Hi,
Welcome to Looking Around Boston, a newsletter about art and culture in Boston and beyond. If you aren’t already signed up, you can do that here. Just a warning that today’s newsletter is another long one. But there’s lots of good stuff in here, so let’s dive in.
I’m a little starved for beauty this year, like many of us. As someone who’s thrilled by bright colors and intricate details, my everyday view—the walls of my apartment—has turned gray and flat after several months. The gray sky and bare trees haven’t been helping. And, my time in art museums this year has sadly gone way down since I’ve spent most of 2020 very, very close to home.
Still, it’s possible to seek out beauty and visual culture during a pandemic. A few months ago, I visited an art gallery on Newbury Street, and the works I saw have been percolating in my brain ever since. Particularly this piece by the late artist Sol LeWitt, Complex Forms B, a set of three line etchings from 1990.
Sol LeWitt, Complex Forms: B, 1990. Set of three line etchings, edition of 20. Krakow Witkin Gallery, Boston.
I learned about LeWitt in my contemporary art class in college, and since then have stumbled on his works around unexpected corners. (I used to work in an office that had his line drawings hanging on the wall across from my desk.) I think of his work, spanning the second half of the twentieth century and a bit of the twenty-first, as a combination of the bold aesthetics and colors of pop art with the intricately plotted and interwoven shapes of geometric and abstract art.
Andy Warhol, Untitled from Marilyn Monroe, 1967. Screenprint. Museum of Modern Art, New York City. Example of pop art’s bold and bright colors.
Lee Krasner, Composition, 1949. Oil on canvas. Philadelphia Museum of Art. Example of geometric elements of abstract art.
LeWitt was clearly in love with shape and color, painting numerous series of precisely charted out lines in a series of complementary colors, building towering concrete structures of perfectly layered squares, and working with more hushed, muted colors and lines to convey the complexities of geometry. His work varies in scale from intimate line drawings to brightly colored murals that cover entire walls.
Sol LeWitt, Curvy Brushstrokes (Color), 1997. Etching with color sugar lift aquatint and aquatint. Krakow Witkin Gallery, Boston.
Sol LeWitt, Tower (DC), 1989, 2009. Concrete blocks, mortar. DeCordova Museum + Sculpture Park, Lincoln, Mass. Note: This piece has two dates because the artist conceived of it in 1989 and the tower was erected in Lincoln two years after his death.
My favorite LeWitt pieces, and maybe his most well known, are his wall drawings. These are murals on a massive scale, created according to the artist’s specifications in various sites, but painted by others—like museum staff or volunteer artists and craftspeople. LeWitt began creating these works in 1968, and there are over a thousand examples in existence. These raise questions typical of conceptual art, a type of art making in which, as Britannica puts it, “the planning of a work of art [is] always be more significant than its execution as an object.” Are the instructions themselves the work of art? If LeWitt, ostensibly the artist, never sets foot in the building where a wall drawing is installed, can he really be said to have made it?
Sol LeWitt, typed instructions for Wall Drawing 118. School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
I was lucky enough to see LeWitt’s wall drawings in 2014, at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, Mass. Splashed over a 27,000 square foot space, the drawings—huge, painted murals in exuberant rainbow colors—are a testament to the medium’s communal nature.
Though LeWitt is (rightfully) credited in the museum’s documentation as the artist, 65 local artists and students are the ones who painstakingly enacted LeWitt’s site-specific instructions; they began in 2007 and finished the next year after LeWitt’s death. It’s a wonderful exploration of the conceptual art philosophy—LeWitt didn’t need to be present for the murals’ creation, or even still alive. If you can, go see these murals—you will be awed by their playfulness and scale. (No rush, though; they will remain on view until 2033, 25 years after their initial completion.)
The wall drawings are spiritually different enough from Complex Forms B that I didn’t immediately recall the North Adams murals as I stood in the Newbury Street gallery this summer. Instead, looking at the three etchings together in a triptych, I was reminded of another style of triptych from a very different time.
Duccio di Buoninsegna, The Crucifixion; the Redeemer with Angels; Saint Nicholas; Saint Gregory, 1311-18. Tempera on panel. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
This (perhaps overly simplistic) geometric comparison led me to think of how medieval art was created on a grand scale. Many of the paintings and altarpieces from the medieval and Renaissance eras that we revere today were created in an artist’s workshop; while the artist’s name is the one listed on the museum wall, a painting by Michelangelo, for example, would have been painted by the master as well as the apprentices and tradespeople working in his studio.
When I studied abroad, I was awed by the scope and detail of the Sienese painter Duccio’s masterwork, the Maestà—an altarpiece of staggering beauty and intricate craftsmanship. This work certainly could not have been completed by one individual genius alone, and represents the collaborative, creative efforts of many whose names we’ll never know.
Duccio di Buoninsegna, Maestà, 1308-1311. Tempera and gold on wood. Museo dell’Opera Metropolitana del Duomo, Siena, Italy.
In a way, medieval artists’ workshops carry the seeds of the tradition Sol LeWitt worked in. It makes sense that in the era of postmodernism, when audience interpretation is essential, artists might again begin to assume the role of studio master or creative director. LeWitt relies on others’ experience, vision, and interpretation to not only physically complete the work, but also conceptually complete the work by bearing witness to its existence. (If no one ever sees a painting, how can we know it really exists?) Our experience of LeWitt’s wall drawings is as important a part of the artwork as his directions and the work of those who splashed paint onto those walls.
When we look at art, each viewer sees differently, bringing diverse experiences and backgrounds. Here’s what I’ve learned from Sol LeWitt’s work: You don’t need to have formal training to look at art, or know all about the artist’s philosophy or their place in history. Whether you’re looking at a LeWitt or a Michelangelo, allow yourself to enjoy shapes, colors, and figures, and know that your experience of the art helps create meaning and a little more beauty.
Thanks for sticking with me if you’ve made it this far. I’m enjoying playing around with longer formats, and writing about my favorite artists is so satisfying, especially when I’m stuck at home. Let me know in the comments what you think, and what you’ve been doing to find joy and beauty these days.
Stay safe,
Cordelia