Art From Ideas

How does Sol LeWitt use simple shapes to create stunning artworks?

Man standing in front of a colorful art piece

Sol LeWitt and his Wall Drawing #993, at the Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo credit: Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images.

Sol LeWitt

Your geometry teacher asks you to make a drawing using “arcs and bands in color.” What would this look like? Do you think you and the person sitting next to you would interpret this phrase the same way?

Arcs and Bands in Color is the title of the 1999 work by American artist Sol LeWitt on the cover. Look carefully. Do you see examples of arcs within the image? Bands? Color? This abstract artist combines seemingly simple lines and shapes into eye-catching geometric designs. His most famous works are larger-than-life drawings and paintings executed directly on museum and gallery walls. And while his works are visually interesting, it’s his ideas that really dazzle viewers.

Enlargeable image of red wall with colorful triangle and wall with black and white pattern

Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing #1005 and #900, 2001. Acrylic, dimensions variable. Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, Massachusetts. © 2020 The LeWitt Estate / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo by Kevin Kennefick, Courtesy Mass MoCA.

How does LeWitt make the flat image below left appear three-dimensional?

Master Plans

LeWitt, shown above, was born in 1928 in Hartford, Connecticut. At age 16, he left home for Syracuse University to study art. In the early 1960s, while living in New York City, he became interested in minimalism—the idea that art could be stripped down to basic elements such as colors, lines, and shapes. “[My] main decision was . . . to simplify things rather than make things more complicated,” he once explained.

The artist believed that the ideas behind a work of art mattered more than the physical artwork. LeWitt saw his job as coming up with those ideas, which other artists could then execute. This made him more like an architect or a musical composer than a traditional painter. This way of working became known as conceptual art.

LeWitt typically provided written instructions and sometimes a sketch of his plan for an artwork. Then he hired other artists to interpret and carry out his design. In 2008, dozens of artists and students helped draw and paint 105 of LeWitt’s works onto the walls of a threestory building at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. The colorful work at left is one of his many isometric drawings. LeWitt uses two-dimensional lines on a flat wall to represent three-dimensional geometric forms.

Enlargeable image of a person observing black & white geometric line art pieces

Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing #370: Ten Geometric Figures (including righ triangle, cross, X, diamond) with three-inch parallel bands of lines in two directions, 1982. Painting, dimensions variable. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York. © 2020 The LeWitt Estate / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo credit: Jeffrey Greenberg Universal Images Group via Getty Images.

How does LeWitt use lines to create shapes in this wall drawing?

Made for Destruction

Because LeWitt considered his ideas to be his artwork, he never intended their physical representations to be permanent. He developed the instructions for the wall drawing above in 1982. In 2014, a team of artists installed it at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. In 2018, museum officials had the wall painted white again. But as long as LeWitt’s description and sketches are not destroyed, the work of art still exists.

This work’s full title is Wall Drawing #370: Ten Geometric Figures (including right triangle, cross, X, diamond) with three-inch parallel bands of lines in two directions. Vertical and horizontal lines meet at precise edges to form 10 geometric shapes. Some elements of the work, such as its exact dimensions, are up to the artists who install it.

Enlargeable image of gray 3-D design with black backdrop

Sol LeWitt, Open Cube, 1968. Painted aluminum, 41 1/3x41 1/3x41 1/3in. (105x105x105cm). Inv. Sammlung Marzona 0341. National Gallery Staatliche Museum, Berlin, Germany. © 2020 The LeWitt Estate / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo credit: bpk-Bildagentur/ Peter Neumann/Art Resource, NY.

How does LeWitt involve the viewer in this work?

Building Blocks

LeWitt also made sculptures, which he called “structures.” He believed cubes were the most boring form, which made them good for experimenting. In his 1968 structure Incomplete Open Cube, above, LeWitt leaves the cube incomplete, inviting viewers to finish the idea in their minds.

Until his death in 2007, LeWitt promoted the idea that everyone could make and appreciate art—not just professional artists and critics. He thought choosing clothes to wear or arranging the furniture in your home could be forms of artistic expression. “Every person alive is an artist in some way,” he said.

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