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104-419: Solomon " Sol " LeWitt (September 9, 1928 – April 8, 2007) was an American artist linked to various movements, including conceptual art and minimalism . LeWitt came to fame in the late 1960s with his wall drawings and "structures" (a term he preferred to "sculptures") but was prolific in a wide range of media including drawing, printmaking, photography, painting, installation, and artist's books. He has been

208-416: A musical choreographer, Tamiris gave Childs her first acting job which proved to be a frightening experience for Childs. After this traumatic experience, Childs decided to focus on dance and pursued a Bachelor of Arts degree in dance. She was able to broaden her technical experience by studying with Judith Dunn, Bessie Schonberg and Merce Cunningham . Childs describes Cunningham saying that he “elucidated

312-435: A commonplace object (such as a urinal) as art because it is not made by an artist or with any intention of being art, nor is it unique or hand-crafted. Duchamp's relevance and theoretical importance for future "conceptualists" was later acknowledged by US artist Joseph Kosuth in his 1969 essay, Art after Philosophy , when he wrote: "All art (after Duchamp) is conceptual (in nature) because art only exists conceptually". In 1956

416-627: A cube made from more than 1,000 light-coloured bricks that measure five meters on each side. It was installed at the Kivik Art Centre in Lilla Stenshuvud, Sweden, in 2014. In 1968, LeWitt began to conceive sets of guidelines or simple diagrams for his two-dimensional works drawn directly on the wall, executed first in graphite , then in crayon , later in colored pencil and finally in chromatically rich washes of India ink , bright acrylic paint, and other materials. Since he created

520-610: A different meaning when employed by Joseph Kosuth and by the English Art and Language group, who discarded the conventional art object in favour of a documented critical inquiry, that began in Art-Language: The Journal of Conceptual Art in 1969, into the artist's social, philosophical, and psychological status. By the mid-1970s they had produced publications, indices, performances, texts and paintings to this end. In 1970 Conceptual Art and Conceptual Aspects ,

624-485: A different system of change to each of twenty-four possible combinations of a square divided into four equal parts, each containing one of the four basic types of lines LeWitt used (vertical, horizontal, diagonal left, and diagonal right). The result is four possible permutations for each of the twenty-four original units. The system used in Drawings Series I is what LeWitt termed 'Rotation,' Drawings Series II uses

728-408: A distaste for illusion. However, by the end of the 1960s it was certainly clear that Greenberg's stipulations for art to continue within the confines of each medium and to exclude external subject matter no longer held traction. Conceptual art also reacted against the commodification of art; it attempted a subversion of the gallery or museum as the location and determiner of art, and the art market as

832-702: A drawing with instructions. Installed in 2011, Lines in Four Directions in Flowers is made up of more than 7,000 plantings arranged in strategically configured rows. In his original proposal, the artist planned an installation of flower plantings of four different colors (white, yellow, red & blue) in four equal rectangular areas, in rows of four directions (vertical, horizontal, diagonal right & left) framed by evergreen hedges of about 2' height, with each color block comprising four to five species that bloom sequentially. In 2004, Six Curved Walls sculpture

936-532: A kind of particularity and clarity in dance that felt distinctly separate from anything I had experienced up to that point”. While studying at the Cunningham studio, Childs was introduced to Yvonne Rainer who encouraged Childs to show her early works at the weekly Judson workshops. During one of these workshops Childs performed a solo, Pastime (1963), at the Judson Memorial Church . Rainer

1040-613: A night receptionist and clerk he took in 1960 at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, would influence LeWitt's later work. At MoMA, LeWitt's co-workers included fellow artists Robert Ryman , Dan Flavin , Gene Beery , and Robert Mangold , and the future art critic and writer, Lucy Lippard who worked as a page in the library. Curator Dorothy Canning Miller 's now famous 1960 "Sixteen Americans" exhibition with work by Jasper Johns , Robert Rauschenberg , and Frank Stella created

1144-676: A significant departure from the rest of his practice, as he created these works with his own hands. LeWitt's gouaches are often created in series based on a specific motif. Past series have included Irregular Forms , Parallel Curves , Squiggly Brushstrokes and Web-like Grids . Although this loosely rendered composition may have been a departure from his earlier, more geometrically structured works visually, it nevertheless remained in alignment with his original artistic intent. LeWitt painstakingly made his own prints from his gouache compositions. In 2012, art advisor Heidi Lee Komaromi curated, "Sol LeWitt: Works on Paper 1983-2003", an exhibition revealing

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1248-484: A soloist who again, repeats the same combination of movements for 17 minutes. Each couple and soloist moves along the stage in a grid-like pattern. A projection of a filmed version of Dance (1979) allows the audience to view the piece from multiple angles at once, adding to the sense of a grid and geometric, abstract patterns. Dance (1979) was composed of three ensemble sections containing eight dancer or four couples, then there were two soloist sections. Childs first took

1352-404: A standard version for his modular cubes, circa 1965: the negative space between the beams would stand to the positive space of the sculptural material itself in a ratio of 8.5:1, or 17 2 {\displaystyle {\frac {17}{2}}} . The material would also be painted white instead of black, to avoid the "expressiveness" of the black color of earlier, similar pieces. Both

