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June 12, 2024 2:54 PM

"wall drawings were already selling for thousands of dollars, so he wanted to have some artwork that everybody could buy" [Radius: not to be sold for more than $100]

"minimal art went nowhere"
[artstory, the]
previously

posted by HearHere (7 comments total)

he wanted them to be sold for $100 in perpetuity

Well he'll never pass the interviews at McKinsey.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 2:58 PM on June 12 [2 favorites]

I was able to see a huge retrospective of LeWitt's work (including one drawn posthumously, which is a weird idea to wrap your brain around) at MASS MoCA last year and it was AMAZING. Three thumbs up. If you're nearby, I highly recommend it. The rest of the museum is bonkers awesome, too.
posted by mrphancy at 3:27 PM on June 12 [4 favorites]

Sol LeWitt's letter to Eva Hesse as read by Benedict Cumberbatch is a treasure for the ages. "Stop it and just DO"
posted by Agent_X_ at 3:59 PM on June 12 [6 favorites]

Regarding the Sol LeWitt exhibit at MASS MoCA, I first stumbled across it the year after it opened. It was ... singular. Like an enormous children's book sprawled over an enormous room, full of color, line, movement and space waiting to be discovered. That said, my understanding then was that it would only run for 25 years, and then close. So, 2033. I don't see anything about that now, or on the MASS MoCA site, but I could be missing something, or the plan may have changed a few years after LeWitt's death in 2007. But still, going in 2009, the idea that it was "limited," even if for 25 years, was compelling. I quote an art review piece here: "One of the most innovative of LeWitt's ideas is that the work was installed for a limited time and then erased or painted over. It was extreme in not creating permanent objects that were readily bought and sold."
posted by buffalo at 5:23 PM on June 12 [1 favorite]

But wait, further searches show that in 2018 it was extended 10 years, to 2043. So, you got time ...
posted by buffalo at 5:28 PM on June 12 [2 favorites]

Installation of Sol LeWitt's wall drawings at the Art Gallery of NSW [content note: loud beeps]
posted by HearHere at 3:02 AM on June 13

Sol LeWitt was smart as hell, in some ways an anti-Andy Warhol they both made mass-produceable works but Andy's went on to be archetypically "High-Art" while LeWitt's, though also undeniably "High-Art" have at their core an egalitarian, for anybody, by anybody aspect to them. A democratic, anti-elitist component. (The whole issue/topic of minimalist works' "papers" is pretty central to their existence - in that if you lost the papers, you couldn't really prove your assembled light-bulbs/ ply-wood box/ pencil line on the wall were "really" by Flavin/Judd/LeWitt. You could, ostensibly, take a handful of LeWitt's works and draw them 'illegally.' Just as graffiti, at best... what does it mean then? This same issue is kind of playing out with Banksy's work: is it really a Banksy or isn't it? Though his way of addressing this is not as refined or subversive as LeWitt's. (An old acquaintance who worked for a certain 'famous' minimalist artist used to tell me the artist would sometimes with-hold the authentication papers, or sign them 'wrong' or have an assistant sign them. Both to be a jerk and also as a statement about the perversity of selling work that is, first and last, cheap and 'easy' to make.)
posted by From Bklyn at 4:01 AM on June 13 [1 favorite]