Sol LeWitt: A Retrospective [Hardcover]

Mr. Gary Garrels (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2000

Sol LeWitt, one of the most important American artists of this century, has spent the past four decades creating artworks that explore the potential of ideas for the making of visual forms. LeWitt transforms these ideas into objects of exquisite beauty and elegance, deliberately introducing elements of chance, intuition, or irrationality into the systems that govern the creation of his works. LeWitt's delicate balancing act between thought and form, between order and disorder, between authorship and anonymity, has exerted an enormous influence on artists of subsequent generations. This book, the first retrospective of LeWitt's work in more than twenty years, fosters a deeper understanding of the artist's career and its significance to American art and thought. Including essays by Gary Garrels, Martin Friedman, Brenda Richardson, and other distinguished curators and art historians, the book charts the evolution of LeWitt's art from his groundbreaking work in Conceptualism during the early 1960s through his turn toward a more lyrical and sensual form of abstraction around 1980. With more than 350 images, the book provides a stunning visual survey of LeWitt's oeuvre from 1960 to the present, including sumptuous wall drawings, three-dimensional structures, and works on paper. This handsome book is the catalogue for an exhibition that will open at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art from 19 February through 30 May 2000, and will then travel to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago from July to October and to the Whitney Museum of Art in New York from November to February 2001.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Sol LeWitt "is to art as Bach was to music," says conceptual artist Adrian Piper, indicating LeWitt's seminal importance to both the theory and practice of contemporary art. LeWitt's creations are the direct embodiments of his theoretical writings, abstract principles that he develops with supreme integrity into physical form. Recognizing his key role in the minimalist and conceptual movements of the 1960s and '70s, New York's MoMA gave LeWitt a major retrospective in 1978. Sol LeWitt: A Retrospective and the accompanying exhibition organized by Gary Garrels of the San Francisco Museum of Modern bring us up-to-date.

During the '80s and '90s, LeWitt's work moved from a cerebral asceticism toward rich color and surfaces and a more explicit sensuality and expressiveness. Nearly 500 carefully chosen and well-reproduced photographs and drawings document this evolution. Together with a sampling of LeWitt's own pithy statements, lucid essays by seven of America's leading curators analyze his contributions to contemporary art. Typical of his methods and attitudes are his signature large-scale wall paintings, their sense of movement and bright bands of color making them among the most gorgeous of his works. While articulating the designs of the wall paintings and the concepts behind them, LeWitt does not paint them himself. He is generous in welcoming anyone else to give physical reality to his designs: "It would be a compliment," he says. Sol LeWitt is a beautiful and substantial book, and its range of illustration and depth of scholarship make it the definitive study of this highly influential artist. --John Stevenson

About the Author

Gary Garrels, curator of the exhibition Sol LeWitt: A Retrospective, is the Elise S. Haas chief curator and curator of painting and sculpture at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 348 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; First Edition edition (March 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300083580
• ISBN-13: 978-0300083583
• Product Dimensions: 11.8 x 9.8 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,229,937 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Fine Catalogue of a Superb Exhibit, May 11, 2000

By 

George Grella "Urbane citizen" (Brooklyn) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sol LeWitt: A Retrospective (Hardcover)

Sol LeWitt is an artist for whom the catalogue is both essential and apt. Because his conception and work mainly consists of a set of instructions that are then executed by other artists, the results can be displayed in many different places. While the literally enormous beauty of the wall paintings and drawings cannot be displayed in the book, that's not the point. The paintings and drawings themselves are temporary, to be whitewashed over when the exhibit 'moves' on. The catalogue provides the valuable service of capturing moments in time when the work was someplace, and brings that to the reader, along with excellent essays on the artist.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not just a coffee table book!, July 2, 2004

By 

M. Byer (Mountain View, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Sol LeWitt: A Retrospective (Hardcover)

For those of you have seen the Sol LeWitt exhibits, this book captures many of those works and more. It offers background information and discussion.

However, this book goes beyond the exhibit installations and shows examples of installations around the world (outdoor structures, indoor wall murals, etc). These are things by an accomplished artist that are just not "out there" for you and I to view.

For those who don't know, Sol Lewitt is an amazingly talented and intelligent artist. Yes, intelligent. Almost autistic seeming at times, Sol Lewitt has a way of setting up circumstances for artistic study and then executing *every* *single* possibility as deemed by those circumstances. In one exhibit (shown in this book), Sol LeWitt examines and deconstructs all the possible forms of an open frame cube. In other examples (also in this book and at the exhibit) are line drawings examining the interaction of hundreds of overlapping circles emanating from various points on the canvas.

Much Sol Lewitt's work goes unnoticed (not much of a web presence, and hard to find posters, examples and pictures). This book helped fill in the gaps and offer a more rounded treatise of his work. Having owned it for months, it is still a pleasure to flip through this book and explore the concepts and discoveries that the artist has gone through. These discoveries are amazingly illustrated (few art books capture the entire series and the evolution of the artist like this one does).

I have enjoyed this book tremendously....it is a sizeable book that is worth the money and is well put together. Worth the purchase.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars lewitt is rad, December 3, 2000

By 

Jon (Sac Town) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sol LeWitt: A Retrospective (Hardcover)

sol lewitt is my #1 favorite artist. i own many books of his work, and i must say that this is one of the most complete. its got everything. if you went to the sf moma and saw this exibition you wont be dissapointed by this book, it captures it the experience well. if you ever get the chance to see lewitts work in person, DO NOT MISS IT ! you will regret it ! in person these works are extremely powerful !