1456-475: A support system for avant-garde artists, balancing its role as publisher, exhibition space, retail space, and community center for the downtown arts scene, in that sense emulating the network of aspiring artists LeWitt knew and enjoyed as a staff member at the Museum of Modern Art. LeWitt collaborated with architect Stephen Lloyd to design a synagogue for his congregation Beth Shalom Rodfe Zedek ; he conceptualized

1560-522: A swell of excitement and discussion among the community of artists with whom LeWitt associated. LeWitt also became friends with Hanne Darboven , Eva Hesse , and Robert Smithson . LeWitt taught at several New York schools, including New York University and the School of Visual Arts , during the late 1960s. In 1980, LeWitt left New York for Spoleto, Italy . After returning to the United States in

1664-569: A system termed 'Mirror,' Drawings Series III uses 'Cross & Reverse Mirror,' and Drawings Series IV uses 'Cross Reverse'. In Wall Drawing #122 , first installed in 1972 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, the work contains "all combinations of two lines crossing, placed at random, using arcs from corners and sides, straight, not straight and broken lines" resulting in 150 unique pairings that unfold on

1768-618: A work of art for Paula Cooper Gallery 's inaugural show in 1968, an exhibition to benefit the Student Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, thousands of LeWitt's drawings have been installed directly on the surfaces of walls. Between 1969 and 1970 he created four "Drawings Series", which presented different combinations of the basic element that governed many of his early wall drawings. In each series he applied

1872-429: Is an American postmodern dancer and choreographer . Her compositions are known for their minimalistic movements yet complex transitions. Childs is most famous for being able to turn the slightest movements into intricate choreography. Through her use of patterns, repetition, dialect, and technology, she has created a unique style of choreography that embraces experimentation and transdisciplinarity . Lucinda Childs

1976-489: Is housed in a three-story 27,000-square-foot (2,500 m) historic mill building in the heart of MASS MoCA's campus fully restored by Bruner/Cott and Associates architects (and outfitted with a sequence of new interior walls constructed to LeWitt's specifications.) The exhibition consists of 105 drawings — comprising nearly one acre of wall surface — that LeWitt created over 40 years from 1968 to 2007 and includes several drawings never before seen, some of which LeWitt created for

2080-481: Is not about the singular hand of the artist; it is the idea behind each work that surpasses the work itself. In the early 21st century, LeWitt's work, especially the wall drawings, has been critically acclaimed for its economic perspicacity. Though modest—most exist as simple instructions on a sheet of paper—the drawings can be made again and again and again, anywhere in the world, without the artist needing to be involved in their production. His auction record of $ 749,000

2184-732: Is now installed at Altona Town Hall, Hamburg . Other major exhibitions since include Sol LeWitt Drawings 1958-1992 , which was organized by the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, the Netherlands in 1992 which traveled over the next three years to museums in the United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland , France, Spain, and the United States; and in 1996, the Museum of Modern Art, New York mounted a traveling survey exhibition: "Sol LeWitt Prints: 1970-1995". A major LeWitt retrospective

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2288-516: Is sometimes (as in the work of Robert Barry , Yoko Ono , and Weiner himself) reduced to a set of written instructions describing a work, but stopping short of actually making it—emphasising the idea as more important than the artifact. This reveals an explicit preference for the "art" side of the ostensible dichotomy between art and craft , where art, unlike craft, takes place within and engages historical discourse: for example, Ono's "written instructions" make more sense alongside other conceptual art of

2392-826: The AXA Center , New York (1984–85); The Swiss Re headquarters Americas in Armonk, New York, the Atlanta City Hall , Atlanta ( Wall Drawing #581 , 1989/90); the Walter E. Washington Convention Center , Washington, DC ( Wall Drawing #1103 , 2003); the Conrad Hotel , New York ( Loopy Doopy (Blue and Purple) , 1999); the Albright-Knox Art Gallery , Buffalo ( Wall Drawing #1268: Scribbles: Staircase (AKAG) , 2006/2010); Akron Art Museum , Akron (2007);

2496-776: The Columbus Circle Subway Station , New York; The Jewish Museum (New York) , New York; the Green Center for Physics at MIT , Cambridge ( Bars of Colors Within Squares (MIT) , 2007); the Embassy of the United States in Berlin ; the Wadsworth Atheneum ; and John Pearson's House, Oberlin, Ohio . The artist's last public wall drawing, Wall Drawing #1259: Loopy Doopy (Springfield) (2008), is at

2600-476: The School of Visual Arts while also pursuing his interest in design at Seventeen magazine, where he did paste-ups, mechanicals, and photostats. In 1955, he was a graphic designer in the office of architect I.M. Pei for a year. Around that time, LeWitt also discovered the work of the late 19th-century photographer Eadweard Muybridge , whose studies in sequence and locomotion were an early influence for him. These experiences, combined with an entry-level job as

