“The idea becomes the machine that makes the art”
Sol LeWitt
“The idea becomes the machine that makes the art”
*View previous post "Systems Esthetics"
To that, when an organization or
individual buys a LeWitt wall drawing, they receive two things, neither of
which is the finished work of art. They get a certificate of authenticity and a
detailed set of instructions—that is, they get the idea. To install the piece,
they worked directly with LeWitt and now, since his death in 2007, work with
LeWitt’s estate to hire one of his trained drafts-people to lead the
installation.
A fundamental component of the wall
drawings is that LeWitt need not be present to install, then it did not matter
to the outcome of the installation that LeWitt was no longer alive. In a
process much like the relationship between a conductor and a group of
musicians, a trained LeWitt draftsperson directs a team of workers to create
the installation using the instructions as the “score.”
In Lewitt’s words, “an architect doesn’t go off with a shovel and dig his foundation and lay every brick. He’s still an artist”. A Sol Lewitt wall drawing begins as a small sketch, and then Lewitt writes directions for completing the piece, the rest is up to the draftsman. Human error and interpretation affect the piece, making sure that no two wall drawings are ever exactly the same. Lewitt believed that “Ideas cannot be owned…they belong to whomever understands them”, and allowed others to reproduce his works as long as they closely followed his instruction. However after the 1980’s, poor copies of his work began to circulate through the art world and he established a system of certificates. For a wall drawing to be considered a Sol Lewitt, it must be completed under the supervision of an assistant and be accompanied by a drawing and instructions certified by Sol Lewitt. The certificate system assured Lewitt that all his pieces would be of the highest quality.
His first wall drawing was executed
in 1968 at the Paula Cooper Gallery in New York City (wall drawing #11) and
consisted of four squares, each with lines meticulously drawn in the four
directions: left to right, up and down, diagonal in each direction. He was exploring a system of rules and the
various permutations of the system. He
developed written instructions for these wall drawings for his studio
assistants to execute. Neveretheless, the vocabulary to create these works
had to evolve, as the drawings became increasingly complex in color choices and
application. LeWitt kept these
instructions very standard, developing easy-to-understand codes for color
combinations, lines, and other elements.
Throughout his entire career, he continued to explore his basic concept,
to use writing (both captions and instructions) to make that concept accessible
to the viewers, and valuing the instructions and idea over the art object
itself.
The artist and his assistants had
to become more specialized in specific drafting and painting techniques to create the
desired effect (e.g. , masking with blue painter’s tape to achieve clear separation
between bands of color, using a contractor’s blue chalk snap line tool to
execute lines, and sanding and preparing walls with chemicals to make them more
receptive to the paint). The designs
continued to grow in detail as exemplified by some of his final works
“Scribbles”, where he returned to the graceful graphite pencil drawings using
scribble lines in different spacing to create beautiful geometric forms with
shading (wall drawing #1247 August 2007, #1260 July 2008, #1261 July 2008). A complete Sol LeWitt wall drawingretrospective has been installed at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA), and will be on display for 25 years, until 2033.
Text and images source:
http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/12/image_courtesy_of_mass_moca.html
