Sol LeWitt
dal 6/3/2012 al 28/7/2012
Segnalato da
6/3/2012
Sol LeWitt
Centre Pompidou - Metz , Metz
Wall Drawings from 1968 to 2007. With over 250 works and documents, the presentation is the first major showing of the LeWitt Collection in Europe. The selected 33 wall drawings span the artist's career from its beginnings to his final works. They reflect the remarkable diversity of his practice, both in the evolution of forms from simple geometric figures to what the artist called "complex" or "continuous" forms, and of the materials used.
Curator: Béatrice Gross, independent curator and art critic, New York.
Centre Pompidou-Metz presents the largest retrospective ever shown in Europe of Sol LeWitt wall drawings.
Conceived in close collaboration with the LeWitt Collection (Chester, Connecticut), the exhibition at Centre Pompidou-Metz features thirty-three black-and-white works spanning the artist's entire career. The retrospective reflects both the extraordinary consistency of LeWitt's systematic explorations and the remarkable diversity of his revolutionary practice.
The American conceptual artist (1928–2007) created some 1200 wall drawings between 1968 and 2007, developing mainly serial and modular systems through a vocabulary of abstract geometric forms. The first wall drawings explore in pencil combinations of straight lines in four directions, a form LeWitt would return to throughout his career. He then progressively introduced numerous variations: not straight lines, broken lines, grids; simple figures: arcs, circles, triangles, etc. and complex figures, loops, pyramids and "forms derived from a cube". From pencil and crayon to India ink, acrylic paint, and graphite, the variety of materials used by LeWitt is equally demonstrated throughout the exhibition.
The artist never ceased to explore every possible combination of closed systems - the notion of the infinite was never part of his work - in which the repetition of forms and modules is conceived as a narrative in its own right.
The practice of wall drawing
Reminiscent of the fresco tradition of the Italian Renaissance, from the late 1960s, Sol LeWitt's wall drawings marked a decisive development in the history of contemporary drawing in particular, and of art in general. Expressing thought processes which the artist conceived beforehand, the wall drawings are executed directly onto the walls on the scale of the exhibition venue. These wall drawings, executed on-site, exist for the duration of the exhibition; they are then destroyed, giving the work in its physical form an ephemeral quality. Its content (or concept) remains however identical from one exhibition to the next.
LeWitt conceived the drawings to be executed by people other than himself. Professional assistants trained by the LeWitt studio, and drafters new to the process, are brought in to precisely follow LeWitt's instructions and diagrams. As the artist stated back in 1967, “In conceptual art, the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work (…) and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes the machine that makes the art.” (Paragraphs on Conceptual Art, in Artforum, vol. 5, no. 10, June 1967, pp. 79-83). Like musicians performing a musical score, the draftsmen and women interpret, each time slightly differently and in their own way, the geometric formulae set out by LeWitt.
The choice of black and white
The Centre Pompidou-Metz has chosen to present thirty-three wall drawings by Sol LeWitt exclusively in black and white. "Black and white is at the heart of the conception of Sol LeWitt's wall drawings, even for the most colorful works," explains the exhibition's curator, Béatrice Gross. "The preparatory drawings are always done in pencil. Colors, where colors exist, are indicated only by their initial letter (R for red, Y for yellow, B for blue). The use of black and white frames the artist's work: LeWitt made his first wall drawings in black pencil, and the last ones in graphite, both on white walls."
This decision to show only black and white wall drawings also underlines the striking visual impact of LeWitt’s work. Depending on the materials and techniques used, the powerful contrast between black and white, or the more subtle contrast of various shades of gray, stresses the structure and the optical effects that bring the works to life, from the subtle vibration of pencil lines to the sustained cadence of flat areas of black and white in acrylic, through soft variations of ink washes.
An exhibition devised in close collaboration with the LeWitt Collection
Sol LeWitt. Wall Drawings 1968-2007 in Galerie 2 of the Centre Pompidou-Metz has been conceived and developed in close collaboration with the LeWitt Collection (Chester, Connecticut). The format of the exhibition, the selection of the works, and their execution result from an ongoing dialogue with the artist's estate. The preparation of the exhibition’s related publication benefited from a unique opportunity to research the LeWitt archives.
Publication
In conjunction with the exhibition, the Centre Pompidou-Metz is publishing a 480-page catalog, with editions in French and in English. This comprehensive publication aims to become a new reference work on Sol LeWitt, as most monographic books about the artist are now out-of-print.
The making of the wall drawings at Centre Pompidou-Metz has been the occasion of an exceptional collaboration with professional drafters trained by the LeWitt studio, local artists, and more than 60 students from local art and architecture schools.
Image: Wall Drawing #879. Loopy Doopy (black and white) Peinture acrylique
Première réalisation: Elizabeth Alderman, Sachiko Cho, Edy Ferguson, Anders Felix, Paux Hedberg, Choichi Nishikawa, Jim Prez, Emily Ripley, Mio Takashima
Première installation: PaceWildenstein, New York Septembre 1998
LeWitt Collection, Chester, Connecticut © Adagp, Paris 2012 © Centre Pompidou-Metz / Photos : Rémi Villaggi
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