Page 43 - Studio International - December 1969

the only longitudinal corridor upstairs con- richness, compounded simplicities, discrete
tained the sequence of six two-lined combina- understatement, and visual and conceptual
tions, with the remaining three-lined drawing clarity (beauty). The fact that the wall
in the visitor's last room acting as a full-stop drawings are likely to be removed for the
thought-return to the main floor. gallery's next exhibition in no way denigrates
Just three weeks before, LeWitt's exhibition the timelessness of this art; they can always
of wall drawings had opened at the Dwan be reconstructed with more precise freshness
Gallery in New York. In one of the two plain- than a Rembrandt (thanks to LeWitt's pre-
walled rooms were the two boxes drawn in cise plan-drawings and notes), and with
the A and B versions of the 'Fours' series; the modern fixatives they could exist with physical
other room was articulated by wall drawings purity about as long as anything else.
of the complete new (`Unitary' ?) series. These But LeWitt's drawing activity does not end
drawings were really integrated with the with this as a culminating masterpiece. Since
architecture—which was simultaneously domi- the time of his completed decisions of how to
nated by their contrapuntal richness as visual treat the Dwan exhibition, he has taken draw-
fields. Each of the four walls was differently ing activity as a medium for ideas related to
treated; each wall was dealt with in terms of time and chance in a series of written proposals
different sets from an instantaneously obvious for other exhibitions. For his five-day part of the
serial totality; and the wall drawings were Ace Gallery's sequential group 'Wall Show'
integrated as much by their architectural in September, he stipulated that each of four
positions as by their positions within a serial people should take one type of straight line
idea also manifest elsewhere. and draw it in parallels across one of the four
On the north and south walls were single walls for equal hours, changing walls (but
panels isolated from the surrounding bare retaining line-type) each of four days, and
wall surface: four separate vertically oriented wiping off one wall for an equal time-period
panels of single-lined drawings were divided on the fifth day. For the showing of 'When
into orthogonal and diagonal pairs by a door- Attitudes become Form' at London's Insti-
way on the north wall, and faced the south tute of Contemporary Arts in August, he
wall's single horizontally oriented rectangle of proposed three bands of horizontal, vertical,
four-lines. This four-lined panel opened a new and diagonal orientation and internal linear
direction in LeWitt's drawing activity: it was parallels to be drawn to the ends of a given
coloured in different hues (grey-graphite wall and intersect at one point: the size,
horizontals, yellow verticals, blue left-to-right combination of band and line direction, and
and yellow right-to-left diagonals), but in such total configuration to be left to the draughts-
balanced primaries that their visual impres- man. For Konrad Fischer's 'Conception'
sion fused into a field almost as neutrally documentation exhibition in November at
'table-of-contents' ; each drawing's directional grey as any other in the room. The east Leverkusen, LeWitt stipulated that four one-
orientation is consistent with the usual reader's and west walls were completely covered metre squares, be outlined one metre apart on
horizontal page-turning movement relative from moulding to moulding in contiguous a wall; inside were to be drawn one line in the
to a vertical binding. And in contrast to this areas of 2- or 3-line combinations: on the first square, ten in the second, 100 in the third,
unified drawing-series-book, the Xerox and west wall the possible variations of 2-lines' 1000 in the fourth : with the draughtsman
Ace Gallery's booklet pages seem materially combinations were rendered in six floor-to- choosing the position, length and direction of
separate from their centred almost geometri- ceiling panels—reading from left to right in the straight line(s), so long as they did not
cally figurative drawings representing aspects the simplest serial order (12, 13, 14, 23, 24, 34), exceed the edge of the square.
of a separately complete serial idea. an order which visually centred itself gently; And even in October in Krefeld— waiting for
At Krefeld, these fifteen drawings were done the east wall was covered with a serial things to arrive and drawings to be executed—
as 2 m. squares on separate walls throughout ordering of the four types of three-lined com- LeWitt was developing a new series of paired
the Haus Lange. Most of them were done in binations which grouped visually and con- rectilinear areas of 1-to-4 line combinations. 11
silverpoint— both technically more efficient ceptually both as four lateral squares of four And I'm sure that's not the last of the open-
for such long lines than graphite, and art- squares of four squares and as repeated dia- ended and flexible drawing activity of Sol
historically ironical as a particularly German gonal repetitions of individual square units. LeWitt. q
and ancient (non-`avant-garde') medium. (Here, in tautological opposition to the
Working in relation to an architectural en- `Fours' series, the ordering process worked in
vironment already 'a work of art' by Mies van terms of divisions within larger wholes rather
der Rohe, these drawings acted as accentuat- than as multiplication of individually separa-
ing spots in spaces on planes rather than as a ted parts.) This north-south east-west axial
singular dominating field. But their grouping dialogue related to the parallel facing of the
was integrated with both the serial idea and boxes in the other room. Thus related, the two
the particular spatial and temporal experience rooms acted as complete works in tautological
of an observer in that place : each drawing opposition : one as a 'Fours' series of ones, the
was alone on a wall, situated for best light and other as a 'Ones' series of fours; one as
non-competition with the three-dimensional interior space confined by articulated walls,
works also exhibited; the presence of the the other as exterior space circulating around
four single-lined and one four-lined and a objects whose articulated surfaces paralleled
11 to be published soon as the complete Bulletin No. 18
group of three three-lined drawings gave the their confining walls and visually dissolved of the Dutch publication Art and Project—available from
ground floor dominance in tonal contrasts their material weightiness. As a complete its publisher Adriaan van Ravesteijn at Amsterdam 9,
and conceptual focusing; and the rooms off work of art, this exhibition was a paragon of Richard Wagnerstraat 8, The Netherlands.