (Drawing), 1968

year nineteen hundred and eighty-eight), 1988

Ink on paper

Embroidery on fabric

39 3/8 x 27 1/2 inches

144 7/8 x 139 3/4 inches PL . 28 PL . 23

Hanne Darboven

John Cage

Drei 1 x 1 Dear Sol (Three 1 x 1 Dear Sol),

11 Stones 2, 1989

1971–74

Color spit bite and aquatint etching

(Postcard from Hanne Darboven to Sol LeWitt)

on smoked paper

Ink on postcard

18 1/8 x 23 inches

Exhibition includes one of twenty postcards,

Edition of 20

4 1/8 x 5 7/8 inches

232

PL . 29

PL . 35

Hanne Darboven

Jackie Ferrara

Untitled, 1989

M127. Slatted 4-Plateau Pyramid, 1974

Color photograph

Masonite

11 3/4 x 8 1/8 inches

7 1/2 x 7 1/2 x 7 1/2 inches

PL . 30

PL . 36

Honoré Daumier

Jackie Ferrara

Battle of the Schools: Idealism vs. Realism, 1855

M125. Slatted Pyramid, 1976

Lithograph

Masonite

9 x 11 inches

9 1/2 x 8 1/4 x 8 1/4 inches

PL . 31

PL . 37

Jan Dibbets

Jackie Ferrara

The Shadows at Konrad Fischer Gallery, 1969

M157. A, Double A/C, Triple C Pyramid, 1976

Black-and-white photographs, graphite,

Ink, graphite, and colored pencil on graph

and ink on board

paper, two parts

19 1/2 x 25 1/2 inches

22 1/4 x 17 3/4 inches each

PL . 32

PL . 38

Jan Dibbets

Dan Flavin

Spoleto Perspective Correction, 1980–94

untitled (to dear durable Sol from Stephen,

Two photographs

Sonja and Dan) one, 1969

27 1/2 x 27 1/2 inches

Daylight and cool white fluorescent light 96 inches square across a corner

PL . 33

Edition of 5

Peter Downsbrough

(Not in exhibition)

WALL, 1985 (Wall Piece) Painted aluminum and tape

PL . 39

Dimensions variable

Charles Gaines Walnut Tree Orchard Drawing, Set Z, 1975–2014

PL . 34

One black-and-white photograph,

Sam Durant

two ink on paper drawings

Camp Release Monument, Minnesota, 2005

Photograph: 29 x 23 inches; drawings:

Graphite on paper

29 x 23 inches each

30 x 22 inches

233

PL . 40

PL . 45

Gilbert & George

Dan Graham

The Sadness in Our Art, 1970

Schema, 1965

Postal sculpture

Offset lithograph and red ink on paper

14 3/4 x 9 7/8 inches

10 3/4 x 6 inches

PL . 41

PL . 46

Gilbert & George

Dan Graham

Having a Lovely Time, 1972

Carl Andre, 1966

(Postcard from Gilbert & George to

Typewriting on paper, recto and verso

Sol LeWitt and Mimi Wheeler)

11 x 8 1/2 inches

Postal sculpture, ink on postcard 3 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches

PL . 47

Dan Graham PL . 42

Side Effects / Common Drugs, 1966

Philip Glass

Graphite on graph paper

Working draft for 1 + 1 For One Player

11 x 8 1/2 inches

and Amplified Table Top, 1968 Ink on paper

PL . 48

12 1/2 x 8 inches

Nancy Graves Quipu, 1974–76

PL . 43

Lithograph and ink on paper

Philip Glass

22 1/2 x 30 inches

Music in Eight Parts, 1970 Graphite on staff paper

PL . 49

13 1/2 x 21 3/4 inches

Hans Haacke The Chase Advantage, 1976

PL . 44

Silkscreen proof and collage over

Dan Graham

LeWitt silkscreen proof

PROGRAM for poem designed to be set up in

30 1/2 x 30 1/2 inches

its final form by the editor of the publication in which it is to be seen, 1960

PL . 50

Photocopy and typewriting on paper

Eva Hesse

11 x 8 1/2 inches

No title, 1967 Ink on graph paper 11 x 8 1/2 inches (Not in exhibition)

234

PL . 51

PL . 57

Eva Hesse

On Kawara

No title, 1967

OCT 20 1973

Ink on graph paper

From I Got Up series (1968–79)

10 3/4 x 8 1/2 inches

Stamped ink on postcard

(Not in exhibition)

3 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches

PL . 52

PL . 58

Channa Horwitz

On Kawara

Sonakinatography I: Varied Movement

OCT 21 1973

for Multi-Media, 1969

From I Got Up series (1968–79)

Ink on graph paper

Stamped ink on postcard

16 x 13 3/4 inches

3 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches

PL . 53

PL . 59

Shirazeh Houshiary

On Kawara

Untitled, 2005

OCT 22 1973

Mixed media on paper

From I Got Up series (1968–79)

15 1/2 x 15 3/4 inches

Stamped ink on postcard 3 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches

PL . 54

Donald Judd

PL . 60

Untitled, 1976

Emily Kame Kngwarreye

Felt-tip marker on paper

Untitled, 1994

8 1/2 x 11 inches

Acrylic on paper 30 1/4 x 22 inches

PL . 55

Alex Katz

PL . 61

Allen Ginsberg, 1986

Jannis Kounellis

Graphite on paper

Untitled, 1960

22 x 15 inches

Tempera on paper 27 1/2 x 39 inches

PL . 56

On Kawara OCT 19 1973 From I Got Up series (1968–79) Stamped ink on postcard 3 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches

235

PL . 62

PL . 67

Jacques Lacombe

Sol LeWitt

Two plates from Recueil des planches du

Pages from draft of Paragraphs on

dictionnaire encyclopédique des amusemens des

Conceptual Art, c. 1967

sciences mathématique et physique, 1792

Typewriting and ink on paper

Offset lithograph, engravings by Robert Bénard

One of nine pages (two pictured),

10 x 7 inches each

11 x 8 1/2 inches each

PL . 63

PL . 68

Clarence John Laughlin

Sol LeWitt

Light on the Cylinders, No. 5, 1939

Circles, Grid, Arcs from Sides and

Gelatin silver print

Four Corners, 1971

13 1/2 x 10 inches

Ink on paper 4 1/2 x 6 1/2 inches

PL . 64

Barry Le Va

PL . 69

Installation Plan, Sonnabend Gallery, 1977

Sol LeWitt

Ink on graph paper, vellum, and tape

Red Lines from the Midpoint of the Left Side,

22 5/8 x 16 3/4 inches

Blue Lines from the Midpoint of the Right Side, Yellow Lines from the Center, 1975

PL . 65

Colored ink and graphite on paper

Sol LeWitt

15 x 14 3/4 inches

Study after Piero, 1958 Ink on paper

PL . 70

22 1/2 x 35 1/8 inches

Sol LeWitt Sol LeWitt, Photo of Florence with the area between

PL . 66

Piazza di San Marco, Via Camillo Benso Cavour,

Sol LeWitt

Via Guelfa, Via de’ Ginori,Via de’Ginori, Borgo

Letter to Eva Hesse, April 14, 1965

San Lorenzo, Via Roma, Via dei Tosinghi, Via

Ink on paper

dei Calzaiuoli, Via degli Speziali, Piazza della

Five pages, 11 x 8 inches each

Republica, Via Calimala, Via Por Santa Maria,

(Not in exhibition)

Piazza del Pesce, Lungarno degli Archibugieri, Lungarno Generale Diaz, Via dei Benci, Via Ghibellina, Via del Proconsolo, Piazza del Duomo, Via dei Servi, Piazza della Santissima Annunziata, Via Cesare Battisti, Via Ricasoli, removed, May 14, 1976 Cut photograph 24 7/8 x 28 1/4 inches

236

PL . 71

PL . 76

Sol LeWitt

Sol LeWitt

Working drawing for Lines and Lines,

Postcard from Sol to Eva LeWitt, 2000

Arcs and Lines, Arcs and Arcs, 1978

Ink on postcard

Ink on paper

4 1/8 x 5 7/8 inches

11 x 8 1/2 inches PL . 77 PL . 72

Sol LeWitt

Sol LeWitt

Wall Drawing #1248

Working drawing for The Museum of Modern

Scribbles 8 (PW), 2007

Art Sol LeWitt exhibition catalogue, 1978

Graphite

Ink and colored pencil on paper on matte board

First drawn by: Chip Allen, Takeshi Arita,

8 1/2 x 11 inches

Andrew Colbert, Sarah Heinemann, John Hogan, Gabriel Hurier, Sara Krugman, Roland

PL . 73 AND FRONT/BACK MAT TER

Lusk, Anthony Sansotta, Michael Benjamin

Sol LeWitt

Vedder; First installation: PaceWildenstein,

Layout for Autobiography, 1980

New York, August 2007

Black-and-white photographs mounted

(Not in exhibition)

on board Exhibition includes six of sixty boards,

PL . 78

13 1/2 x 23 1/2 inches each

Richard Long A Line in Canada, 1974

PL . 74

Black-and-white photograph

Sol LeWitt

20 x 30 inches

Postcard from Sol to Carol and Sofia LeWitt, 1985

PL . 79

Gouache and ink on postcard

Lee Lozano

4 x 6 inches

Study for CRAM, 1965 Ink and graphite on graph paper

PL . 75

10 1/2 x 8 inches

Sol LeWitt Blue over Color with Color Edges, 1992

PL . 80

Gouache on paper

Lee Lozano

29 x 22 1/4 inches

Study for LEAN, 1965 Graphite and colored pencil on lined paper 9 x 6 inches

237

PL . 81

PL . 86

Alvin Lucier

Kazuko Miyamoto

Navigations for Strings, 1991

Maquette for Egypt, c. 1973–75

Commissioned by Ernstalbrecht Stiebler

String and nails on painted wood

and the Hessischer Rundfunk for the

23 1/4 x 15 1/2 inches

Arditti Quartet, 1991 Ink on paper

PL . 87

Exhibition includes two of eight pages,

Ree Morton

12 x 18 inches each

Swamp Cabbage, 1974 Crayon and colored pencil on paper

PL . 82

29 1/2 x 41 1/2 inches

Robert Mangold Four Triangles Within a Circle I, 1974

PL . 88

Colored pencil on brown paper

Eadweard Muybridge

22 1/8 x 22 1/8 inches

Animal Locomotion, Plate 271, c. 1887 Collotype

PL . 83

13 1/2 x 19 1/4 inches

Robert Mangold Four Color Frame Painting #11, 1985

PL . 89

Acrylic paint, black pencil, and paper on paper

Maurizio Nannucci

36 3/4 x 27 inches

“Star / walking writing” from: to create a creative artist, 1973/1975

PL. 84

Black-and-white photographs mounted on

Mario Merz

metal (Exhibition does not include wooden

The Space of this Growth Pours

storage box)

