LeWitt’s first notable works are mostly large-scale drawings in black and white, but by the end he was working in an extraordinary range of colours. As his career progressed he kept introducing elements that might never have been predicted from his early geometric investigations. LeWitt’s passion for Aboriginal art, which he collected with a little help from his friends in Australia, is characteristic of an artist who believed one should constantly remain open to new ideas. It’s doubtful anyone ever met Richard Serra or Dan Flavin and said: “What a nice man!” This makes him an anomaly among his American peers of the Minimalist generation, who were notoriously self-centred and irascible. By all accounts LeWitt (1928-2007) was a charming, easy-going man and a great supporter of other artists. “It went nowhere,” he said, which seems a reasonable assessment of a style that aimed to reduce art to its most basic elements.ĭespite his conceptual rigour there is an aspect of LeWitt’s wall drawings and minimalist ‘structures’ (a word he preferred to ‘sculptures’) that makes us feel good. He consistently argued that the idea of a work of art was more important than the realisation, but he referred to his own work as “conceptual art with a small ‘c’.” As for Minimal art he was even more dismissive. LeWitt is one of the acknowledged gurus of Conceptual Art and Minimalism, although he disavowed both labels.
Besides, as this exhibition demonstrates, he loosened up considerably in his old age.
It’s a harsh call because LeWitt may not be the most expressive of artists but his precise, geometric work has that appeal we associate with anything so blatantly perfectionist. “Soulless Twit!” was the verdict from one local art identity, when I mentioned Sol LeWitt: Your mind is exactly at that line, at the Art Gallery of NSW.
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