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Army Of Artists Perpetuate LeWitt's Conceptual VisionBy Andrea Shea Listen to story (Real Audio)
They're part of an enormous retrospective spanning the career of conceptual artist Sol LeWitt, who died in 2007. LeWitt became famous for his precise "wall drawings," which he didn't actually execute himself. More than 100 are in the show, which opens this weekend, and stays open for 25 years. WBUR's Andrea Shea reports. ANDREA SHEA: Sol LeWitt once said, "The idea becomes the machine that makes the art." That quote became his Modus Operandi, and it was a radical concept in late 60s. For LeWitt his conceptualization was the most important part of the art. He saw it in his mind, then, in a sense released his idea by communicating it to others to complete. Even after his death Sol LeWitt's art is being made. For his retrospective it takes an army, sixty strong. Professional assistants, apprentices and interns. On a sunny summer morning they're deployed on three floors in this 27,000 square foot former mill, known here at Mass MoCA as Building #7. Sylvia Birns Swindlehurst is an apprentice. SYVLIA BIRNS SWINDLEHURST: I've been here since April and at that point everything was just blank white walls. SHEA: Not any more. We're surrounded by vivid floor-to-ceiling images in various stages of completion. Some helpers peel off masking tape and brown paper that protects drying paint. Others drench balled up rags in buckets of ink wash to "boom boom" geometric shapes with punchy color and texture. Julia Wagner is an intern in this guild system. She came on in June. JULIA WAGNER: We're doing everything from pencil sharpening to masking walls to doing a lot of wall preparation. If anything surprised me it was how much we the interns got an actual hand on what's on the wall. SHEA: The number of hands here comes as no surprise to Anthony Sansotta. He's co-directing this retrospective and worked with LeWitt's as an assistant for more than twenty years. ANTHONY SANSOTTA: Sol started doing his own wall drawings back in 1968 and then he soon realized that if he was going to be using the entire wall that he was going to need help (laughs). SHEA: But Sansotta says employing help wasn't simply a practical move for LeWitt. SANSOTTA: That worked into his philosophy that the artist did not necessarily need to produce his own work. The most fundamental part of it was that fact that it was an idea. And that it was sort of enough for the artist to have the idea and then that idea could or could not be realized. SHEA: To that end Sansotta says he and LeWitt's other assistants followed detailed instructions. SANSOTTA: Pretty much like an architect or a composer, we had either a set of working drawings or a set of notes. SHEA: You can't buy a completed LeWitt wall-drawing, but you could purchase permission to have one produced using notes that read like algorithms, or complex trigonometry problems. JOCK REYNOLDS: A circle, who's diameter is determined by the distance between two points, the first point is located where two lines would cross if the first line was drawn from a point half way between... SHEA: That's Jock Reynolds reading notes written by LeWitt. He directs the Yale University Art Gallery and was a close friend of the artist. Reynolds worked closely with LeWitt before his death to plan this retrospective. Walking around the building he still marvels at the transformation of words and ideas into shapes and lines writ large on the walls. REYNOLDS: All of a sudden you're in a room with these different kinds of lines are literally just dancing together in the most elegant and gorgeous visual fashion you can imagine. SHEA: And Reynolds says seeing more than 100 LeWitts in one place is rare. REYNOLDS: You know what's often been the case people get to see one or two of these but they seldom get to see the whole progression of LeWitt's work? SHEA: ?over time. LeWitt started with basic lines. Often thousands of them. Vertical, horizontal, diagonal. He introduced primary colors and their combinations. Then geometric shapes and isometric shapes. Inks and washes. Arcs. Grids. Waves. All looking rather logical. Some pretty trippy. Upstairs in what's called "The Scribble Chamber" professional assistant Michael Benjamin shows the work LeWitt was doing at the end of his career. MICHAEL BENJAMIN: What we have to do is scribble with pencils and scribble and keep scribbling until you get the gradation from black, very very black, to light and it creates a three dimensional feeling once it's done. SHEA: So how long does it to take? BENJAMIN: A day's worth of scribbling will render maybe two square feet. Right now you're looking at nine foot by nine foot. It's a very obsessive process! SHEA: Benjamin, like everyone working on the Mass MoCA project, admires LeWitt's M.O. BENJAMIN: I love the idea of art being accomplished by a group of people it gives more respect to the art itself and it takes the focus away from Sol because he's not actually there doing it. SHEA: LeWitt's friend and associate Jock Reynolds says the artist didn't harbor an ego and was the opposite of an "art-star." REYNOLDS: He was a fantastic human being I mean this was a guy who didn't want to spend a lot of time going to openings or playing the scene, he spent practically all of his time simply working day in and day out in his studio. SHEA: Right up until the very end, according to Reynolds. Sol LeWitt died of cancer in 2007. And while the artist passed away before the actual wall-drawings began, Reynolds says LeWitt didn't need to see the completed exhibition because for him the idea mattered most. In fact the artist rarely wanted to see any of his installations. REYNOLDS: He knew what this would look like, I feel very certain in knowing that he went to the beyond knowing this was going to happen, how it would look, and he knew it was going to get done and he knew it would be here for a long time. SHEA: Twenty five years is a long time for any show, but especially for one spotlighting Sol LeWitt. Because, at the end of most exhibitions his painstakingly executed wall-drawings are painted over. But here at Mass MoCA Sol LeWitt's legacy will span a generation, leaving future museum directors, curators, artists and his estate to decide where LeWitt's art fits in 2033.
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