Sol LeWitt, Serial Project

Sol LeWitt, Serial Project #1 ABCD, 1966–68, baked enamel on steel, 9 1/2×70 x 70”.


SO Do you see your work as an abstract narrative, as telling a story about permutation or about how language and objects differ? How important is language to your work?

SL Serial systems and their permutations function as a narrative that has to be understood. People still see things as visual objects without understanding what they are. They don’t understand that the visual part may be boring but it’s the narrative that’s interesting. It can be read as a story, just as music can be heard as form in time. The narrative of serial art works more like music than like literature. Words are another thing. During the ‘70s I was interested in words and meaning as a way of making art. I did a group of “location” pieces that would direct the draftsman in making the art. All of the tracks leading to the final image were to be shown. A person could read the directions and verify the process and even do it.

SO That brings us to the question of how you keep it interesting, how you keep it moving for yourself.

SL Unless you’re involved with thinking about what you’re doing, you end up doing the same thing over and over, and that becomes tedious and, in the end, defeating. When artists make art, they shouldn’t question whether it is permissible to do one thing or another. In my case, I reached a point in the evolution of my work at which the ideology and ideas became inhibiting. I felt that I had become a prisoner of my own pronouncements or ideas. I found I was compelled by the innate logic of the work to follow a different way. Whether it was a step forward or a step back or a step sideways didn’t matter. At that point I had moved to Italy. Quattrocento art really impressed me. I began to think about how art isn’t an avant-garde game. It has to be something more universal, more important.


In: Sol LeWitt (interview) by Saul Ostrow. BOMB 85/Fall 2003, ART
Avilable at: http://bombsite.com/issues/85/articles/2583