2704-688: The Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford. After earning a BFA from Syracuse University in 1949, LeWitt traveled to Europe where he was exposed to Old Master paintings. Shortly thereafter, he served in the Korean War , first in California , then Japan , and finally Korea . LeWitt moved to New York City in 1953 and set up a studio on the Lower East Side, in the old Ashkenazi Jewish settlement on Hester Street . During this time he studied at

2808-408: The syntax of logic and mathematics, concept art was meant jointly to supersede mathematics and the formalistic music then current in serious art music circles. Therefore, Flynt maintained, to merit the label concept art , a work had to be a critique of logic or mathematics in which a linguistic concept was the material, a quality which is absent from subsequent "conceptual art". The term assumed

2912-696: The "airy" synagogue building, with its shallow dome supported by "exuberant wooden roof beams", an homage to the wooden synagogues of eastern Europe . In 1981, LeWitt was invited by the Fairmount Park Art Association (currently known as the Association for Public Art ) to propose a public artwork for a site in Fairmount Park . He selected the long, rectangular plot of land known as the Reilly Memorial and submitted

3016-462: The 1950s. With the emergence of an exclusively language-based art in the 1960s, however, conceptual artists such as Art & Language , Joseph Kosuth (who became the American editor of Art-Language ), and Lawrence Weiner began a far more radical interrogation of art than was previously possible (see below ). One of the first and most important things they questioned was the common assumption that

3120-520: The 1960s using the modular form of the square in arrangements of varying visual complexity. In Issue 5 of 0 To 9 magazine , LeWitt's work 'Sentences on Conceptual Art' was published.This piece became one of the most widely cited artists' writings of the 1960s, exploring the relationship between art, practice and art criticism . In 1979, LeWitt participated in the design for the Lucinda Childs Dance Company's piece Dance . In

3224-405: The 1960s, LeWitt denied that approaches such as Minimalism , Conceptualism , and Process Art were merely technical or illustrative of philosophy. In his Paragraphs on Conceptual Art , LeWitt asserted that Conceptual art was neither mathematical nor intellectual but intuitive, given that the complexity inherent to transforming an idea into a work of art was fraught with contingencies. LeWitt's art

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3328-610: The 1980s and particularly 1990s to date that derive from the conceptual art movement of the 1960s and 1970s. These subsequent initiatives have included the Moscow Conceptualists , United States neo-conceptualists such as Sherrie Levine and the Young British Artists , notably Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin in the United Kingdom . Lucinda Childs Lucinda Childs (born June 26, 1940)

3432-607: The 2017 Venice Dance Biennial, she was awarded the Golden Lion for her lifetime achievements. As of 2018, The Lucinda Dance Company has been shut down. When interviewed about the closing of her company, Childs states that “it’s almost a natural thing. Everybody’s ready to move on". While this is not the first time her company has closed, this does appear to be the last. “As one of America's leading modern dance choreographers, she makes work which can often be described as conceptual dance.” While her minimalist movements were simple,

3536-471: The Beach (1976) was a transition for Childs and a springboard into her most well-known piece, Dance (1979). In her collaboration with Philip Glass and Sol LeWitt , Dance (1979), the minimalist quality of her choreography is evident. In this hour-long piece, the dancers move across the stage in pairs repeating the same balletic, geometric movements for 19 minutes and 55 seconds. Then the sequence shifts to

3640-535: The Isouian movement, Excoördism, self-defines as the art of the infinitely large and the infinitely small. In 1961, philosopher and artist Henry Flynt coined the term "concept art" in an article bearing the same name which appeared in the proto- Fluxus publication An Anthology of Chance Operations . Flynt's concept art, he maintained, devolved from his notion of "cognitive nihilism", in which paradoxes in logic are shown to evacuate concepts of substance. Drawing on

3744-759: The Lifetime Achievement Bessie Award. She was also awarded by the French government, which designated her as among the highest rank of dancer performers. Besides her own productions, Childs has also choreographed for the Paris Opéra Ballet, Lyon Opera Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, and the Berlin Opera Ballet. In 2015 she played a major part in Robert Wilson 's and Arvo Pärt 's Adam's Passion . At

3848-601: The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Dia:Beacon , The Jewish Museum in Manhattan, Pérez Art Museum Miami , Florida, MASS MoCA , North Adams, Massachusetts Institute of Technology List Art Center's Public Art Collection, Cambridge , National Gallery of Art , Washington D.C., and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden . The erection of Double Negative Pyramid by Sol LeWitt at Europos Parkas in Vilnius, Lithuania

3952-589: The Perry-Mansfield of Theatre and Dance. Childs also worked with theater director Barney Brown from the Pasadena Play-House . During her second year at Perry-Mansfield, Childs auditioned for Tamiris and was cast in a trio with Daniel Nargin . In the summer of 1959, Childs went to Colorado College to continue studying dance and composition with Hanya Holm . This is where she meet Merce Cunningham and began to focus exclusively on dance. As

