Sol LeWitt: A Retrospective, SFMOMA, San Francisco

Sol LeWitt: A Retrospective
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
February 19 - May 30, 2000

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) will highlight 40 years of work by Sol LeWitt in the long-awaited exhibition Sol LeWitt: A Retrospective. The first comprehensive survey of Sol LeWitt's work since 1978, the retrospective will present over 200 works -- ranging from the well known wall drawings and structures to photographs, books and works on paper -- from each phase of the artist's career. Organized by Gary Garrels, SFMOMA Elise S. Haas Chief Curator and curator of painting and sculpture, in collaboration with Sol LeWitt, the exhibition will open on February 19 and be on view in the Museum's fourth-floor galleries through May 21, 2000, and in the fifth-floor galleries through May 30, 2000.

Sol LeWitt was born in 1928 in Hartford, Connecticut, and received his BFA in 1949 from Syracuse University. In 1953 he moved to New York, where he attended what is now known as the School of Visual Arts, and from 1955 to 1956 worked as a graphic artist for the architect I.M. Pei. In the mid-1960s, he began taking occasional teaching positions at art schools including Cooper Union, the School of Visual Arts and New York University. His work was first publicly exhibited in 1963 at St. Mark's Church, New York.

Since 1965, Sol LeWitt has had hundreds of solo exhibitions. His first retrospective was presented at the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague in 1970 and later showcased in a major mid-career retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1978. His work has been featured in innumerable group exhibitions. Sol LeWitt's pieces have been collected by some of the most prestigious museums in the world, including SFMOMA, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Gallery of Art, Paris's Musée National d'Art Moderne, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum and the Tate Gallery, London. 

Development of a Distinct Philosophy 

Beginning in 1962, Sol LeWitt began to make a series of geometric wall reliefs, soon moving to free-standing objects or "structures," the name he uses for all of this sculptural work. At this time his work was closely related to that of other artists, including Carl Andre, Donald Judd and Robert Morris, who were developing the movement that was dubbed Minimalism. By 1964 his structures had been simplified to open, linear forms, in which ideas could be explored in permutations and series.

In the mid-1960s, he pioneered the Conceptual art movement, emphasizing ideas for the generation of art rather than working from physical materials. LeWitt published "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art," an influential statement on Conceptualism, in a 1967 issue of Artforum and followed this with "Sentences on Conceptual Art," which appeared in Art Language in 1969.

In "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art," Sol LeWitt stated the importance of reduction in the artistic process: "When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes the machine that makes the art." His work is focused upon the ideas behind it and the proscribed rendering of form to realize a physical manifestation of those ideas. 

Supporting his idea that the thought is more important than the act, Sol LeWitt rejects the notion of art as a unique and precious object. He often uses assistants to execute the works based upon his detailed instructions. Adherence to LeWitt's system does not validate a scientific principle or insure technical perfection. For Sol LeWitt, an idea may be mathematically or scientifically invalid, but as long as the executor follows the system established by the artist, a true expression of the idea is produced. The intent is to merely to make good art. Instructions for executing a work give way to any number of physical manifestations of an idea; some will be beautiful, some will not, but the idea maintains its integrity. His art exists, above all, in the space between the artist's conception and the viewer's reception; it is dependent upon the viewer's sensory responses for its completion. Some instructions are simple and straightforward and some are long and complex.

For example, Sol LeWitt's instructions for the execution of Wall Drawing #340, 1980, mandates: 

Six-part drawing. The wall is divided horizontally and vertically into six equal parts. 1st part: On red, blue horizontal parallel lines, and in the center, a circle within which are yellow vertical parallel lines; 2nd part: On yellow, red horizontal parallel lines, and in the center, a square within which are blue vertical parallel lines; 3rd part: On blue, yellow horizontal parallel lines, and in the center, a triangle within which are red vertical parallel lines; 4th part: On red, yellow horizontal parallel lines, and in the center, a rectangle within which are blue vertical parallel lines; 5th part: On yellow, blue horizontal parallel lines, and in the center, a trapezoid within which are red vertical parallel lines; 6th part: On blue, red horizontal parallel lines, and in the center, a parallelogram within which are yellow vertical parallel lines. The horizontal lines do not enter the figures.

