This is the catalogue for a major retrospective organized by SFMOMA and celebrating the work of one of the most important and influential conceptual artists of the century. Sol LeWitt's career has been defined by a series of groundbreaking explorations into the basic building blocks of form and their relationship to philosophical and mathematical concepts. (Some critics have seen his work as visual manifestoes of the ideas of Descartes and Kant.) The fact is, however, that LeWitt's works transform these abstract principles and formulas into objects of beauty and grace, introducing elements of chance, intuition, or irrationality into the scientific systems that inspired their creation. While his thoroughly documented work of the 1960s was firmly fixed in the realm of conceptualism, his turn toward a more lyrical and sensual form of abstraction since then has never received adequate critical attention. This catalogue will chart the evolution of LeWitt's art from the sixties through to the present to show the enormous influence that his delicate balancing act between thought and form, order and disorder, has exerted on younger artists.
Sol LeWitt "is to art as Bach was to music," says conceptual artist Adrian Piper, indicating LeWitt's seminal importance to both the theory and practice of contemporary art. LeWitt's creations are the direct embodiments of his theoretical writings, abstract principles that he develops with supreme integrity into physical form. Recognizing his key role in the minimalist and conceptual movements of the 1960s and '70s, New York's MoMA gave LeWitt a major retrospective in 1978.
Sol LeWitt: A Retrospective and the accompanying exhibition organized by Gary Garrels of the San Francisco Museum of Modern bring us up-to-date.
During the '80s and '90s, LeWitt's work moved from a cerebral asceticism toward rich color and surfaces and a more explicit sensuality and expressiveness. Nearly 500 carefully chosen and well-reproduced photographs and drawings document this evolution. Together with a sampling of LeWitt's own pithy statements, lucid essays by seven of America's leading curators analyze his contributions to contemporary art. Typical of his methods and attitudes are his signature large-scale wall paintings, their sense of movement and bright bands of color making them among the most gorgeous of his works. While articulating the designs of the wall paintings and the concepts behind them, LeWitt does not paint them himself. He is generous in welcoming anyone else to give physical reality to his designs: "It would be a compliment," he says. Sol LeWitt is a beautiful and substantial book, and its range of illustration and depth of scholarship make it the definitive study of this highly influential artist. --John Stevenson