4056-742: The Scottish Opera. In 2003, Childs choreographed Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé for the Geneva Opera Ballet. Childs choreographed John Adams' opera Doctor Atomic with the San Francisco Ballet in 2007. She also choreographed and directed Vivaldi's opera Farnace for the Opera du Rhin in 2012. Her most recent work, THE DAY , premiered in the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival on August 1, 2019. In 2009, Childs received

4160-715: The United States Courthouse in Springfield, Massachusetts (designed by architect Moshe Safdie ). Wall Drawing #599: Circles 18 (1989) — a bull's eye of concentric circles in alternating bands of yellow, blue, red and white — was installed at the lobby of the Jewish Community Center , New York, in 2013. In the 1980s, in particular after a trip to Italy, LeWitt started using gouache , an opaque water-based paint, to produce free-flowing abstract works in contrasting colors. These represented

4264-578: The Wadsworth Atheneum's sixth MATRIX exhibition, providing instructions for a second wall drawing. MoMA gave LeWitt his first retrospective in 1978-79. The exhibition traveled to various American venues. For the 1987 Skulptur Projekte Münster , Germany, he realized Black Form: Memorial to the Missing Jews , a rectangular wall of black concrete blocks for the center of a plaza in front of an elegant, white Neoclassical government building; it

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4368-521: The application of cybernetics to art and art pedagogy, "The Construction of Change" (1964), was quoted on the dedication page (to Sol LeWitt) of Lucy R. Lippard 's seminal Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972 , Ascott's anticipation of and contribution to the formation of conceptual art in Britain has received scant recognition, perhaps (and ironically) because his work

4472-444: The art. Tony Godfrey, author of Conceptual Art (Art & Ideas) (1998), asserts that conceptual art questions the nature of art, a notion that Joseph Kosuth elevated to a definition of art itself in his seminal, early manifesto of conceptual art, Art after Philosophy (1969). The notion that art should examine its own nature was already a potent aspect of the influential art critic Clement Greenberg 's vision of Modern art during

4576-435: The beauty in her choreography lay in her spatial exploration. Her work captivates the splendor of the different patterns the human body can create across a stage by basic repeated movements such as skipping or turning. She would create an entire performance piece based on one simple combination that would be repeated numerous times but in a different way. Whether she takes apart and reorders the combination or simply reverses it

4680-417: The composition Glass had made and analyzed how the music was constructed and designed her own structure of movement to interact with it. Childs choreographed this piece to come together with the music at points, and to counter it at others. The two structures were similar but not a true reflection. Childs had the couples on stage during this piece as she feels the couples heighten the spatial relations between

4784-440: The conceptual artists used language in place of brush and canvas, and allowed it to signify in its own right. Of Lawrence Weiner's works Anne Rorimer writes, "The thematic content of individual works derives solely from the import of the language employed, while presentational means and contextual placement play crucial, yet separate, roles." The British philosopher and theorist of conceptual art Peter Osborne suggests that among

4888-448: The concerns of the conceptual art movement, while they may or may not term themselves "conceptual artists". Ideas such as anti-commodification, social and/or political critique, and ideas/information as medium continue to be aspects of contemporary art, especially among artists working with installation art , performance art , art intervention , net.art , and electronic / digital art . Neo-conceptual art describes art practices in

4992-446: The dance vocabulary, using objects and texts.” Lucinda Childs choreographed steadily until 1968 when she decided to take a break and focus on her own style of dance. During this break, she experimented with her choreography exploring different methods. After opening her own dance company, The Lucinda Dance Company in 1973, Childs collaborated with the likes of Robert Wilson and Philip Glass. Childs, Glass and Wilson joined together on

5096-413: The dancers and the audience. Having two dancers on stage versus one opens up and charges the space with energy. The dancers were also accompanied by a film projected on the screen in front of the dancers. The dancers were visible from behind the screen, dancing in sync with the dancers in the film. The film aspect of this collaboration came from Sol LeWitt . In the original staging, the filmed dancers were

5200-518: The dancers with a film. Childs’ latest work was composed in two parts, composed by David Lang and danced by Wendy Whelan . The cellist, Maya Beiser , sits on stage playing Lang’s music while Whelan dances. The second part of THE DAY (2019), was “The World to Come.” This section of THE DAY (2019) was about the idea of life after death as perceived by the Jewish religion. The piece was started around September 11, 2001 , which later informed parts of

5304-437: The draftsmen to fill in areas of the wall by scribbling with graphite. The scribbling occurs at six different densities, which are indicated on the artist's diagrams and then mapped out in string on the surface of the wall. The gradations of scribble density produce a continuum of tone that implies three dimensions. The largest scribble wall drawing, Wall Drawing #1268 , is on view at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery . According to

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5408-444: The duration of an exhibition; they are then destroyed, giving the work in its physical form an ephemeral quality. They can be installed, removed, and then reinstalled in another location, as many times as required for exhibition purposes. When transferred to another location, the number of walls can change only by ensuring that the proportions of the original diagram are retained. Permanent murals by LeWitt can be found at, among others,

5512-424: The early 1960s, LeWitt first began to create his "structures," a term he used to describe his three-dimensional work. His frequent use of open, modular structures originates from the cube , a form that influenced the artist's thinking from the time that he first became an artist. After creating an early body of work made up of closed-form wooden objects, heavily lacquered by hand, in the mid-1960s he "decided to remove