Into the Infinite Space, 1970

Ninety-two photographs, 6 1/2 x 5 inches each

Ink on paper Three sheets, 9 x 12 inches each

PL . 90

Giulio Paolini PL . 85

Sotto le Stelle (Under the Stars), 1985–88

Kazuko Miyamoto

Metal display case and gold nails

Untitled, 1975

Dimensions variable, case: 15 x 18 7/8 inches

String and nails on painted wood 24 x 23 1/4 inches

PL . 91

Henry Pearson 13 / 1986, 1986 Acrylic on paper 8 3/4 x 8 1/2 inches

238

PL . 92

PL . 97

Adrian Piper

Steve Reich

A Number of Variations on the Area of an

Piano Phase, 1966

8� Square, 1968

Ink on paper

Left: carbon copy, right: ink on graph paper

13 x 10 3/4 inches

and tape Left: 10 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches, right:

PL. 98

16 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches

Steve Reich Pendulum Music, 1968

PL . 93

Ink on paper

Adrian Piper

13 x 8 1/2 inches

Talking to Myself: The Ongoing Autobiography of an Art Object, 1973

PL . 99

Photocopy of typewritten manuscript,

Steve Reich

Thirty-three pages, 11 x 8 1/2 x 3 1/4 inches

First version of reductions from

overall

Drumming, 1970 Graphite on staff paper

PL . 94

12 x 9 1/4 inches

Sylvia Plimack Mangold Apartment House, c. 1965

PL . 100

Watercolor on paper

Dorothea Rockburne

13 3/4 x 20 1/4 inches

Drawing Which Makes Itself, London Drawing #3, 1973

PL . 95

Graphite on folded paper

Sylvia Plimack Mangold

25 x 20 1/2 inches

Painted Graph Paper, 1975 Acrylic and graphite on paper

PL . 101

15 1/2 x 19 inches

Fred Sandback Untitled, 1982

PL . 96

Graphite and colored pencil on paper

Sylvia Plimack Mangold

19 7/8 x 25 5/8 inches

Untitled (Falcon Rulers), 1976

(Not in exhibition)

Watercolor on paper 8 x 8 inches

PL . 102

Jan Schoonhoven Untitled, 1965 Ink on paper 9 7/8 x 9 7/8 inches

239

PL . 103

PL . 108

Robert Smithson

David Tremlett

Quasi-Infinities and the Waning of Space

Walls for Fossano Italy #20, 1994

[Study for article published in Arts Magazine,

Graphite and pastel on paper

November, 1966], 1966

16 1/2 x 23 1/2 inches

Graphite, colored pencil, ink, and grease crayon on paper

PL . 109

Four sheets, 14 x 11 1/8 inches each

David Tremlett Drawings for Edges and Corners, 2004

PL . 104

Graphite and pastel on paper

Pat Steir

18 7/8 x 59 inches

Love Letter, Jan ‘75, 1975 (Postcard from Pat Steir to Sol LeWitt)

PL . 110

Graphite and ink on postcard

Georges Vantongerloo

5 1/4 x 8 1/2 inches

Études 1919 (Constructions des Rapports des Volumes) [Studies 1919 (Constructions of

PL . 105

Volume Relations)], 1919

Pat Steir

Colored pencil, graphite, and ink on paper

A Mirage – A Statement –

10 x 8 3/8 inches

A Love Letter – A Drawing, 1976 Ink on paper

PL . 111

9 3/4 x 9 3/4 inches

Bernar Venet Random Combination of Undetermined

PL . 106

Lines, 1993

Pat Steir

Charcoal on paper

Drawing Lesson Part 2, Color, 1978

8 3/8 x 12 1/2 inches

Portfolio of five color sugar lift and spit bite aquatints with aquatint and drypoint

PL . 112

15 1/2 x 15 1/2 inches each

Ruth Vollmer Construction drawing of Pseudosphere, c. 1969

PL . 107

Graphite and ink on paper

Old Tutuma Tjapangati

48 x 20 1/8 inches

Tjangara (Devil Man) Walatu, c. 1980 Graphite on paper

PL . 113

11 3/4 x 8 1/8 inches

Ruth Vollmer Pseudosphere, 1969 Laminated wood 24 x 11 x 11 inches

240

PL . 114

PL . 119

Lawrence Weiner

Franz West

Untitled, 1964

Untitled, 1988

Ink on graph paper

Mixed media

11 x 8 1/2 inches

24 x 43 inches

PL . 115

PL . 120

Lawrence Weiner

Utagawa Yoshiiku

Certificate for ONE SQUARE LIMESTONE

Hanada Saemon Yukimura from Samurai Heroes

SLAB OF ARBITRARY THICKNESS ONE

of the Taikeiki, 1867

SHEET OF BROWN WRAPPING PAPER

Woodblock print

BONDED EVEN WITH THE EDGES TO THE

9 1/2 x 7 inches

TOP SURFACE OF THE LIMESTONE, 1968 Ink on graph paper

NOT PICTURED

9 x 7 inches William Anastasi PL . 116

Incision, 1967

Lawrence Weiner

Incision on wall

Certificate for TWO MINUTES OF SPRAY

36 inch radius

PAINT DIRECTLY UPON THE FLOOR FROM A STANDARD AEROSOL SPRAY CAN, 1968

William Anastasi

Ink on graph paper

Postcard from William Anastasi

11 x 8 5/8 inches

to Sol and Carol LeWitt, n.d.

