Sol Lewitt’s scribbles
Sol LeWitt’s wall scribbles are large works that were made in-situ on paper attached directly to gallery walls. They were not drawn by him per se, but by assistants armed with graphite pencils and instructions to achieve the desired result. The scribbles themselves are spidery and vein like up close, revealing a graduated texture as you step away from them.
Many hours of painstaking repetitive work goes into the making of these works and the works become at least in part about the experience and the mental shifts that happen in the ‘drawers’ as they undertake the project. The works are a residue of this process and that s where the art is. LeWitt himself said in 1971:
“The draftsman and the wall enter a dialogue. The draftsman becomes bored but later through this meaningless activity finds peace or misery. The lines on the wall are the residue of this process. Each line is as important as each other line. All of the lines become one thing. The viewer of the lines can see only lines on a wall. They are meaningless. That is art.” (Caniglia, 2011)
Wall Drawing #1274: Scribble Column (Horizontal). Sol LeWitt 2006 (Art Gallery of NSW)
References:
CANIGLIA, J. 2011. "Peace or misery": The making of a Sol LeWitt wall drawing [Online]. Walker Art. Available: https://walkerart.org/magazine/peace-or-misery [Accessed 04 August 2022].
