Sol Lewitt by Bloom Lary;

Author:Bloom, Lary;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
Published: 2019-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

ART AND TRUST

An editorial on a LeWitt exhibit at the Joslyn Museum in Omaha, Nebraska, appeared in the Omaha Herald in January 1977:

We hereby nominate Sol LeWitt for the 1977 Nobel Prize in Art. Out of his fertile imagination has come a concept, infinite in possibility, which can revolutionize the world of visual art by making any ordinary citizen capable of creating masterpieces of painting and sculpture….

Think of it. You too can be among the creative elite. Just conceptualize your masterpiece, write the instructions, and get someone else to execute it.

We have a concept, as a matter fact. Here are the directions: To one fresco painting of a reclining Adam, add one picture of a reclining God, touching index fingers. Add angels, cherubs, clouds and rocks to taste. Cover with a good grade of antiquing glaze (not included.) The result should be suitable for basement ceiling, rec room, parsonage or friendly neighborhood art museum.1

According to a reporter for the UK newspaper Independent, at the opening of the LeWitt exhibit at the Lisson Gallery in London, in 1971, one person remarked about a piece featuring white cubes: “It’s just a stack of wine bottle racks.”2 In contrast, Caroline Tisdall’s review in the Guardian argued: “This is the most refreshing work to show in London for some time…. It is the objective of the artist who is concerned with conceptual art to make his work mentally interesting to the spectator, and therefore he would want it to become emotionally dry.”3

Chrissie Isles, exhibitions coordinator at Modern Art Oxford, said: “LeWitt didn’t want an association of meanings…. This was the idea of art being more democratic, a reductive, almost impersonal rationalization of artwork as pure form free from descriptive or subjective expression…. Anyone could make it.”4

But not everyone did make it. It takes an eye, a heart, a steady hand, a great deal of patience, and in many instances a strong body and will.

The question of how LeWitt recruited younger artists to carry out his ideas naturally arises. On one level the answer is obvious: They needed the work and were pleased that an artist of LeWitt’s stature thought them skilled enough to rely upon. But there was something else, too, that was related to his deep interest in the work and lives of others.

Michael Harvey never became an official member of a LeWitt crew, but he did complete some work for his benefactor, and his recollections reveal how LeWitt related to younger artists.

Harvey, who eventually became a prominent painter and filmmaker, devoted a section of his memoir, South of Houston: Sketches from the Art World in Pen and Youth, to his encounters with LeWitt. In a particularly telling passage, he described the time in the early 1970s when he arrived at 117 Hester Street in a state of near self-loathing, his girlfriend having left him. He had taken on odd jobs to make a living:

Sol looked surprised when he opened his heavy metal door, though we’d agreed to meet. It was just his manner, shy unassuming, a stay-at-home guy who didn’t care for the bars or openings.

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