Sol LeWitt: basic seriality

photo courtesy of dia beacon

Excerpted from an essay by Lynne Cook
“Serial components are multipartite pieces with regulated changes,” Sol LeWitt argued in 1966. “The differences between the parts are the subject of the composition.” Such works, which have constituted the mainstay of his practice since the mid-1960s, “are to be read by the viewer in a linear or narrative manner . . . even though,” he conceded, “in its final form many of these sets would be operating simultaneously, making comprehension difficult.”

LeWitt first articulated his long-standing commitment to seriality as a mode of composition and a thematic as his practice was evolving from its roots in Minimalism to a pioneering Conceptualism. In response to seminal works by peers such as Donald Judd and, more particularly, Dan Flavin, LeWitt, too, pared his vocabulary to simple geometric forms. Focusing on the cube and square, he fabricated neutral three-dimensional structures, in a pristine white, which he then parsed in permutational progressions or finite preset series. For example, 1 2 3 manifests all possible variations on three different kinds of cubes. Eliminating the play of the arbitrary, the expressive, and the subjective, eschewing all trace of his hand and taste, LeWitt accorded priority to underlying ideas over their physical counterparts.

The work’s basic unit, a square measuring one meter per side and divided into quarters, is grouped to make a larger square of four equal units, then stacked into four rows centered on each of the four walls of the gallery. A recurrent form in LeWitt’s early drawings, the square, like the cube, from which most of his early sculptures were composed, is for him among the “least emotive” of any possible forms.

“A more complex form would be too interesting in itself and obstruct the meaning of the whole. There is no need to invent new forms,” he contends. “The square and cube are efficient and symmetrical.” This elementary syntax constitutes “the best form to use as a base unit for any more elaborate function, the grammatical device from which the work may proceed.”The four directions assumed by the lines in Drawing Series. . . represent the basic directions in which lines may be drawn: vertical, horizontal, diagonal from top left to bottom right, and diagonal from top right to bottom left. In accordance with the artist’s preset plan, these lines have been overlaid in every possible combination so that the resulting sequence methodically exhausts every variation that may be derived from the given logic and within the formal limits established by the location.