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It's really about the idea.
It has nothing to do with the application of the hand, and the art, he says
lies in those instructions. It lies in
the thinking about what the art should be and he gives that as a recipe for other
artists to interpret
and to execute.
Sol LeWitt was a really radical
thinker in the way in which he approached his work and he came out of a tradition
of conceptual art that really began in the twentieth century in a big way with
Marcel Duchamp.
One thing about Sol LeWitt is that he very much cared about there not being
any pretention about the display of the art
He never wanted it on a pedestal, he never wanted it behind glass
He didn't want anything any kind of barrier to exist
between the people who are engaging with it and the art itself.
That's a really important theme that runs throughout this work.
This is made out of concrete block which is a very modest material.
You don't typically see that in the tradition of Western art making
that something so humble is used in a fine art context.
So this piece right here is Circle with Towers
It's one of his structures that he created using concrete blocks,
and what's interesting is that he actually didn't create this structure
himself, he drafted plans for Circle with Towers
and we've hired masons
to actually build the work. It's very intentionally at grade level so that you
can walk and approach it easily. I love that you can touch it and that you can sit on it
and that it's a real gathering place
There is this element of thecube
which is a theme that he used over and over again throughout his life
It's a very elemental shape and he uses it in many different ways
So this is one of the three while said this while drying stand
the artist who installed this work had rags full of
these primary colors in class and they would
dad on the colors in different layers so
if you look closely at this yellow there's actually
many different layers and color that form to create this
yellow color that you see and some of these colors have as many as
14 layers of color to create the color that you see now
These darker colors from far away it sort of looks
like a gray or a brown or a black but when you get up close you can actually see
that there are oranges and purples and yellows and blues, what
is neat about this work is that he got these beautiful jewel tones just
using the three basic colors and black.
A lot of times the analogy of music is made
of the composer creating a score and other musicians interpreting it.
And at the end of the day you remember the musicians
but it's the Bach and the Beethoven that really
anchor themselves as the composer's who create the work and I think thats
probably the perspective in which he's thinking.