Sol LeWitt’s “Wall Drawing #1038 Bars of color within a square (#3)” (left) and “Wall Drawing #869” (above) at the Georgia Museum of Art. © 2024 The LeWitt Estate / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
This past fall, the Georgia Museum of Art brightened up its lobby with two wall drawings by famed contemporary artist Sol LeWitt. A fusion of conceptual art and community engagement, the project, funded in part by a grant from the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation, allowed students to directly participate in the creation of a work that will be on display for years to come. For LeWitt, the true art was the idea. The execution could be left to others. Years after his death in 2007, that legacy remains. LeWitt was a pioneering figure in the conceptu - al and minimalist art movements. His wall drawings are found in museums and galleries around the world and were not typically created by the artist’s own hand. Instead, he wrote detailed instructions on how to make them and invited others to bring his vision to life, challenging traditional notions of art-making by prioritizing the conceptual process over the final product. Professional installers from the Sol LeWitt estate (Gabriel Hurier, Lacey Fekishazy and Michael Benjamin, all of whom trained and worked under LeWitt), students and faculty from the University of Georgia’s Lamar Dodd School of Art, and museum interns and staff worked together to create the drawings over two weeks. Together, they transformed the museum’s lobby into a collaborative art space, meticulous- ly following LeWitt’s instructions to create two large-scale wall drawings: “Wall Drawing #869” from LeWitt’s “Copied Lines” series and “Wall Drawing #1038 Bars of color within a square (#3)” from his “Bars” series. The result is more than just a visual display. It’s an embodiment of collabora- tion, learning and creativity. “Wall Drawing #869” involved the most collaboration. LeWitt’s instructions for it read: “Using a marker or crayon, a not straight line is drawn horizontally, about halfway between the floor and ceiling, across the wall. The line is black. The second line is drawn by another person, using another color, beneath the first line, as close as possible, imitating the black line. The next line is drawn in anoth- er color beneath the second line. Each color is drawn by a different person, and is continued, in the same sequence, to
the bottom of the wall. The black line (the first line) is not repeated. Continue to the bottom of the wall with the last complete line.” One of the installers from the estate created the first line, and UGA students, faculty and staff created the rest, in a repeating pattern of red, blue and yellow. The length of the wall meant that drawing a single line took about 45 minutes. Those creating the lines had to hold the surface of the marker flat against the wall and create the line without going back over any of it. They could take brief breaks to swap out markers, but the process required a lot of concentration, making it an almost meditative experience. This project serves as a continuation of LeWitt’s philosophy that art can live on through shared participation, rather than as a static object to be admired from afar. The stu- dents’ efforts breathe new life into the work, making it rel - evant and meaningful in the present moment. As you view the results, you can feel tiny alterations changing the flow of the line, almost like a game of telephone. All the lines work together, but each of them is its own unique creation. In a world where we often view art as something created by individual geniuses, LeWitt’s work invites us to con- sider a different model, where ideas take precedence over the physical and the act of creation is a shared, collective experience. For those who participated, this project will be a defining moment in their artistic journeys, offering a deeper understanding of the intersections among art, col- laboration and community.
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