Sol LeWitt

Vente: Briest, Paris, 5 décembre 1998, lot 111
Acquis lors de cette vente par le propriétaire actuel

Hartford, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art; Waterville, Colby College Museum of Art; Cleveland, The Cleveland Museum of Art; Scottsdale, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Sol Lewitt: Incomplete open cubes, 26 janvier 2001-14 avril 2002; catalogue, pp.13-50, illustration du dessin

This work is in excellent condition.
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Dessin schématique des Incomplete Open Cubes, 1974, The LeWitt Collection, Connecticut © D.R.

Sol LeWitt's Incomplete Open Cubes might be thought of, both literally and metaphorically, as a kind of "counter intelligence." In the formats in which the entire series is presented, it seems at once to signify meaning and yet, like an unbreakable code, to be impenetrable. In its systematic logic it invites our understanding, yet in its spatial and permutational complexity, it refuses our attemps at comprehending it as a whole. In the formats where we experience the variations individually, we find the unexpected duality of forms that are at once incomplete conceptually and satisfying aesthetically. In every format, the work performs acts of metaphorical counter intelligence, pitting reason against itself, confounding expectations, insisting on paradox.

Perhaps the ultimate paradox is that it is through the negation of subjectivity that LeWitt reaffirms the creative role of the artist. If Incomplete Open Cubes negates the romantic approach to making art as the exercise of subjective artistic expression, it does not do so at the expense of the artist. The fact that Lewitt's forms were not the result of an intentional act of creative imagination in the traditional sense does not render the artist obsolete. Instead, LeWitt's conceptualism reinvents at once the methodology and formal language of artistic expression.

Nicholas Baume in Sol Lewitt: Incomplete open cubes, 2001, p.31