SOL
LEWITT: RECENT ACQUISITIONS
February 1-April 13, 2003
Sol LeWitt, Isometric Projection #13, 1981, ink
and pencil on paper,
19 x 19 in.
This exhibition commemorates the acquisition of an important group of
works by artist Sol LeWitt, including six wall drawings, five works
on paper, and two cement-block structures. This addition to our existing
holdings makes LeWitt as one of the best-represented artists in the
collection of the Addison Gallery of American Art. Today the museum
possesses forty-two works, produced from the early 1960s to the present
and representing all media—paintings, wall drawings, structures,
prints, drawings, and photographs.
The Addison’s long connection to Sol LeWitt began in 1978 through
Addison director Chris Cook, long an admirer and supporter of conceptual
art. During his tenure, the museum acquired its first LeWitt works,
and Wall Drawing #358, a piece that was produced by Andover students
was included in a fiftieth anniversary exhibition. This project was
the precedent for the landmark Sol LeWitt: Twenty-Five Years of Wall
Drawings, 1968–93, organized by director Jock Reynolds in 1993.
This stellar exhibition presented forty-four wall drawings that were
produced by sixty students and volunteers working with one of LeWitt’s
assistants and the Addison Gallery staff.
Over the years, generous alumnae and other benefactors have helped the
Addison build its holdings of LeWitt’s work by donating individual
prints, portfolios, and books—as well as additional LeWitt objects
in other media. While these acquisitions came about by chance, motivated
by the passion of Jock Reynolds, there is another logic behind collecting
LeWitt in depth, one based on the existing holdings of the Addison Gallery.
One example is the strong connection of LeWitt’s work to the Addison’s
extensive holdings of photography by Eadweard Muybridge, the artist-inventor
who in the late-nineteenth century pioneered the depiction in photographic
sequences of people and animals carrying out ordinary movements. In
Muybridge’s work, LeWitt found "the idea that all of the parts
were only the result of the basic idea, but that each individual part
was equally important, and that all parts were equal—nothing hierarchical."
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The
Addison has in its collection a rare, early monochromatic painting by
LeWitt, Somersaulting, 1961, directly related to Muybridge's motion studies.
Muybridge's running man eventually became the inspiration for LeWitt’s
serial transformations of a cube, which have generated a substantial body
of his work.
LeWitt’s
art also has a particular logic for the Addison collection given its rather
substantial holdings of conceptual and minimal art. Three of LeWitt’s
prominent contemporaries attended Phillips Academy: Carl Andre, Hollis
Frampton, and Frank Stella. All have been extremely generous in donating
their own work. And, Andre and Stella have donated major artworks by their
contemporaries, LeWitt (Andre donated Wall Drawing # 716), Brice Marden,
Robert Ryman, Donald Judd, and Mel Bochner among them.
Sol LeWitt, Nine-pointed Star with Color Bands,
1991, Gouche on paper
Above all,
the Addison considers Sol LeWitt to be one of the major figures of his
time; he revolutionized the idea and practice of drawing, and realigned
the relationship between an idea and the art it produces. For all of these
reasons, the Gallery is proud to have a substantial, and comprehensive,
if not exhaustive, collection of LeWitt’s work. Thanks to the artist
himself; to Mimi Won, an Andover alumna; and to an anonymous donor, this
year the Addison has acquired six wall drawings, bringing the total in
the permanent collection to nine. These additional examples fill significant
gaps and add to the breadth of the museum’s holdings. Now, the Addison
has wall drawings spanning all media used by LeWitt: pencil, colored pencil,
crayon, ink wash, and acrylic paint.
Excerpted
from an essay by Adam D. Weinberg entitled Sol LeWitt: Connecting the
Dots in the Addison Collection, published in conjunction with this
exhibition and available at the Addison Gallery.
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