Sol LeWitt’s Wall Drawings: Bold, Bright, Beholding

Second day in Mass MoCA, because it would have been impossible to absorb so much art, all at once!… (tickets were valid for two consecutive days then, this may have changed post-Covid).

…”Each wall drawing begins as a set of instructions or a simple diagram to be followed in executing the work. As the exhibition makes clear, these straightforward instructions yield an astonishing—and stunningly beautiful—variety of work that is at once simple and highly complex, rigorous, and sensual. The drawings in the exhibition range from layers of straight lines meticulously drawn in black graphite pencil lead, to rows of delicately rendered wavy lines in colored pencil; from bold black-and-white geometric forms, to bright planes in acrylic paint arranged like the panels of a folding screen; from sensuous drawings created by dozens of layers of transparent washes, to a tangle of vibratory orange lines on a green wall, and much more. Forms may appear to be flat, to recede in space, or to project into the viewer’s space, while others meld to the structure of the wall itself, like gauze.” [source]

Images of wall drawings:

793A – Irregular wavy color bands
340 – One of a Six-part drawing
396 – A black five-pointed star, a yellow six-pointed star, a red seven-pointed star, and a blue eight-pointed star
414 – Drawing Series IV (A) with India ink washes (detail of 24 drawings)
527 – Two flat-topped pyramids with color ink washes superimposed
439 – Asymmetrical pyramid with color ink washes superimposed (plus us in playful mood, trying to agree which wall would work best in our home)

Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective

On view through 2043

MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA

September 2nd, 2019

Sol LeWitt’s Wall Drawings: Straight Lines, Continuous Forms

It occupies nearly an acre of specially built interior walls that are installed—per LeWitt’s own specifications—over three stories of a historic mill building situated at the heart of MASS MoCA’s 19th-century, former factory campus. A landmark collaboration of MASS MoCA, Yale University Art Gallery, the Williams College Museum of Art, and the Sol Lewitt estate, over 60 artists and art students spent six months rendering 105 large-scale wall drawings spanning the artist’s storied career.

Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective

Images of wall drawings 422, 610, 681, 692

On view through 2043

MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA

September 1st, 2019

Relay with Riley

Getting things straight

Bridget Riley, Royal Liverpool University Hospital, 1983, as wall painting, Bolt of Colour, 2017

Riley’s first wall painting was made in response to a 1979 invitation from the Royal Liverpool Hospital to conceive a work for its walls. Riley devised a visual scheme featuring horizontal ribbons of color, running the lengths of the hospital corridors. The palette, like that of her paintings at the time, was inspired by a 1980 trip to the pyramids and tomb paintings of ancient Egypt. Of this color scheme Riley later wrote: “The Ancient Egyptians had a fixed palette. They used the same colors—turquoise, blue, red, yellow, green, black and white—for over 3,000 years….In each and every usage these colors appeared different but at the same time they united the appearance of the entire culture. Perhaps even more important, the precise shades of these colors had evolved under a brilliant North African light and consequently they seemed to embody the light and even reflect it back from the walls.”

Riley completed the design for the Royal Liverpool Hospital in 1983. In the years since, she has made many more wall paintings, including a work for two floors of St. Mary’s Hospital in London in 1987, with a third floor completed in 2014. In addition to these commissions, Riley has made wall drawings for numerous museum and gallery exhibitions and collections in the U.S., the U.K., and Europe.

Riley’s wall painting for Chinati will be the artist’s largest work to date and span six of the eight walls of the building. As referenced in the work’s title/description, Royal Liverpool University Hospital, 1983, as wall painting, Bolt of Colour, 2017, the mural revisits Riley’s Egyptian palette and establishes a continuity between the design for the Royal Liverpool Hospital and the new work for Chinati. It is inspired in part by similarities in size and spatial orientation in the sites of each project and affinities between the brilliant light and palette the artist witnessed in Egypt and the high desert landscape in which the Chinati Foundation is situated. [Source: Chinati Foundation]

The artwork was conceived specifically for the museum’s special exhibition building, encompassing it’s entire U-shaped enclosure. It was inaugurated in October 2017 and remained on view through 2019.

Chinati Foundation – Μarfa, ΤΧ

October 6th, 2018