Graphite, ink, and stamp on postcard

PL . 117

4 1/4 x 6 inches

Lawrence Weiner Still More or Less above the Level of Water, 1983

Carl Andre

(Postcard from Lawrence Weiner to Sol and

Note from Carl Andre to Sol LeWitt, 1978

Carol LeWitt)

Graphite on paper

Ink and postage stamps on postcard

3 x 4 1/2 inches

6 3/8 x 9 7/8 inches Carl Andre PL . 118

Postcard from Carl Andre to Sol LeWitt, 1983

Hannah Weiner

Ink on postcard

Poem for Sol LeWitt, n.d.

4 x 6 inches

Typewriting on paper 11 x 8 1/2 inches

241

Stephen Antonakos

Peter Downsbrough

Postcard from Stephen Antonakos

Hand – Photo No. 2 from NOTICE, 1985

to Sol LeWitt, 1973

(Postcard from Peter Downsbrough to Sol

Ink and tape on postcard

LeWitt)

5 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches

Black-and-white photo postcard 4 x 6 inches

Stephen Antonakos Postcard from Stephen Antonakos

Peter Downsbrough

to Sol LeWitt, 1975

Hand & Dice – Photo No. 3 from NOTICE,

Ink on postcard

1985 (Postcard from Peter Downsbrough to

4 x 5 7/8 inches

Sol LeWitt) Black-and-white photo postcard

Gene Beery

4 x 6 inches

Untitled (Denied Realities), 1980 (Postcard from Gene Beery to Sol LeWitt)

Dan Flavin

Ink on postcard

untitled (to dear durable Sol from

5 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches

Stephen, Sonja, and Dan), 1970 Daylight and cool white fluorescent light

Hanne Darboven

96 inches square across a corner

Postcard from Hanne Darboven

Edition of 5

to Sol LeWitt, 1975 Ink on postcard

Charles Gaines

5 7/8 x 8 1/2 inches

Postcard from Charles Gaines to Sol and Carol LeWitt, 1987

Jan Dibbets

Ink on postcard

On May 9 (Friday), 1969

4 5/8 x 6 5/8 inches

(Postcard from Jan Dibbets to Sol LeWitt) Black-and-white photo postcard

Dan Graham

4 x 6 inches

Postcard from Dan Graham to Sol LeWitt, 1967

Peter Downsbrough

Ink on postcard

Dice – Photo No. 1 from NOTICE, 1985

3 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches

(Postcard from Peter Downsbrough to Sol LeWitt) Black-and-white photo postcard 4 x 6 inches

242

Eva Hesse

Sol LeWitt

No title, 1967

Postcard from Sol LeWitt to Channa Horwitz,

Ink on graph paper

2005

11 7/8 x 8 1/4 inches

Ink on postcard

Collection of The Museum of Modern Art,

4 x 6 inches

New York; Ruth Vollmer Bequest

Collection of the Channa Horwitz Estate

(This work was lent to the exhibition because the works by Eva Hesse in the LeWitt

Sol LeWitt

Collection were traveling with another

Wall Drawing #1271

exhibition.)

Scribbles 12, 2007 Graphite

Ray Johnson

First drawn by: Nicolai Angelov, Martin

The Location of One Swan, c. 1974

Devrient, Selvaggia Filippini, Andrea Gallo,

(Postcard from Ray Johnson to Sol LeWitt)

Giuseppe Petrania, Mauro Rescigno

Black and colored ink and graphite on postcard

First installation: MADRE, Museo d’Arte

3 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches

Contemporanea Donnaregina, Naples, November 2012

On Kawara

36 x 60 inch rectangle, centered and 24 inches

Telegram to Sol LeWitt, February 5, 1970

from the bottom of the wall

From I Am Still Alive series (1970–2000) Collage and ink on telegram

Jane Logemann

5 3/4 x 8 inches

Postcard from Jane Logemann to Sol LeWitt, 1996

Sol LeWitt

Watercolor and ink on postcard

Postcard from Sol LeWitt to Lawrence,

5 x 7 inches

Alice, and Kirsten Weiner, n.d.