5616-619: The early conceptualists were the first generation of artists to complete degree-based university training in art. Osborne later made the observation that contemporary art is post-conceptual in a public lecture delivered at the Fondazione Antonio Ratti, Villa Sucota in Como on July 9, 2010. It is a claim made at the level of the ontology of the work of art (rather than say at the descriptive level of style or movement). The American art historian Edward A. Shanken points to

5720-403: The essence of painting, and ought to be removed. Some have argued that conceptual art continued this "dematerialization" of art by removing the need for objects altogether, while others, including many of the artists themselves, saw conceptual art as a radical break with Greenberg's kind of formalist Modernism. Later artists continued to share a preference for art to be self-critical, as well as

5824-504: The essential, formal nature of each medium. Those elements that ran counter to this nature were to be reduced. The task of painting, for example, was to define precisely what kind of object a painting truly is: what makes it a painting and nothing else. As it is of the nature of paintings to be flat objects with canvas surfaces onto which colored pigment is applied, such things as figuration , 3-D perspective illusion and references to external subject matter were all found to be extraneous to

5928-541: The evening and finishing around eleven-thirty, and did not tell a story. The story was meant to be up to the audience to decide and that became an essential part of the piece itself. Childs solo in Act 1 scene i was structurally linked to the three visual and musical motifs of the opera. Childs also embodied many different characters within this solo through her gestures. The choreography for this piece came about through structured improvisation guided by Robert Wilson. Einstein on

6032-654: The example of Roy Ascott who "powerfully demonstrates the significant intersections between conceptual art and art-and-technology, exploding the conventional autonomy of these art-historical categories." Ascott, the British artist most closely associated with cybernetic art in England, was not included in Cybernetic Serendipity because his use of cybernetics was primarily conceptual and did not explicitly utilize technology. Conversely, although his essay on

6136-556: The exhibition "Selections from The LeWitt Collection" at the Weatherspoon Art Museum assembled approximately 100 paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, and photographs, among them works by Andre, Alice Aycock , Bernd and Hilla Becher , Jan Dibbets , Jackie Ferrara , Gilbert and George , Alex Katz , Robert Mangold , Brice Marden , Mario Merz , Shirin Neshat , Pat Steir , and many other artists. LeWitt's work

6240-479: The first cement Cube was built in a park in Basel . From 1990 onwards, LeWitt conceived multiple variations on a tower to be constructed using concrete blocks. In a shift away from his well-known geometric vocabulary of forms, the works LeWitt realized in the late 1990s indicate vividly the artist's growing interest in somewhat random curvilinear shapes and highly saturated colors. In 2007, LeWitt conceived 9 Towers ,

6344-476: The first dedicated conceptual-art exhibition, took place at the New York Cultural Center . Conceptual art emerged as a movement during the 1960s – in part as a reaction against formalism as then articulated by the influential New York art critic Clement Greenberg . According to Greenberg Modern art followed a process of progressive reduction and refinement toward the goal of defining

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6448-479: The founder of Lettrism , Isidore Isou , developed the notion of a work of art which, by its very nature, could never be created in reality, but which could nevertheless provide aesthetic rewards by being contemplated intellectually. This concept, also called Art esthapériste (or "infinite-aesthetics"), derived from the infinitesimals of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz – quantities which could not actually exist except conceptually. The current incarnation (As of 2013 ) of

6552-399: The gallery walls. LeWitt further expanded on this theme, creating variations such as Wall Drawing #260 at the Museum of Modern Art , New York, which systematically runs through all possible two-part combinations of arcs and lines. Conceived in 1995, Wall Drawing #792: Black rectangles and squares underscores LeWitt's early interest in the intersections between art and architecture. Spanning

6656-589: The late 1980s, LeWitt made Chester, Connecticut , his primary residence. He died at age 78 in New York from cancer complications. LeWitt is regarded as a founder of both Minimal and Conceptual art . His prolific two and three-dimensional work ranges from wall drawings (over 1200 of which have been executed) to hundreds of works on paper extending to structures in the form of towers , pyramids , geometric forms, and progressions. These works range in size from books and gallery-sized installations to monumental outdoor pieces. LeWitt's first serial sculptures were created in

6760-428: The late 1990s and early 2000s, he created highly saturated colorful acrylic wall drawings. While their forms are curvilinear, playful and seem almost random, they are also drawn according to an exacting set of guidelines. The bands are a standard width, for example, and no colored section may touch another section of the same color. In 2005 LeWitt began a series of 'scribble' wall drawings, so termed because they required

6864-615: The limitations of the canvas for more extensive constructions. "Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective", a collaboration between the Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG), MASS MoCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art), and the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) opened to the public in 2008 at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts. The exhibition will be on view for 25 years and

6968-441: The many factors that influenced the gravitation toward language-based art, a central role for conceptualism came from the turn to linguistic theories of meaning in both Anglo-American analytic philosophy , and structuralist and post structuralist Continental philosophy during the middle of the twentieth century. This linguistic turn "reinforced and legitimized" the direction the conceptual artists took. Osborne also notes that

