 |
Comments on the Conceptual
Art
Sol LeWitt has been a leading figure in the world of the Conceptual Art
for the last forty years, and he proposes a way of creating art in which
the idea or the planning are prior to anything else, and the resulting form
is not all-important. He is therefore an artist whose major engagement has
been that of giving directions to his assistants, or anyway to those who
had to realise his works. With this procedure he has created basic works
that were and are decisive for the contemporary art, such as the Structures,
the Wall drawings, etc. He thus not only created art, he also created a
theory centered on how to create art, who the artist is and who the beneficiary
is, considering these elements as important parts of the debate on art in
our century and at all times.
1) Diaffti, LeWitt:
The artist and the drawer cooperate in the making of art. The artist must
allow for different interpretations of his project. The drawer perceives
the artist's project and adapts it then to his own experience and understanding.
... Seeing as each individual is unique, each one understands and carries
out in his own personal way the instructions he received, even though these
are the same for everyone. ... The Wall drawing is the artist's creation
as long as the original project is kept with. Otherwise, the drawer becomes
the artist and the wall drawing his own work, but it will be just a parody
of the original idea anyway.
I shall just add that:
The artist and the reviewer cooperate in the making of art. The artist must
allow for different interpretations of his project. The reviewer perceives
the artist's idea and adapts it then to his own experience and understanding.
... Seeing as each individual is unique, each one understands and interprets
in his own personal way the instructions he received, even though these
are the same for everyone. ... This is the artist's creation as long as
the original project is kept with. Otherwise, the reviewer becomes the author
and the text his own work, but it will be just a parody of the original
idea anyway.
|
 |
| |
3)
LeWitt again:
My art is not made of formal concoctions, the forms I make use of are
just a vehicle for the contents... An art such as mine, which emphasizes
the contents, cannot be seen and understood starting from the form. It
is an enormous and crucial difference.
And I say again:
Aside from the good reasons of the artist with his ideas, who is behind
the work, the audience who stays in front of the work first of all perceives
the work of art by means of the forms, the colors and the images. The
truth is that the position turns out to be crucial, too. And if it is
true that the artist needs ideas to create art, it is also true that we
need art to have ideas.
4) After this Sol LeWitt explains:
When an artist uses a form of Conceptual Art, it means that the whole
project and all the decisions are taken in advance and that the carrying
out is reduced to a mere mechanical fact. The idea becomes a machine which
creates art.
I shall point out that:
The machine is the basis of the way of thinking of various artists of
the times - the Sixties - in which Sol LeWitt defined his works; let's
take for example Andy Warhol who used to say that he "wanted to be
a machine", body and soul. LeWitt seems to detach the body from the
head, but it is significant that the term "machine" has been
adopted: the machine is the characterising element of the 20th century.
During the Sixties the "pop" aspect was predominant, the machine
was therefore seen as an object, that is, a form and an image; today,
with the great spread of intelligent machines, we are facing a subsequent
phase that we could define as conceptual, where the machine itself has
ideas to create a new society.
5) But then LeWitt carries on:
There are various ways of creating a work of art. One of them is taking
decisions one at a time, another one is concocting a decision-making system.
The system can have a logical or an illogical (random) structure.
To this I should like to answer that:
The conceptual system he ushered in is not a cold machine, it is rather
a paradox to bring about a crisis in the rational systems of modern times
and in the mechanical system they represent.
6) So let's go on with LeWitt saying:
The Conceptual Art is not theoretical, nor does it illustrate theories,
it is rather intuitive.
My comment therefore is:
Intuition and chance bring about a crisis in, or rather, they question
the idea of the modernist rationality as well as the idea from which the
conceptual Art itself started and according to which the project is not
definitive but subject to changes. This is another element for us to check
its validity, which lies in the fact of originating paradoxes that are
self-questioning in the first place.
7) LeWitt points out in fact:
The conceptual artists are mystical rather than rational. They come to
conclusions to which the logic cannot get.
And I go to the extent of saying:
In the end, this idea of the machine implies it is actually the brain
and therefore not a machine at all; it is human, no matter whom it belongs
to, just like art is art no matter how it is expressed.
8) LeWitt then suggests that:
An architect is still an artist even though he does not personally go
dig the foundations of the house he has planned, or place the bricks one
on top of the other.
So I continue saying that:
Le Corbusier, for instance, or Mies van der Rhoe, were artists who expressed
themselves in architecture; LeWitt, then, had worked with the architect
I.M. Pei during the Fifties, the one who constructed the glass pyramid
in front of the Louvre in the 1980's. Aside from the biographical data,
the important thing is that LeWitt continues to make use and to discuss
elements of modernity in his reflections: first the architect and then
the designer are those who model reality not with their own hands, but
with their ideas and their projects which are - just like in the Conceptual
Art - carried out by other people. 9) But LeWitt makes a further distinction:
Architecture and the tridimensional art are of a totally opposite nature.
The former is engaged in creating with a specific purpose. In order not
to miss its goal architecture - be it a work of art or not - must be functional.
Art is not functional. When the tridimensional art starts taking up some
of the characteristics of architecture creating for instance functional
areas, it weakens its artistic function.
To which I respond:
We pass from the form following the function, of the moderns, to the form
following the idea, of the conceptuals.
10) That's why LeWitt stated that:
Today's architects do not hold in great esteem the ziggurats... Ironically,
the new Whitney Museum is a ziggurat turned upside down, and it is very
appreciated, whilst the modern buildings where offices are located are
not considered as particularly elegant... It could very well be the right
moment to think again of the ziggurats. Many of them will be acknowledged
as valuable works of art.
In this case my position is:
Precisely the ziggurats are reminding of many of his works, from the Modular
structures to today's sculptures such as the work exhibited at the Giardini
of the Biennale in Venice, or the one constructed in the courtyard of
the Museum in Colle Val d'Elsa.
11) LeWitt teaches us:
A work of art implies many elements, of which the most important are the
most evident.
To which I shall observe that:
They show a rhythm and an organisation of the basic elements of geometry,
such as the parallelepiped, that make us think of a constructing system
which - according to LeWitt - isn't there this time. But if this happens
it means that the artist's goal, that is, the primary idea of the form,
has been reached anyway. They are reminding of the ancient architectures
of the Aztec and Maya people as well as of the form and the structure
of the modern cities such as New York and Hong Kong - and this the artist
says is there. Finally, serial arrangements and stardadization do not
necessarily give origin to identical forms and images.
12) LeWitt then continues:
Some ideas are logical in their concept and illogical in their perception.
And I add:
Just like the recent tempera paintings exhibited at the Museum. They are
illogical because they are very expressive, and the flat color stands
out as the most evident thing; the organisation of the color, then, does
not show any previous system but at the same time it is revealing of the
artist's permanence in Umbria, where he spends some time every summer.
13) LeWitt again:
One of the lessons I have learned from the great fresco painters of the
Italian Quattrocento is their perception of the flat surface on which
they did not use a linear perspective, but rather an isometric perspective
system which flattened all forms.
So I:
Isometric paintings which have melted to the extent that they have taken
up the form of landscapes that the artist himself painted without referring
to others.
14) So in the end LeWitt says:
The successful works of art alter our perceptions and therefore change
our way of understanding our own conventions.
And I conclude:
Thus the Conceptual Art and its processes end up appearing and being not
merely conceptual any more, but simply art.
Giacinto di Pietrantonio
|