Pen and ink on postcard

Dorothea Rockburne

4 1/4 x 6 inches

Postcard from Dorothea Rockburne

Collection of Lawrence, Alice, and Kirsten

to Sol LeWitt, 2002

Weiner, New York

Copper, graphite, marker, and ink on postcard 4 1/8 x 5 7/8 inches

Sol LeWitt Postcard from Sol LeWitt to Stephen, Naomi,

Fred Sandback

and Evangelia Antonakos, May 28, 1982

Untitled, 1982

Ink on postcard

Yarn

4 1/8 x 5 7/8 inches

Installation size: height variable depending on

Collection of Stephen and Naomi Antonakos,

ceiling x 162 x 17 inches

New York

243

Allyson Strafella Postcard from Allyson Strafella to Sol LeWitt, c. 1996 Ink and thread on postcard 3 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches Allyson Strafella Postcard from Allyson Strafella to Sol LeWitt, 1997 Ink and thread on postcard 3 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches Lawrence Weiner TWO MINUTES OF SPRAY PAINT DIRECTLY UPON THE FLOOR FROM A STANDARD AEROSOL SPRAY CAN, 1968 LANGUAGE + THE MATERIALS REFERRED TO Dimensions variable Lawrence Weiner Postcard from Lawrence Weiner to Sol LeWitt, 1971 India ink on postcard 4 x 5 3/4 inches Lawrence Weiner Postcard from Lawrence Weiner to Sol LeWitt, 1980 Paint marker and ballpoint pen on postcard 4 x 6 inches Lawrence Weiner Postcard from Lawrence Weiner to Sol LeWitt, 1986 Gouache, India ink, and typewriter on postcard 4 1/4 x 6 inches

244

IMAGE CREDITS

Courtesy of Barbara Krakow Gallery, Boston; PL . 34 : © Sam Durant, Courtesy of Paula

Unless noted otherwise, images courtesy of the

Cooper Gallery, New York, Photograph by Jody

LeWitt Collection, Chester, CT.

Dole; PLS . 35–36 : Courtesy of Frederieke Taylor Gallery; PL . 37: Courtesy of Frederieke

PLS . 1–3 : Courtesy of the artist, Photograph

Taylor Gallery, Photograph by Jody Dole; PL .

by Jody Dole; PL. 4 : Courtesy of the artist;

38 : © 2016 Stephen Flavin / Artists Rights

PL . 5–8 : Art © Carl Andre / Licensed by

Society (ARS), New York, Courtesy of David

VAGA, New York, NY, Courtesy of Paula

Zwirner, New York / London; PL . 39 :

Cooper Gallery, New York; PL . 9 : Courtesy

© Charles Gaines, Courtesy of Paula Cooper

of Naomi Antonakos; PL. 10: © 2016 Richard

Gallery, New York, Photograph by Jody

Artschwager / Artists Rights Society (ARS),

Dole; PLS . 40 –41: Courtesy of the artists and

New York; PL . 11: Courtesy of the artist,

Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong;

Photograph by Jody Dole; PL . 12 : Courtesy

PL. 42 : © Dunvagen Music Publishers Inc.

of the artist; PL . 13 : Courtesy of the artist,

Used by Permission; PL. 43 : © 1968 Dunvagen

Photograph by RJ Phil; PL . 14 : Courtesy

Music Publishers Inc. Used by Permission; PLS .

of the artist, Photograph by Jody Dole; PL .

44–47: Courtesy of Dan Graham; PL . 48 : Art

15 : Courtesy of the artist; PL . 16 : © Franco

© Nancy Graves Foundation, Inc. / Licensed

Bemporad; PL . 17: © Mel Bochner, Photograph

by VAGA, New York, NY, Photograph by Jody

by Jody Dole; PL. 18: © Mel Bochner,

Dole; PL. 49 : © Hans Haacke / Artists Rights

Photograph by RJ Phil; PL. 19 : © Mel Bochner;

Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst,

PL. 20 : © 2016 Artists Rights Society (ARS),

Bonn, Photograph by Jody Dole; PLS . 50 –51:

New York / SIAE, Rome; PL . 21: © 2016

© The Estate of Eva Hesse, Courtesy Hauser &

Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / SIAE,

Wirth, Zurich, Photograph by John Groo; PL .

Rome, Photograph by RJ Phil; PL . 22 : © 2015

52 : Courtesy of the Channa Horwitz Estate,

Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / SIAE,

© 1969 Channa Davis, all rights reserved,

Rome; PL . 23 : Courtesy of the John Cage

Photograph by Jody Dole; PL . 53 : Courtesy

Trust; PL . 24 : © 2015 Artists Rights Society

the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York and

(ARS), New York / SIAE, Rome, Photograph by

Hong Kong, Photograph by Jody Dole; PL . 54 :

Jody Dole; PL . 25 : Courtesy of the artist; PL.

Art © Judd Foundation, Licensed by VAGA,

26: © Chuck Close, Courtesy of Pace Gallery;

New York, NY, Photograph by RJ Phil; PL . 55 :

PLS . 27–29 : © 2016 Artists Rights Society

Art © Alex Katz / Licensed by VAGA, New

(ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn; PL .

York, NY, Photograph by Jody Dole;

31: © 2015 Jan Dibbets / Artists Rights Society

PLS . 56–59 : Courtesy David Zwirner, New

(ARS), New York, Photograph by John Groo;

York and London, Photograph by RJ Phil;

PL . 32 : © 2016 Jan Dibbets / Artists Rights

PL . 60 : © 2016 Artists Rights Society (ARS),

Society (ARS), New York, Photograph by Jody

New York / VISCOPY, Australia, Photograph

Dole; PL . 33 : © 2016 Peter Downsbrough

by Jody Dole; PL . 61: Courtesy of Cheim

/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York,

& Read, New York, Photograph by Jody

246

Dole; PL . 62 : Photograph by Jody Dole; PL .

New York / SIAE, Rome, Photograph by Jody

63 : Courtesy of the Historic New Orleans

Dole; PLS . 85–86 : Courtesy of the artist,

Collection, Williams Research Center; PL .