7072-520: The music then think about all the different sequences, trying to figure out “where there could be musical transitions that we abide by, and where there are ones we don't abide by”. Childs also mentioned, in Speaking of Dance: Twelve Contemporary Choreographers on Their Craft (2004), that the works of Jackson Pollock , Barnett Newman , Mark Rothko , Jasper Johns , and Robert Rauschenberg influenced her works. When she began her Company in 1973, Childs

7176-607: The opera Einstein On The Beach . Childs participated as the leading performer and choreographer and won an Obie Award for Best Actress for her performance. She also appeared in a show titled I Was Sitting on My Patio This Guy Appeared I Thought I Was Hallucinating in 1977. Childs also originated the role of Hubert Page in The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs Off-Broadway in 1982. Janet McTeer would later go on to receive an Academy Award nomination for playing

7280-403: The owner and distributor of art. Lawrence Weiner said: "Once you know about a work of mine you own it. There's no way I can climb inside somebody's head and remove it." Many conceptual artists' work can therefore only be known about through documentation which is manifested by it, e.g., photographs, written texts or displayed objects, which some might argue are not in and of themselves the art. It

7384-412: The piece. Spoken word about the loss experienced at that time overlays the music. The messages were alphabetically arranged in the piece. The piece in its entirety is 30 minutes long with text coming in every six seconds. Childs began choreography in the second part as it was more abstract. Each structure in the first part, with the text, took on a different meaning depending on the props used and Childs

7488-547: The principle of his work, LeWitt's wall drawings are usually executed by people other than the artist himself. Even after his death, people are still making these drawings. He would therefore eventually use teams of assistants to create such works. Writing about making wall drawings, LeWitt himself observed in 1971 that "each person draws a line differently and each person understands words differently". Between 1968 and his death in 2007, LeWitt created more than 1,270 wall drawings. The wall drawings, executed on-site, generally exist for

7592-474: The problem of defining the term itself. As the artist Mel Bochner suggested as early as 1970, in explaining why he does not like the epithet "conceptual", it is not always entirely clear what "concept" refers to, and it runs the risk of being confused with "intention". Thus, in describing or defining a work of art as conceptual it is important not to confuse what is referred to as "conceptual" with an artist's "intention". The French artist Marcel Duchamp paved

7696-465: The project shortly before his death. Furthermore, the artist was the subject of exhibitions at P.S. 1 Contemporary Center, Long Island City ( Concrete Blocks ); the Addison Gallery of American Art , Andover ( Twenty-Five Years of Wall Drawings, 1968-1993 ); and Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford ( Incomplete Cubes ), which traveled to three art museums in the United States. At

7800-443: The range of actual perception...". Childs approached this piece from all different angles exploring dialect, architecture, and staging. The piece asked its viewers to look beyond what was in front of them and instead use different senses to visualize the unseen. This dance has only been performed three times, the most recent being the 2013 Philadelphia revival. In the revival, the dancers used stop-watches for timing purposes. This

7904-589: The ratio and the color were arbitrary aesthetic choices, but once taken they were used consistently in several pieces which typify LeWitt's "modular cube" works. Museums holding specimens of LeWitt's modular cube works have published lesson suggestions for elementary education, meant to encourage children to investigate the mathematical properties of the artworks. Beginning in the mid-1980s, LeWitt composed some of his sculptures from stacked cinder blocks, still generating variations within self-imposed restrictions. At this time, he began to work with concrete blocks. In 1985,

8008-791: The rise of Modernism with, for example, Manet (1832–1883) and later Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968). The first wave of the "conceptual art" movement extended from approximately 1967 to 1978. Early "concept" artists like Henry Flynt (1940– ), Robert Morris (1931–2018), and Ray Johnson (1927–1995) influenced the later, widely accepted movement of conceptual art. Conceptual artists like Dan Graham , Hans Haacke , and Lawrence Weiner have proven very influential on subsequent artists, and well-known contemporary artists such as Mike Kelley or Tracey Emin are sometimes labeled "second- or third-generation" conceptualists, or " post-conceptual " artists (the prefix Post- in art can frequently be interpreted as "because of"). Contemporary artists have taken up many of

8112-587: The role of the artist was to create special kinds of material objects . Through its association with the Young British Artists and the Turner Prize during the 1990s, in popular usage, particularly in the United Kingdom, "conceptual art" came to denote all contemporary art that does not practice the traditional skills of painting and sculpture . One of the reasons why the term "conceptual art" has come to be associated with various contemporary practices far removed from its original aims and forms lies in

8216-672: The role opposite Glenn Close . Since 1992, Childs has worked primarily in the field of opera, starting with Luc Bondy 's production of Richard Strauss's Salome . She also choreographed Bondy's production of Macbeth for the Scottish Opera in 1995. That same year, Childs directed her first opera, a production of Mozart's Zaide for La Monnaie in Brussels, Belgium. In 2001, Childs choreographed Los Angeles' Opera's Production of Wagner's Lohengrin , conducted by Kent Nagano . In 2002, Childs directed Orfeo ed Euridice for

