March 25, 2009

christopher knight on sol lewitt's last wall drawing

The LA Times’ Christopher Knight has a fantastic post up on Culture Monster about Sol LeWitt’s last public wall drawing, “Wall Drawing No. 1259: Loopy Doopy (Springfield),” installed in the new United States District Court building in Springfield, Massachusetts.

The energy of the piece derives from the way it negotiates the crazy play of its linear twists and turns with the strict rationality of the architectural setting. (The building was designed by Boston architect Moshe Safdie.) On a black acrylic ground, the wide white lines seem to emerge from the surrounding white-walled interior, which merges a rectilinear grid with a compound curve. Buildings can be eccentric, but they must also subscribe to the logic of structural codes – which an artist can happily ignore. The loopy-doopy drawing, flooded with natural light from the building’s glass facade and skylights directly above, takes that fundamental difference and runs with it.

Here’s a video that Knight took of the piece…

Knight says it “may be the most perfect union of contemporary art and architecture in the United States. It’s our Sistine.” I’d love to find an excuse to visit Springfield…