Photograph by Jody Dole; PL . 87: © Estate of

64 : © Barry Le Va, Courtesy of David Nolan

Ree Morton, Courtesy of Alexander and Bonin,

Gallery, New York, Photograph by Jody Dole;

New York, Photograph by Jody Dole; PL .

PL . 65 : © 2016 The LeWitt Estate / Artists

88 : University Archives and Records Center,

Rights Society (ARS), New York, Photograph

University of Pennsylvania; PL . 89 : Courtesy

by RJ Phil; PL. 66 : © 2016 The LeWitt Estate

of the artist; PL . 90 : © Giulio Paolini; PL . 91:

/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; PL .

Photograph by Jody Dole; PL . 92 : © Adrian

67: © 2016 The LeWitt Estate / Artists Rights

Piper Research Archive Foundation, Berlin;

Society (ARS), New York; PLS . 68– 69 : ©

PL . 93 : © Adrian Piper Research Archive

2016 The LeWitt Estate / Artists Rights Society

Foundation, Berlin, Photograph by Jody Dole;

(ARS), New York, Photograph by Jody Dole;

PLS . 95–96 : © Sylvia Plimack Mangold,

PL . 70 : © 2016 The LeWitt Estate / Artists

Courtesy of Alexander and Bonin, New York;

Rights Society (ARS), New York, Photograph

PL . 94 : © Sylvia Plimack Mangold, Courtesy

by RJ Phil; PL. 71: © 2016 The LeWitt Estate

of Alexander and Bonin, New York, Photograph

/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York,

by RJ Phil; PL . 97: © Copyright 1980 in the

Photograph by Jody Dole; PLS . 72, 74 :

U.S.A. by Hendon Music, Inc., A Boosey &

© 2016 The LeWitt Estate / Artists Rights

Hawkes company. All Rights Reserved. Shown

Society (ARS), New York; PL . 73 : © 2016 The

by permission for the exclusive use of The

LeWitt Estate / Artists Rights Society (ARS),

Drawing Center, 2016; PL. 98 : © Copyright

New York, Photograph by Fundación ICO,

1980 by Universal Edition. Revised Assignment

Madrid; PL . 75 : © 2016 The LeWitt Estate

to Hendon Music, Inc., 2015. International

/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York,

Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved.

Photograph by Jody Dole; PL . 76 : © 2016 The

Shown by Permission for the Exclusive use

LeWitt Estate / Artists Rights Society (ARS),

of The Drawing Center, 2016; PL . 99 : ©

New York; PL . 77: © 2016 The LeWitt Estate

Copyright 1971 by Hendon Music, Inc.

/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York,

Revised, © Copyright 2011 by Hendon Music,

Courtesy of Pace Gallery, Photograph by Kerry

A Boosey & Hawkes Company. International

Ryan McFate; PL . 78 : © 2016 Richard Long,

Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved.

All Rights Reserved, DACS, London / ARS,

Shown by Permission for the Exclusive use of

NY; PLS . 79–80 : © The Estate of Lee Lozano,

The Drawing Center, 2016; PL . 100 : © 2016

Courtesy of Hauser & Wirth, Zurich; PL . 81:

Dorothea Rockburne / Artists Rights Society

Courtesy of the artist, Photograph by RJ Phil;

(ARS), New York; PL . 101: © 2016 Fred

PL . 82 : © 2016 Robert Mangold / Artists

Sandback Archive; PL . 102 : © 2016 Artists

Rights Society (ARS), New York, Photograph

Rights Society (ARS), New York / c/o Pictoright

by Jody Dole; PL . 83 : © 2015 Robert Mangold

Amsterdam; PL . 103 : Art © Holt-Smithson

/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York;

Foundation / Licensed by VAGA, New York,

PL . 84 : © 2016 Artists Rights Society (ARS),

NY; PL. 104 : Courtesy of Cheim & Read, New

247

York; PL . 105 : Courtesy of Cheim & Read, New York, Photograph by Jody Dole; PL. 106 : Courtesy of Crown Point Press and Cheim & Read, New York, Photograph by RJ Phil; PL .

107: © 2016 Artists Rights Society (ARS),

New York / VISCOPY, Australia, Photograph

by Jody Dole; PL . 108 : Courtesy of the artist, Photograph by RJ Phil; PL . 109 : Courtesy of the artist; PL . 110 : © 2016 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ProLitteris, Zurich; PL . 111: © Bernar Venet, Photograph by Jody

Dole; PLS . 112–113 : Estate represented by Tilton Gallery, New York; PLS . 114–115 : © 2016 Lawrence Weiner / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; PL . 116 : © 2016 Lawrence Weiner / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, Photograph by RJ Phil; PL. 117: © 2016 Lawrence Weiner / Artists

Rights Society (ARS), New York; PL . 118 : Charles Bernstein for Hannah Weiner in Trust, Photograph by RJ Phil; PL. 119 : Courtesy of the legal successor of the artist; PL. 120 : Photograph by Jody Dole.

248

P L AT E S S E C T I O N Q U O TAT I O N N O T E S

PA G E 116

Sol LeWitt, in Sol LeWitt, ed. Alicia Legg PA G E 11

(New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1978), 114.