8320-406: The same as on stage. In the 2014 remount of Dance (1979) , the dancers portrayed in the film are the original dancers, while the live performers have changed. LeWitt filmed the original dancers from various angles. Close-up shots, long shots, and overhead shots were used to create the abstract, almost ghost-like projection. The most frequent way to combine the dancers on stage to those in the film

8424-404: The same movements would not be repeated as they were initially introduced. Often, pieces she choreographed, such as Street Dance (1964), were accompanied by a monologue that would explain not only her movements but what it's about. In a 2018 interview conducted by Rachel F. Elson of Dance Magazine , Childs states that she is “responding to the music” when she choreographs. She will listen to

8528-676: The skin altogether and reveal the structure." This skeletal form, the radically simplified open cube, became a basic building block of the artist's three-dimensional work. In the mid-1960s, LeWitt began to work with the open cube: twelve identical linear elements connected at eight corners to form a skeletal structure. From 1969, he would conceive many of his modular structures on a large scale, to be constructed in aluminum or steel by industrial fabricators. Several of LeWitt's cube structures stood at approximate eye level. The artist introduced bodily proportion to his fundamental sculptural unit at this scale. Following early experimentation LeWitt settled on

8632-460: The subject of hundreds of solo exhibitions in museums and galleries around the world since 1965. The first biography of the artist, Sol LeWitt: A Life of Ideas , by Lary Bloom, was published by Wesleyan University Press in the spring of 2019. LeWitt was born in Hartford, Connecticut , to a family of Jewish immigrants from Russia. His father died when he was 6. His mother took him to art classes at

8736-906: The time of his death, LeWitt had just organized a retrospective of his work at the Allen Memorial Art Museum in Oberlin, Ohio . At Naples Sol LeWitt. L'artista e i suoi artisti opened at the Museo Madre on December 15, 2012, running until April 1, 2013. LeWitt's works are found in the most important museum collections including: Tate Modern , London, the Van Abbemuseum , Eindhoven, National Museum of Serbia in Belgrade, Centre Georges Pompidou , Paris, Hallen für Neue Kunst Schaffhausen, Switzerland, Australian National Gallery , Canberra, Australia, Guggenheim Museum ,

8840-520: The time. Language was a central concern for the first wave of conceptual artists of the 1960s and early 1970s. Although the utilisation of text in art was in no way novel, only in the 1960s did the artists Lawrence Weiner , Edward Ruscha , Joseph Kosuth , Robert Barry , and Art & Language begin to produce art by exclusively linguistic means. Where previously language was presented as one kind of visual element alongside others, and subordinate to an overarching composition (e.g. Synthetic Cubism ),

8944-479: The two floors of the Barbara Gladstone Gallery, Brussels, this work consists of varying combinations of black rectangles, creating an irregular grid-like pattern. LeWitt, who had moved to Spoleto, Italy, in the late 1970s credited his transition from graphite pencil or crayon to vivid ink washes, to his encounter with the frescoes of Giotto , Masaccio , and other early Florentine painters. In

9048-804: The variety of techniques LeWitt employed on paper during the final decades of his life. From 1966, LeWitt's interest in seriality led to his production of more than 50 artist's books throughout his career; he later donated many examples to the Wadsworth Athenaeum's library. In 1976 LeWitt helped found Printed Matter, Inc , a for-profit art space in the Tribeca neighborhood of New York City with fellow artists and critics Lucy Lippard , Carol Androcchio, Amy Baker (Sandback), Edit DeAk , Mike Glier, Nancy Linn, Walter Robinson , Ingrid Sischy , Pat Steir , Mimi Wheeler, Robin White and Irena von Zahn. LeWitt

9152-495: The way for the conceptualists, providing them with examples of prototypically conceptual works — the readymades , for instance. The most famous of Duchamp's readymades was Fountain (1917), a standard urinal-basin signed by the artist with the pseudonym "R.Mutt", and submitted for inclusion in the annual, un-juried exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in New York (which rejected it). The artistic tradition does not see

9256-414: Was a horizontal split-level, so the couples on stage were dancing along below the film. For the solo sections, a vertical split was used to show the front and back of the dancer at the same time. Childs describes the use of the projection as the dancers becoming the decor, the scenic element, instead of using a piece of abstract art which was the original suggestion before LeWitt came up with the idea to pair

9360-442: Was a signal innovator of the genre of the "artist's book," a term that was coined for a 1973 exhibition curated by Dianne Perry Vanderlip at Moore College of Art and Design , Philadelphia. Printed Matter was one of the first organizations dedicated to creating and distributing artists' books, incorporating self-publishing, small-press publishing, and artist networks and collectives. For LeWitt and others, Printed Matter also served as

9464-459: Was a significant event in the history of art in post Berlin Wall era. Sol LeWitt was one of the main figures of his time; he transformed the process of art-making by questioning the fundamental relationship between an idea, the subjectivity of the artist, and the artwork a given idea might produce. While many artists were challenging modern conceptions of originality, authorship, and artistic genius in