Sol LeWitt's work strikes a delicate balance between perceptual and conceptual qualities; between dedication to the simplicity and order of geometry and his pursuit of visual beauty and intuitive creation; and between his authorship and anonymity regarding his work. Wall drawings, perhaps more than any other medium Sol LeWitt uses, illustrate this inherent tension between craftsmanship and anonymity. The historical precedent of Renaissance fresco painting, which LeWitt deeply admires, is counterbalanced by the execution of his wall drawings. By using industrial materials that erase any trace of craft and employing assistants to execute his ideas, LeWitt was one of the first artists to renounce the importance of the artist's hand. However, LeWitt's desire to adhere to a system does not negate his wish to create truly beautiful wall drawings. As the artist said in the early 1980s, "I would like to produce something I would not be ashamed to show Giotto." 

Four Decades of Work

In 1968 Sol LeWitt made his first artist's book, developing an array of variations of straight lines, overdrawn in four directions. In a logical extension, LeWitt made the radical break of executing some of these drawings in large scale with pencil directly on the wall, the first of his "wall drawings," which would form the basis for his most sustained, important and richly developed work over the next thirty years. This shift also set the pattern throughout his career of moving readily back and forth between works on paper, wall drawings and structures. It is this way of working through theme and variation among media and materials that will be highlighted in the SFMOMA retrospective. 

Idea, detail and execution merge in the work Incomplete Open Cubes, 1974, in which Sol LeWitt explores all possible configurations of an incomplete cube. Each arrangement is expressed in three ways: as a three-dimensional wooden structure composed of eight-inch segments; as a schematic drawing; and a photograph of the sculpture. In its most reduced state, the cube is achieved with three segments. At its most complex, it is fashioned with eleven edges and comes closest to forming a complete cube. Between the boundaries, Sol LeWitt illustrates each possibility of a cube-structures with four segments, five segments and so on. He presents the elements by rank, with both the sculptures and pictures ordered from the least to most complex.

In the 1980s, Sol LeWitt's work shifted significantly. Geometric shapes and their permutations became the dominant subject of his 1980s wall drawings, which are executed in layers of colored ink washes that create an extraordinarily varied palette of luminous tones. His works, until then linear and muted, now included three geometric shapes -- circle, square and cone -- and were created with a richer and warmer palette. For example in 1982, Sol LeWitt executed a series entitled Forms Derived from a Cube, in which he depicted variations of geometric elements found within a cube. The piece signifies the beginning of a more selective and interpretive approach to his work; with an innumerable number of possible permutations of a cube, LeWitt chose to depict only 24 variations. These, in turn, at the end of the decade, inspired a new series of complex geometric, crystal-like forms, executed both as multi-colored wall drawings and as structures of white painted wood that erupt from the floor. 

Over the years, Sol LeWitt repeatedly experimented with the idea of a star in different colors and configurations. His Star series exemplifies the artist's mature exploration of serialism and geometry. LeWitt's 1996 Wall Drawing #808 -- presented at the Bienal Internacional São Paolo where Sol LeWitt represented the United States -- presents an array of three-to nine-pointed stars, each centered within a black-bordered rectangular section of wall space. The artist's strict use of geometry dictates that each star is constructed from the form of a regular polygon, and each point of the star rests on the circumference of a circle. Sol LeWitt achieves the broad range of color in each section through a process of layering, rather than mixing, his traditional four colors. In later works from the 1990s -- such as Wall Drawing #879: Loopy Doopy (Black and White), 1998, which is composed of broad, lively swirls -- Sol LeWitt began to incorporate more fluid shapes and wider brushstrokes. Moving away from the strict systematic forms of his earlier work, the latest pieces have a rhythmic optical playfulness and exuberance, an almost decorative quality, often combining bright, saturated colors with alternately saturated blacks.

Sol LeWitt: A Retrospective will be accompanied by a 368-page catalogue with essays by Martin Friedman, Gary Garrels, Andrea Miller-Keller, Brenda Richardson, Anne Rorimer, John Weber and Adam Weinberg. Featuring a lavish photo section with 140 color and 315 black-and-white photographs, the catalogue also includes a selection of Sol LeWitt's writings, the complete exhibition checklist and a bibliography. The catalogue is co-published by the Yale University Press and will be available in a $39.95 softcover edition and a $75 cloth edition at the SFMOMA MuseumStore. In addition, SFMOMA's Education Department will present a host of public programs, including a studio program for youth, a three-part lecture series and a half-day symposium. 

After its SFMOMA presentation, the exhibition will travel to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (July to October 2000), the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (October 2000 to February 2001) and other international venues. 

Sol LeWitt: A Retrospective is organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Support for this exhibition has been generously provided by the Henry Luce Foundation and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support is provided by Henry S. McNeil Jr.

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