Sol Le Witt
Published August 08, 2020
Here you see the first 9 of Sol LeWitt's "Sentences on Conceptual Art." He wrote a total of 35 groundbreaking assertions that, even today, are guides, exercises, licenses, and talking points for art making. This page is presumed to be in LeWitt's handwriting and housed in the collection of the MOMA. Here are 6 more of LeWitt's Sentences on Conceptual Art that we love:
“The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.”
“Ideas can be works of art; they are in a chain of development that may eventually find some form. All ideas need not be made physical.”
"When words such as painting and sculpture are used, they connote a whole tradition and imply a consequent acceptance of this tradition, thus placing limitations on the artist who would be reluctant to make art that goes beyond the limitations.”
"For each work of art that becomes physical there are many variations that do not."
"All ideas are art if they are concerned with art and fall within the conventions of art."
"The conventions of art are altered by works of art."
Sol LeWitt was an American artist, thinker, and writer. He is sometimes seen as the father of a movement where language became the crucible for artmaking, at a time when Abstract Expressionism largely defined art.
