In 1999, I stumbled upon a Sol LeWitt installation while wandering around some Italian city, I can’t remember which. I was pretty excited because Sol LeWitt is an icon. He’s famous for lots of innovations, but I’m particularly fond of his installations (and installation in general).
So, I stepped into the crumbling gallery and walked around some white cement blocks that were stacked throughout. Hmm, I thought. Hmm. This is…very…white.
I was reminded of Sol the other day and I thought I’d see if I could find images of that show. No luck – it didn’t help that I couldn’t remember what city I was in. But I found some similar pieces.
Mouse over the photos for the dates to get an idea of the duration of Sol’s love of white squares.
I found so many of these blocky white structures that my original intention was to post them and poke a little fun at Sol. But as it turns out, I love them. I especially like them all together like this. The last one is a photograph and it’s so beautiful, I could cry looking at it.
And the truth is that Sol is really into color. Bold primary colors. And curves. So, I was skewing the data to begin with. There’s my funny joke. I’ve succeeded in proving to myself that Sol deserves his position in the art world even if all he did were blocky white structures.
You want a little color now, don’t you? How about the Barolo Chapel? It’s my favorite. Here was his blank canvas. You can see why he was attracted to it.
And here’s what he made of it.
Oh, Sol. Thank you.
