Mosaic âSol LeWittâ
In remote self-isolation in the countryside, where books have stayed in the cityâs bookshelves and I donât wish to use the internet, without small shell-shaped madeleine cakes to soak in tea made of linden flowers that arenât even picked yet, I tryâfrom what has been left at my memory's disposalâto assemble a mosaic: one of the many possible portraits of LeWitt.
1. White quadratic bone-like structures, but also wavy lines and bright coloured areas; drawings, drawings; and drawings thatâfollowing instructionsâare executed by others interpreting the unexpressed (and inexpressible); black-and-white masked colouring-in clock design and the synagogue project; studies and notes as ready artworks; and solid, substantial, open-air sculptures / structures / âspecial objectsâ. These pieces of mosaic are too trivial and already worn out (pale and colourless).
2. Iâll start again: âwhen an artist learns their craft too well, they make slick artââLeWittâs 34th sentence on conceptual art (1968). IngĆ«na Skuja once said that for ceramists, âslickâ is a positive, even praiseworthy quality, though that only points out that the grammar of the new artâs language is transgressive, breaking past laws, and âtheatricalâ, as Michael Fried would have said (and did so in 1967).
3. Structures just like structuralist structuralism and post-structuralism, âeven though not completely deadâ, are left in the past. Even if the new virus will create âstructural changesââ a phrase that politicians have tediously worn outâthen the basis of its consequences include shortness of breath and pulmonary edema forming in a human body. What is bodily in LeWittâs structures and drawings?
4. Fragmentation. The Primary Structures exhibition opened at the Jewish Museum in New York on 26 April, 1966. In the small gallery eight (a former library whose neo-Gothic details were covered with black drapery), next to Walter De Mariaâs literally caged âCageâ (a work made from thin metal bars), was LeWittâs cubic â3 x 3 x 3â structure of 3 x 3 x 3 cubes, which would have been understood as secluded and self-sufficientâlike a hedgehogâby the Jena Romanticists: âA fragment, like a miniature work of art, has to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world and be complete in itself like a hedgehogâ (Friedrich Schlegelâs Athenaeum Fragment, 206). It was self-sufficient, and as if tuned out, for a moment, from the surrounding ecosystem (hedgehog), a case of art being from the global art world.
5. Even though the body stays here in the metaphor of the romantic that was Schlegel, in the context of LeWittâs works, it wasnât only a spectatorâs body (and mind) that was needed to give meaning and scale to his processual structures and ideas, but in the moment, itâs the alienation of each oneâan alienation from the seemingly organic unity that âlateâ (global and what not) capitalism is trying to present as instinctively inevitable, while simultaneously becoming fragmented but comprehensible, and able to be implemented, albeit at your home on an empty wall: a LeWitt drawing (tell them youâre in quarantine and the copyright agency wonât enter your roomâŠ).
6. But is there anything that I canât instantly remember about LeWitt? What to fantasise about? Look, a shred of memoryâhe had a short text about the form of a ziggurat whichâswitching to city planningâwould furthermore be better than the common skyscraper in New York (LeWitt had used ziggurat forms in several of his works). In some utopian past scenario, these kind of skyscrapers wouldnât be hit by airplanes (it wouldnât be so effective and easy), and we would be spared from the bothersome airport control system (but itâs not importantânow we will travel less, and hike more around our homelands, besides which there will be less air pollution). Such a number of towers of Babel would most likely confuse god, and they could cancel the Great Flood, initiated via global warming; the mix-up of languages would be reanimated with the help of some super-google-translate system, because all the small and dying languages, such as Latvian and others, would become intelligible, and we would get rid of the emaciated lingua franca, the crippled English.
7. I remember lectures with quotes of memories of Adrian Piperâhow she and Sol were ecstatic about Beckettâdialogues and situations without context (another âhedgehog-istâ) that fits so well with the unrepresentative literalism of the visual forms of minimalism. Every now and then, I have tried different texts by Beckett imagining examples of what they could have read, but in my opinion, the diagram with a slight time shift tracking the unsuccessful meetings of Mercier and Camier is still the bestâthese ridiculously absurd protagonists who share the name of the novel are immortal, because they find it almost impossible to meet and⊠get infected (to tell the truth, I must admit that by stubbornly repeating their arrival, waiting for five minutes, going for a walk, returning and so on, they do meet after 45 minutes).
8. Literature. I rifle through the book shelf at the country house in Latgale looking for inspiration, until I find the unread Old Curiosity Shop by Dickens as a Russian translation. From the first pages, I meet the gaze of a collector type, as if described by Walter Benjamin: âThere were suits of mail standing like ghosts in armour here and there; fantastic carvings brought from monkish cloisters; rusty weapons of various kinds; distorted figures in china and wood and iron and ivory; tapestry and strange furniture that might have been designed in dreams.â
9. Lines that havenât been seen even in dreamsâif perhaps credited to some mad mathematicianâis what someone might say about LeWittâs drawings. Isnât this the right time to look into your attic, in an old closet, at forgotten childhood memories, to turn to never before noticed people? Could it be a vocabulary for the new art whose grammar is yet to be found (or, whose grammar is only coming into being)? And could this young and unpredictably diverse art vocabularyâletâs indulge in the positive impulse, hidden in utopiaâbe the one whose influence will contort or knock down the ruling consumerist attitude and the critical art discourse, partly servicing it, and partly battling it?
KombuÄŒi rural municipality, 31 March, 2020.
JÄnis Taurens
