GEOMETRIC FIGURES & COLOR
Sol LeWitt
New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1979. First edition. Square quarto. Printed perfect bound and sewn wrappers. 48 pp. Artist's book based of permutations based on geometric figures of circle, square, triangle, rectangle, trapezoid and parallelogram in red, yellow, and blue on red, yellow and blue. Uncoated white wrappers lightly soiled and faintly handled, but a very good or better copy of this influential artists book.
8 x 8 softcover book with 48 pages of "Circle, square, triangle, rectangle, trapezoid and parallelogram in red, yellow and blue on red, yellow and blue."--Page [2].
Lewitt conceptually explores: "Circle, Square, Triangle, Rectangle, Trapezoid and Parallelogram in Red, Yellow and Blue on Red, Yellow and Blue." The book is divided into three sections, each of which differ by background color. Barbara M. Reise wrote that "LeWitt's colours, like his lines and squares, are like 'facts': they are inert, pre-established, accepted and un-emotional man-made constructs which can 'come to life' within a present context but do not necessarily do so. Red, yellow, blue, and black (and the white of wall or paper) are standard "absolute primaries basic to all pigment colour that is according to the colour system accepted by an art academic from early 19th-century theorists like Chevreul. Unlike the Newtonian rainbow-spectrum based on light-waves, this theoretical structure is more conceptually mathematical and tautological than referential to some exterior and inhuman Nature. LeWitt's use of these colours is as flatly complete, physical, and self-reflective as the theory itself. Unlike Seurat, whose use of the same colour theories was subordinated and interrelated to other interests in proportion theories and (seen) scene subject-matter, LeWitt uses colour as both the subject and the object of his art" (in: 'Sol Lewitt Critical Texts,' ed. Adachiara Zevi, Rome, 1994, p. 188).
Sol LeWitt (1928–2007) is widely recognized as one of the most influential artists of the last half-century. Though perhaps best known for his wall drawings and “structures” (the term he preferred to “sculpture”), LeWitt also made an important, highly original body of work in photography that spanned the course of his career.
Central to LeWitt’s approach to photography was the concept that the artist need not always make the photographs himself. His “cut-outs” from the 1970s, for example, began with commercially made aerial photographs of cities important to the artist, especially New York and Florence. In Part of Manhattan with Central Park, Rockefeller Center and Lincoln Center Removed (1978), LeWitt excised with a mat knife three Manhattan landmarks, resulting in a jarring photographic object that prompts the viewer to reconsider the materiality of an urban landscape.
From the web site for the The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute: LeWitt recognized early the potential benefits in distributing artistic production through low-cost publications: books offer permanence to the artistic moment that is lacking in a scheduled gallery setting; they can allow an artist deeper and more complete control of their presentation; their audience is at the same time more far reaching than an exhibition and yet very intimate to the individual viewer holding the object in his hand. As a founder in the early 1970s of Printed Matter, a bookstore devoted entirely to artists’ books and their creation, he championed affordable books as an artistic vehicle, both for his peers and for himself.
While the use of artists’ books fit nicely with the qualities of his system-driven conceptual and minimal works, they also proved uniquely suited for his little-known photographic work. Despite the representational element inherent in photography, LeWitt uses the nature of the book format to organize his images to reflect the seriality and systems that permeate his non-representational works.
References : "Sol LeWitt : Artist's Books" by Sol LeWitt, Giorgio Maffei, Emanuele De Donno, Didi Bozzini, Cecilia Metelli, Marilena Bonomo. Sant'Eraclio di Foligno, Italy : Edizioni Viaindustrie, 2009, pp. 88-89. "Pick Up the Book, Turn the Page and Enter the System : Books by Sol LeWitt" by Sol LeWitt, Betty Bright. Minneapolis, MN : Minnesota Center for Book Arts, 1988, unpaginated.