9568-428: Was able to drift the structures in and out of relating directly with the text or not. There were a lot of props in the first half, and it was all mainly performed through improvisation. While not set with specific movements, the first part of THE DAY (2019) was set in the way of prop movement. Childs and Whelan explored how to move each prop and let that be the focus of how the rest of the movements should flow, letting

9672-503: Was also the one to encourage Childs to be a part of the Judson Dance Theater in 1963 with dancers such as James Waring , Valda Setterfield , and Arlene Rothlein . Here, Childs worked primarily as a soloist and was allowed to explore and experiment with her own dance style and choreography. Childs states, “Judson made me interested in dance, but it also made me feel torn between different things – technique, working outside

9776-674: Was born in New York City . She began dancing at the age of six at the King-Coit School. At age eleven, Childs was introduced to Tanaquil LeClercq from the New York City Ballet . LeClercq had inspired Childs to pursue dance, but Childs found that she could not execute everything perfectly. When she met the actress Mildred Dunnock , her ambition shifted to becoming an actress. Continuing her dance training, she studied with Harriet Ann Gray and Helen Tamiris at

9880-545: Was first publicly exhibited in 1964 in a group show curated by Dan Flavin at the Kaymar Gallery, New York. Dan Graham 's John Daniels Gallery later gave him his first solo show in 1965. In 1966, he participated in the " Primary Structures " exhibit at the Jewish Museum in New York (a seminal show which helped define the minimalist movement), submitting an untitled, open modular cube of 9 units. The same year he

9984-565: Was included in the "10" exhibit at Dwan Gallery , New York. He was later invited by Harald Szeemann to participate in "When Attitude Becomes Form," at the Kunsthalle Bern , Switzerland, in 1969. Interviewed in 1993 about those years LeWitt remarked, "I decided I would make color or form recede and proceed in a three-dimensional way." The Gemeentemuseum in The Hague presented his first retrospective exhibition in 1970, and his work

10088-753: Was installed on the hillside slope of Crouse College on Syracuse University campus. The concrete block sculpture consists of six undulating walls, each 12 feet high, and spans 140 feet. The sculpture was designed and constructed to mark the inauguration of Nancy Cantor as the 11th Chancellor of Syracuse University . Since the early 1960s he and his wife, Carol Androccio, gathered nearly 9,000 works of art through purchases, in trades with other artists and dealers, or as gifts. In this way he acquired works by approximately 750 artists, including Dan Flavin , Robert Ryman , Hanne Darboven , Eva Hesse , Donald Judd , On Kawara , Kazuko Miyamoto , Carl Andre , Dan Graham , Hans Haacke , Gerhard Richter , and others. In 2007,

10192-480: Was interested in “creating dances with simple, geometrical spatial patterns”. As such, her exploration of this topic lead to Childs creating a diagrammatical score that noted each dancer’s path. In Street Dance (1964), Childs created her stage on a street in Manhattan where her audience was the occupants of a nearby loft. The six-minute dance was based on its surroundings and the performers blended in with what

10296-619: Was later shown in a major mid-career retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art , New York in 1978. In 1972/1973, LeWitt's first museum shows in Europe were mounted at the Kunsthalle Bern and the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford . In 1975, Lewitt created "The Location of a Rectangle for the Hartford Atheneum" for the third MATRIX exhibition at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. Later that year, he participated in

10400-454: Was occurring on the street. Every so often they would point out different details about the appearance of the buildings and the assorted window displays. Although the audience was not completely able to see what exactly the performers were pointing to, they could hear the explanation from a nearby audio tape. Childs discusses the performance stating that “the result was that the spectator was called upon to envision information that existed beyond

10504-569: Was organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2000. The exhibition traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago , and Whitney Museum of American Art , New York. In 2006, LeWitt's Drawing Series… was displayed at Dia:Beacon and was devoted to the 1970s drawings by the conceptual artist . Drafters and assistants drew directly on the walls using graphite , colored pencil , crayon , and chalk . The works were based on LeWitt's complex principles, which eliminated

10608-405: Was set in 2014 for his gouache on paperboard piece Wavy Brushstroke (1995) at Sotheby's , New York. Conceptual art In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes

10712-426: Was the first piece Childs had performed on a traditional stage in collaboration with Philip Glass and Robert Wilson . Up until this, her other works had all been performed in ‘alternative spaces’ such as churches, museums, galleries, and sidewalks. This was also the first piece that Childs had worked with a composer on. Einstein on the Beach (1976) was a five-hour-long production, normally beginning at six-thirty in

10816-567: Was too closely allied with art-and-technology. Another vital intersection was explored in Ascott's use of the thesaurus in 1963 telematic connections:: timeline , which drew an explicit parallel between the taxonomic qualities of verbal and visual languages – a concept that would be taken up in Joseph Kosuth's Second Investigation, Proposition 1 (1968) and Mel Ramsden's Elements of an Incomplete Map (1968). Proto-conceptualism has roots in

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