Sol LeWitt and Andrea Miller-Keller, “Excerpts from a Correspondence, 1981–1983,” in Sol

PA G E 12 2

LeWitt Wall Drawings 1968–1984, ed. Susanna

Mel Bochner, “Outside the Box: Mel Bochner and

Singer, Catalogue raisonné (Amsterdam:

John Baldessari on Sol LeWitt,” Artforum Vol. 45,

Stedelijk Museum; Eindhoven, Netherlands:

No. 10 (Summer 2007): 102.

Van Abbemuseum; Hartford, CT: Wadsworth Atheneum, 1984), 22.

PA G E 14 6

Pat Steir, in Sol LeWitt: 100 Views, eds.

PA G E 6 4

Susan Cross and Denise Markonish, exhibition

Dan Graham, “Thoughts on Two Structures”

catalogue (North Adams: MASS MoCA

in End Moments (New York: Dan Graham,

with Yale University Press, 2009), 111.

1969), 68.

PA G E 15 4 PA G E 6 8

Eva Hesse, in Sol LeWitt, exhibition catalogue (The

Mel Bochner, “Primary Structures,”

Hague: Gemeentemuseum, 1970), 27.

Arts Magazine, Vol. 40, No. 8 (June 1966): 34.

PA G E 16 6 PA G E 8 2

Robert Smithson, “A Museum of Language in the

Sol LeWitt, “Hanne Darboven—Her Work,”

Vicinity of Art,” Art International, Vol. 12, No. 3

in Hanne Darboven. Ein Jahrhundert-abc

(March 1968): 27.

(Hanover: Kestner-Gesellschaft, 2004), 15.

PA G E 17 2 PA G E 8 6

Sol LeWitt and Andrew Wilson, “Sol LeWitt

Sol LeWitt, “Sentences on Conceptual Art”

Interviewed,” Art Monthly, No. 164 (March 1993): 6.

in 0–9, No. 6 (January 1969): 3.

PA G E 2 5 9 PA G E 10 4

Carl Andre, in Sol LeWitt, exhibition catalogue

Mel Bochner, “The Serial Attitude,” Artforum,

(The Hague: Gemeentemuseum, 1970), 14.

Vol. 6, No. 4 (December 1967): 28.

PA G E 114

Lucy R. Lippard, “Escape Attempts,” in Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object, ed. Lucy Lippard (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), vii.

249

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Co-Chairs

Drawing Dialogues: Selections from the Sol LeWitt

Rhiannon Kubicka

Collection is made possible by the support of

Jane Dresner Sadaka

Marian Goodman Gallery. Additional support is provided by Agnes Gund, Wynn and Sally

Frances Beatty Adler

Kramarsky, the Kraus Family Foundation, Mickey

Dita Amory

Cartin, Christie’s, Carol Saper, the Evelyn Toll

Brad Cloepfil

Family Foundation, Kathleen Irvin Loughlin,

Anita F. Contini

Steve Henry and Philip Shneidman, William and

Andrea Crane

Donna Acquavella, Paula Cooper Gallery, Gabriella

Bruce W. Ferguson

de Ferrari, Tony and Gail Ganz, Rhona Hoffman

Stacey Goergen

Gallery, Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron,

Steven Holl

Leon B. and Cynthia H. Polsky, Emily Rauh

Iris Z. Marden

Pulitzer, Richard Roth, Michael and Nancy Rosen

Nancy Poses

Blackwood, and Pat Steir.

Eric Rudin David Salle Joyce Siegel Galia Meiri-Stawski Barbara Toll Waqas Wajahat Isabel Stainow Wilcox Candace Worth

Emeritus Michael Lynne George Negroponte Elizabeth Rohatyn Jeanne C. Thayer Executive Director Brett Littman

