Sol lewitt brief biography of prophets
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Prophets often lead lopsided lives. Their pronouncements, whether predictive or admonitory, are pored over endlessly, but the person behind the words is often in shadow or reduced to a caricature over time. What did Isaiah have for breakfast, and who (if any) did he sleep with? And what does it mean when that profet turns out to be an ordinary person?
Sol LeWitt (1928-2007) was the foremost profet of conceptual art (he preferred the small “c”), which provided an intellectual, often cooly detached riposte to Abstract Expressionism’s grandly emotional gestures. LeWitt transformed the idea of the mural with his multitudinous wall drawings, his best-known and most multitudinous works. “I think the cavemen came first, (p. xiv)” was his response when he was given too much credit for drawing on a wall instead of paper or canvas. That diffidence, and wry accuracy, was typical of him. His “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art” (1967) and “Sentences
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THE PANTOGRAPH PUNCH
One of the great pleasures of seeing films in a festival context is the discovery of unexpected thematic and textual links between ostensibly disparate cultures. For perhaps obvious reasons, this phenomenon seems to occur more frequently in the documentary realm than with fictional worlds. Case in point: profiles of the American artist Sol LeWitt and the New Zealand ethnomusicologist Richard Nunns share an avid exploration of the passage of knowledge, and disruptions to it, both through time and down generations.
The sounds produced by taonga pūoro—traditional Māori instruments—have become commonplace in this country, to the point where, in certain settings, their absence is noticeable. Radio New Zealand recently introduced new theme music for some of its shows, among them Morning Report; the appearance of certain taonga pūoro in the cue before the 8am news bulletin now reveals both the vansinne blandness of the synth-driven ’80s track it replaced, and
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Do: Sol LeWitt’s Electrifying Letter of Advice on Self-Doubt, Overcoming Creative Block, and Being an Artist
“The great doesn’t happen through impulse alone, and is a succession of little things that are brought together,” Vincent van Gogh wrote in contemplating principles, talking vs. doing, and the human pursuit of greatness in a beautiful letter to his brother Theo. “Making your unknown known is the important thing — and keeping the unknown always beyond you,” Georgia O’Keeffe wrote in her memorable letter to Sherwood Anderson about success, public opinion, and what it really means to be an artist. But how does one keep a solid center of principled conviction while at the same time expanding outward into widening circles of growth-impulses, always reaching for the unknown without letting competence fester into complacency or perfectionism become an anchor of stagnation?
The answer to that, and to other elemental perplexities of t