The Mass MoCA is the Massachusettes Museum of Contemporary Art, located in North Adams, Massachusetts. This museum has been transformed from a factory warehouse into a place that now displays contemporary works of visual and performing arts. With popular exhibits such as “Invisible Cities” by multiple artists, Sol LeWitt’s “A Wall Drawing Retrospective,” and “Oh Canada” by a number of Canadian artists, the Mass MoCA is sure to spark your interest. This museum is unlike many ordinary art museums because many of the exhibits are only temporary.
Sol LeWitt is an artist whose work is only supposed to be shown temporarily and then it is taken down, and in many cases, destroyed. This happens because his paintings are on walls and are directed by specific directions only to be displayed for a given period of time. LeWitt has a whole section of the building of Mass MoCA that is dedicated to his artwork, which was also created there as well. This includes three floors with a total of about ninety pieces all painted by interns and students instead of LeWitt, himself. The paintings were his ideas and painted with the directions that he created. One of his works that I found most interesting was Wall Drawing #422 because of the many different variations that could have come about by following the original directions. This wall painting was done in 1984 and did not have a complete overview of exactly how it was going to look due to the lack of indication of what specific type of wall it was supposed to be painted on. This was done on purpose to show that Sol LeWitt’s wall paintings could work on any wall in any room, even ones with windows and doors. The directions were to designate a wall and divide it into fifteen vertical panels, four containing a single color, six containing combinations of two colors, another four containing combinations of three colors, and one panel containing all four basic colors. LeWitt’s art idea for these wall paintings was based on conceptual art to make sure this idea could be carried out. The carrying out of an idea doesn’t always mean the artwork is going to look a certain way. Conceptual artwork can vary in the way it looks, what is important is that it followed the correct directions or standards that were planned out before the artwork was actually created.
LeWitt’s wall painting completely achieves the conceptual art idea in that he has a thought out plan of what he wants to be displayed while he is less focused on how it is going to look in the end as long as the each instruction has been completed. Some may not understand LeWitt’s conceptual art because it is not physically painted by himself. This form of art is one of the most interesting in the modern art world because it is so different from what has already been established in the art society. I think LeWitt is a genius in the creative art sense for thinking of this unprecedented way of making artwork. I have never seen anything like his artwork and was impressed by such a unique way of expression through simple, sometimes challenging instruction to create masterpieces. LeWitt’s idea is a total success, bringing fresh new things to the table every time one of his sets of instructions is followed. It is also amazing that his artwork can still remain actively in progress while he is unfortunately deceased.
It is a coincidence that I had never even heard of LeWitt before I had created an art project similar to his style for my Two Dimensional Creative Processes class. We were to follow a set of instructions almost identical to what LeWitt had said for Wall Drawing #422. It was to design sixteen square panels all containing different color combinations of the main colors used in the first panel. This was one of my favorite projects and was so similar to LeWitt’s form of direction.
Carly Tucker 