Tag Archives: public art

Sol LeWitt: Structures at City Hall Park

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The idea becomes a machine that makes the art. 
-Sol LeWitt
The Public Art Fund has created a Sol LeWitt cubeland in the grass of busy City Hall Park, not to mention creating a very informative accompanying website to go with it. Up through December, you have plenty of time to come down and stroll among his 2-dimensional creations.
Worker touching up the aluminum sculpture with white paint

Le Witt, who died in 2007, was a prolific and influential American artist whose structures, or sculptures, demonstrate his Conceptual and Minimal roots. This outdoor installation of sculptures tracks his work from the more recent organic and colorful forms of the 00s to the white cubes of the 70s that began it all. I would have enjoyed seeing more of his later works–Splotch stands out starkly against the other white geometric structures, but certainly the earlier works are more emblematic of his oeuvre.

And so, a backwards chronology:

Splotch 15, 2005
One x Two Half Off, 1991
Tower (Colombus), 1990
Complex Forms, 1990
Stars, 1989-1990
Complex Form 6, 1987
Pyramid (Munster), 1987
Double Modular Cube, 1979
Incomplete Open Cubes, 1974

Ravels in Review Memorial Day Weekend

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Ubi Roi, Hernan Bas at Lehmann Maupin

Yes, it has been a week already, and luckily things have calmed down since the fire on my block last week. In fact, they have slowed to a crawl, which is about the pace my sinuses can handle right now.

  • Despite the fog in my brain, or perhaps because of, I tried to explain the greatness of Erasmus based on the fact he named himself ‘Desire Desire.’ He did some other things too.
  • I questioned whether Francis Bacon could qualify as the greatest painter of the 20th twentieth, and got at least a few votes for greatness, if not greatest painter ever. I’m hanging out on a limb until I see the retrospective up at the Met now.
  • The oldest sculpture ever was discovered, and there is some very scientific discussion about how sex-obsessed early humans were.

All in all, a good week. Some things to look forward to in the art world, like Francis Bacon at the Met and promising-sounding Hernan Bas exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum of Art and Lehmann Maupin, and a long Memorial Day weekend ahead.

H