“A fascinating, detailed and moving account on the life and work of a truly genius artist. A must read for anyone interested in Art.” —João Leonardo, artist Sol LeWitt (1928–2007), one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, upended traditional practices of how art is made and marketed. A key figure in minimalism and conceptualism, he proclaimed that the work of the mind is much more important than that of the hand. For his site-specific work—wall drawings and sculpture in dozens of countries—he created the idea and basic plan and then hired young artists to install the pieces. Though typically enormous and intricate, the physical works held no value. The worth was in the pieces of paper that certified and described them. LeWitt championed and financially supported colleagues, including women artists brushed aside by the bullies of a male-dominated profession. Yet the man himself has remained an enigma, as he refused to participate in the culture of celebrity. Lary Bloom’s book draws on personal recollections of LeWitt, whom he knew in the last years of the artist’s life, as well as LeWitt’s letters and papers and over one hundred original interviews with his friends and colleagues, including Chuck Close, Ingrid Sischy, Philip Glass, Adrian Piper, Jan Dibbets, and Carl Andre. This absorbing chronicle brings new information to our understanding of this important artist, linking the extraordinary arc of his life to his iconic work. Includes twenty-eight illustrations. “An insightful and intimate portrait of the artist, the man and his times.” —Saul Ostrow, Founder of Critical Practices Inc.

"Books are the best medium for many artists working today," Sol LeWitt (1928-2007) once declared. A pioneer of artist's books, and co-founder of New York's Printed Matter bookstore in 1976, LeWitt is closely identified with the book as an art form. Starting with 1967's Serial Project No. 1 (from Aspen magazine), and closing with Chicago (Morning Star Publications, 2002), this book reproduces covers and spreads from Sol LeWitt's massive oeuvre of artist's books, almost all of which are now rarities. As artist's book historian Clive Phillpot notes, "the principle attribute of LeWitt's books is one common to all books: a dependence upon sequence, whether of families of marks or objects, or of single or permuted series which have clear beginnings and endings." Critical observations from LeWitt himself and a variety of scholars make this volume the most sustained treatment of LeWitt's prolific activity in this area to date.

Published to accompany MASS MoCA's landmark installation of LeWitt's innovative wall drawings, this book celebrates the artist and his illustrious 50-year career.

A revelatory consideration of the wide-ranging practice of one of the most influential American artists of the 20th century A pioneer of minimalism and conceptual art, Sol LeWitt (1928–2007) is best known for his monumental wall drawings. LeWitt’s broad artistic practice, however, also included sculpture, printmaking, photography, artist’s books, drawings, gouaches, and folded and ripped paper works. From the familiar to the underappreciated aspects of LeWitt’s oeuvre, this book examines the ways that his art was multidisciplinary, humorous, philosophical, and even religious. Locating Sol LeWitt contains nine new essays that explore the artist’s work across media and address topics such as LeWitt’s formative friendships with colleagues at the Museum of Modern Art in the early 1960s; his photographs of Manhattan’s Lower East Side; his 1979 collaboration with Lucinda Childs and Philip Glass and its impact on his printmaking; and his commissions linked to Jewish history and the Holocaust. The essays offer insights into the role of parody, experimentation, and uncertainty in the artist’s practice, and investigate issues of site, space, and movement. Together, these studies reveal the full scope of LeWitt’s creativity and offer a multifaceted reassessment of this singular and influential artist.

The bare minimum Often regarded as a backlash against abstract expressionism, Minimalism was characterized by simplified, stripped-down forms and materials used to express ideas in a direct and impersonal manner. By presenting artworks as simple objects, minimalist artists sought to communicate esthetic ideals without reference to expressive or historical themes. This critical movement, which began in the 1960s and branched out into land art, performance art, and conceptual art, is still a major influence today. This book explains the how, why, where and when of Minimal Art, and the artists who helped define it. Featured artists: Carl Andre, Stephen Antonakos, Jo Baer, Larry Bell, Ronald Bladen, Walter De Maria, Dan Flavin, Robert Grosvenor, Eva Hesse, Donald Judd, Gary Kuehn, Sol LeWitt, Robert Mangold, John McCracken, Robert Morris, Robert Ryman, Fred Sandback, Richard Serra, Tony Smith, Frank Stella, Robert Smithson, Anne Truitt About the Series: Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Genre Series features: a detailed illustrated introduction plus a timeline of the most important political, cultural and social events that took place during that period a selection of the most important works of the epoch, each of which is presented on a 2-page spread with a full-page image and with an interpretation of the respective work, plus a portrait and brief biography of the artist approximately 100 colour illustrations with explanatory captions

Co-founder and co-editor of October magazine, a veteran of Artforum of the 1960s and early 1970s, Rosalind Krauss has presided over and shared in the major formulation of the theory of postmodernism. In this challenging collection of fifteen essays, most of which originally appeared in October, she explores the ways in which the break in style that produced postmodernism has forced a change in our various understandings of twentieth-century art, beginning with the almost mythic idea of the avant-garde. Krauss uses the analytical tools of semiology, structuralism, and poststructuralism to reveal new meanings in the visual arts and to critique the way other prominent practitioners of art and literary history write about art. In two sections, "Modernist Myths" and "Toward Postmodernism," her essays range from the problem of the grid in painting and the unity of Giacometti's sculpture to the works of Jackson Pollock, Sol Lewitt, and Richard Serra, and observations about major trends in contemporary literary criticism.

Bringing together thinkers from philosophy of religion, religious studies, music, art, and film, while drawing on a wealth of phenomenological resources and methods, a team of renowned scholars provide new vantages on the question of how art is an expression of the human desire for God. In three interrelated parts, chapters employ phenomenological tools to propose new ways for speaking of the desire for God. Scholars first draw upon music, sculpture, film, and painting to develop ways of expressing diverse philosophical and religious aspects characteristic of aesthetic experience. The discussion then opens up to examine the mystical and wounded aspects of embodied interface with God. The final part investigates embodied aesthetic praxis in philosophy of religion and religious studies. With several contributions engaging with the embodied, aesthetic experience of underrepresented voices, Art, Desire, and God offers constructive phenomenological bridges across divides of disciplines, aesthetic experiences, and embodied actions.

An original and provocative exploration of the relationship between contemporary art, politics, and activism Artists Remake the World introduces readers to the political ambitions of contemporary art in the early twenty-first century and puts forward a new, wide-ranging account of art’s political potential. Surveying such innovations as evidence-driven art, socially engaged art, and ecological art, the book explores how artists have attempted to offer bold solutions to the world’s problems. Vid Simoniti offers original perspectives on contemporary art and its capacity as a force for political and social change. At its best, he argues, contemporary art allows us to imagine utopias and presents us with hard truths, which mainstream political discourse cannot yet articulate. Covering subjects such as climate change, social justice, and global inequality, Simoniti introduces the reader to a host of visionary contemporary artists from across the globe, including Ai Weiwei, Olafur Eliasson, Wangechi Mutu, Naomi Rincón Gallardo, and Hito Steyerl. Offering a philosophy of contemporary art as an experimental branch of politics, the book equips the reader with a new critical apparatus for thinking about political art today.

Taking "Specific Objects," the seminal text written by Judd in the mid-sixties, as the central theme, the author analyzes the artist's main concepts and his whole career from a new perspective: "what one seeks is an object that speaks of the world in which it is moving or of the world from which it is moving away. One searches for a boundary work, a frontier, that says, simultaneously, where it is coming from and where it is going, a work in which interests overlap. A work that will function as a mark or a crossroads, locating this work is the first exercise.