251

EXHIBITION FUND

Linda Lighton and Lynn Adkins Marion Miller

Director’s Council

Diane Nixon

Frances Beatty Adler and Allen Adler

Sarah A. Peter

Dita Amory and Graham Nickson

Ed Ruscha

Devon Dikeou

Joyce Pomeroy Schwartz

Steven Holl

Candace King Weir

Rhiannon Kubicka and Theo Blackston

Claire Weisz

The PECO Foundation Galia Meiri-Stawski and Axel Stawski

Catalogue Sponsor

Judith Levinson Oppenheimer and John

George Ahl

Oppenheimer

Eugenia Bell

Nancy and Fred Poses

Jill Baker and Jeffrey Bishop

Fiona and Eric Rudin

Douglas Cramer and Hugh Bush

Jane Dresner Sadaka and Ned Sadaka

Eileen and Michael Cohen

Lisa Silver and Jean-Christophe Castelli

Jody Falco and Jeffrey Steinman

Barbara Toll

Maxine and Stuart Frankel Jane Furse

Curator’s Circle

Carol and Arthur Goldberg

Grant Johnson

Susan M. Gosin and Richard Barrett

Jack Rudin

Jane and Michael Horvitz

Waqas Wajahat

Barbara Jones Herbert Kasper

Artist’s Patron

Werner H. Kramarsky

Anne H. Bass and Julian Lethbridge

Mi Young Lee

Bookmobile

Linda Macklowe

The Carl Andre and Melissa L. Kretschmer

Oldenburg Van Bruggen Foundation Inc

Foundation

Anne Sidamon-Eristoff

Emy and Jacques Cohenca

Francis H. Williams

Elizabeth Currie Flobelle Burden Davis and Henry Davis

Education Benefactor

Rose Dergan and Will Cotton

Georges Armaos

Hester Diamond

Vittorio Calabrese

Susan and Thomas Dunn

Vija Celmins

Libby and Adrian Ellis

Mia Enell and Nicolas Fries

Rebecca and Gilbert Kerlin

Shelly and Vincent Fremont

Toby D. Lewis Carol LeWitt

252

Francis Greenburger

Michael Kihn

Linda and Hans Haacke

Nancy King and John McDevitt King

Allison Hill-Edgar

Joanna Kleinberg Romanow and Daniel

Betty Lou Hudson

Romanow

Margaret and Daniel Loeb

Janet Kraynak and Stefano Basilico

Jay McInerney

Cynthia Knox and Carla Rae Johnson

Anthony Meier

Pierre Leval

Elizabeth and Clement Moore

Scott Lifshutz

Morris A. Orden

Anne Lindberg

Beatrice Scaccia

Diana Littman-Paige and Adam Paige

Serena Trizzino

Susan Lorence Joanne Lyman

Program Underwriter

Myra Malkin

Elizabeth Albert

John Melick

Louis Blumengarten

Mireille Mosler

Thomas Buser

Nancy R. Newhouse

Prudence Carlson

Susan Palamara

Joan Spaulding Cobb and Henry Cobb

G. Layng Pew III

Fran Deitrich and Peter Capolino

Marion Preston

Danielle Dimston

Victoria Reese and Greg Kennedy

Yvette Drury Dubinsky and John Paul Dubinsky

Andrea Rosen

John Evans

Anthony Russell

Stephen Figge

Steven Sanderson

John Forgach

Barbara Schwartz

Christian Frederiksen

Richard Spain

Mary Freedman

Alfred Steiner

Barrett and Peter Frelinghuysen

Mina Takahashi and Marco Breuer

Ellen and Norman Galinsky

K. Brad Van Woert III

Noah Garson and Ronald Schwartz

Daniela Velan

Nancy and Stuart Goode Myiesha Gordon

Gallery Supporter

Brad Greenwood

Elizabeth Albert

Christine Grounds and Jonathan P. Mir

Noriko Ambe

Susan Harris

Gina Amorelli

Christopher Heuer

Elizabeth and Chris Apgar

Glenda Hibler

Margery and Howard Appelbaum

D. Joy Howell

Kenseth Armstead

Tracey Hummer

Teresa Beaudet and Gerald Giamportone

David G. Keeton

Olivia Bernard

253

Sally B. Brown and Thatcher M. Brown III

Sarah Jane Mustin and Craig Stockwell

Nancy and Charles Busch

Barbara Nessim

Barbara Campisi

Brian Ormond

Carol Caputo

Alexandria Pang

Laura Cosgrave

Marcia Patmos

Elizabeth Coyne

Ellen Paxson

Stephen Daly

Jody Pinto

Heide Fasnacht

Deborah Pohl

Lindy Fyfe

Barry Redlich

Anne Gilman

Peter Shedd Reed

Tatiana Ginsberg

Bill Rock

Karina Givargisoff

Carol Ruderman

Susan Gofstein

Joan Ryan

Leonard Gold

Peter Saul

Laurel Gonsalves

Christa Savino

Kathryn and Mark Green

Robert Schechter

Hilde Grey

Roger Schickedantz

Constance Grey

Robert Seng

Josephine Grieder

Drew Shiflett

Francoise Grossen

Joan Greenfield and Dominique Singer

Ann Hamilton

Mimi Smith

Graham Harles

Frances Sniffen

David Hart

Joan Snyder

Jack Hazerjian

Ann Tsubota

George Held

Lynn Umlauf

Nona Hershey

Judith and Phillip Vander Weg

Jeffrey Hoppa

Wendy Vanderbilt-Lehman

Nina Katchadourian

Dorsey Waxter

Rainer Keller

Jill Weinstein

Donald King

Richard Zakin

Carla Klevan

Henry V. Zimet

Nancy Koenigsberg Robin Kyle Martha Lewis Nancy Linden Patricia Lyell Karen Mainenti Tom Morton Lucia Cirino Murphy

254

CONTRIBUTORS

Claire Gilman is Senior Curator at The Drawing Center.

Béatrice Gross is an independent curator and art critic based in New York. She has recently curated Double Eye Poke. Lynda Benglis, Dan Flavin, Sol LeWitt, Bruce Nauman at galerie kamel mennour (Paris, 2015) and served as Editor of Sol LeWitt Wall Drawings Catalogue Raisonné (Artifex Press, New York, 2013–15). Gross has also organized a series of Sol LeWitt and LeWitt Collection exhibitions as Adjunct Curator at Centre Pompidou-Metz (France, 2012–13) and Guest Co-Curator at M-Museum Leuven (Belgium, 2012). She is the Editor of Sol LeWitt’s extensive monographic book published by Centre PompidouMetz Editions (2012).

E D WA R D H A LL A M T U C K P U B L I C AT I O N P R O G R A M

This is number 126 of the Drawing Papers, a series of publications documenting The Drawing Center’s exhibitions and public programs and providing a forum for the study of drawing.

Margaret Sundell Executive Editor Joanna Ahlberg Managing Editor Designed by AHL&CO / Peter J. Ahlberg, Kyle Chaille This book is set in Adobe Garamond Pro and Berthold Akzidenz Grotesk.

It was printed by BookMobile in Minneapolis, MN.

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