Wadsworth To Debut First Exhibition Devoted To Sol LeWitt, Landmark In Conceptual Art

HARTFORD — “Sol LeWitt: Incomplete Open Cubes,” at Wadsworth Museum of Art January 27 to April 29, is the first comprehensive exhibition devoted to Mr LeWitt’s innovative series.

Made in 1974, “Variations on an Incomplete Open Cube” brought to a climax a conceptualist approach to art-making that has made Sol LeWitt one of the most influential abstract artists of his generation.

Mr LeWitt was born in Hartford, Conn., in 1928. As a young boy he took his first art lessons at Wadsworth Atheneum. A pioneer of minimalist and conceptual art, Mr LeWitt defined the movement away from representational and expressionist painting into intellectual abstract art.

In the June 1967 issue of Artforum (New York), Mr LeWitt wrote: “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 the art.

“If the artist carries through his idea and makes it into visible form, then all the steps in the process are of importance. The idea itself, even if not made visual, is as much a work of art as any finished product,” the artist continued. “All intervening steps — scribbles, sketches, drawings, failed works, models, studies, thoughts, conversations — are of interest. Those that show the thought process of the artist are sometimes more interesting than the final product.”

“Variations on an Incomplete Open Cube” examines all 122 possible configurations of the idea. It begins with the three-edge minimum that suggests the volume of an open cube, and its three permutations, expands to 32 eight-part variations, and culminates in an 11-part variation. (Twelve edges, of course, would complete the cube.)

The exhibition will assemble 30 of the 122 white-painted aluminum “structures,” as Mr LeWitt called them, now scattered worldwide. In addition to the elegant 40-inch square sculptures, there will be a 2½-inch scale set of all 122 cubes, rendered in white-painted wood, and a drawing of each variation. Working sketches and notes from Mr LeWitt’s archive will illuminate his trial and error process in devising a systematic approach to the serial composition.

While much discussion of Mr LeWitt’s work has focused on his conceptual method, there has been little attention to the formal properties of the resulting works, or their significance in relation to the broader themes of later modernism. At the Wadsworth, the aluminum structures from the “Incomplete Open Cube” series will be installed in the Old Master galleries of European and American art to stimulate comparisons with art and architecture of earlier times. The reduced-scale version of the series and accompanying works on paper will be on view in the gallery devoted to MATRIX exhibitions of contemporary art.

After its presentation in Hartford, “Sol LeWitt: Incomplete Open Cubes” will travel to Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Me., July 8 to August 26; Cleveland Museum of Art, September 23 to December 30; and Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, January 18 to April 14, 2002. The Hartford showing coincides with the artist’s major retrospective at The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, which remains on view through February 25.

Accompanying the exhibition is a 116-page catalogue with 40 color and 40 black-and-white illustrations and essays by Nicholas Baume, Jonathan Flatley and Pamela M. Lee. It is available in the museum’s shop for $22.95.

Wadsworth Atheneum, at 600 Main Street in Hartford, is open Tuesday through Sunday from 11 am to 5 pm, and the first Thursday of most months until 8 pm. For a recorded listing of weekly museum tours and events call 860/278-2670.