The Project
|
Dr. Irene Barberis, 2024
“Contemplating the paint marks left on Sol LeWitt’s main painting wall in his Chester studio in 2019, I considered in the quiet, just how widely and profoundly Sol had influenced artists young and old around the globe – the word ‘conceptual artist’ coined by him in the sixrties and prevalent everywhere is but one example. And so was born the idea of making an audit of his influence in the countries of my earlier Metasenta Projects. After conversations with the LeWitt family, this idea seemed to be a good one! |
The research would be democratic across nations, working with both large establishments and at grassroots levels. The shows and research would be able to work with much resource and equally with little, and have an open-ended process of mobility and fluidity at its center. Ten artists would be selected from each location to be part of the cross-cultural dialogue. To commence the research, a ‘pop-up’ or smaller exhibition of the four female Core artists would ensue with a major exhibition of the fourteen atists occurring within two years, and so has begun… The Concentric Influences of Sol LeWitt: Foundations, Pivots, and Place; ten countries. 2019 – 2026.”
|
Selected pages from the book: SOL LEWITT IRENE BARBERIS: EXPLORING THE CHESTER STUDIO – A VISUAL DOCUMENTATION
The Book
Available exclusively from Metasenta Publishing.
Purchase now online >> Additional Information: ISBN: 978-0-9941928-1-3 Published: 2022 Full colour, 264 pages Dimensions: 24cm x 24cm, 264 pages, plus cover. Authors: Irene Barberis, Lucy R. Lippard, Janet Passehl Designer: Irene Barberis, Gina Lee (What Gina Did Next) |
SOL LEWITT - IRENE BARBERIS
Exploring the Chester Studio A VISUAL DOCUMENTATION $150.00 AUD Since first meeting in NewYork in 1974, Sol LeWitt and Irene Barberis maintained a friendship that spanned decades. LeWitt’s mentorship and his ongoing influence and presence in her work led to her 2019 residencies in LeWitt’s studios: Chester, USA; Spoleto and Praiano, Italy. In the Chester studio, Barberis documented all that she saw, creating over 800 artworks that form part of the ongoing international LeWitt/Barberis research project. The first of two volumes records Barberis’ three-month stay in the Chester Studio. It reproduces some of her thousands of photographs in a format inspired by LeWitt’s own gridded photo essays and is the first complete published documentation of the space. Collectors, artists and historians will delight in Barberis’ unique ‘camera and brush’ responses to LeWitt’s Chester studio space. The intimate nature of Barberis’ undertaking is echoed by personal observations by Lucy R. Lippard, author and friend of LeWitt, and Janet Passehl, artist and curator of the LeWitt Collection. |
Here’s to the Spirit of Sol
Lucy R. Lippard
Sol’s generosity was epic. Once he arrived at his true path, and his career took off, he traveled a lot, meeting artists all over the world and bringing the news back to our New York community. One Christmas in the mid ‘60s he laid out some Hilla and Berndt Becher photographs on the floor and said I could choose one. I couldn’t make up my mind, so he gave me two. He gave his art away to friends and assistants, traded with young and unknown artists, often women, and purchased their art. The huge collection housed in Chester can be read as a kind of diary of his travels and friendships.
It is fascinating to read these fond accounts of the LeWitt family’s life. I was spending time in the west, then moved to New Mexico in 1993, and was only in Chester once or twice. Our long friendship started in 1960, when Sol and I were both flunkies at MoMA. (He nourished my reading habits in those years, thanks to the Donnell Library across the street.) We mostly saw each other in Lower Manhattan. By 1961, I was living in a loft on the Bowery with my then- husband Bob Ryman. Eva Hesse and her then-husband Tom Doyle lived a block away. Sol’s tiny loft on nearby Hester Street, with the pickle store on the street, rang with classical music, and his old cat Puss reigned. It was an intellectual source for many of us younger artworkers, especially for Hesse.
Sol was older, but when I first knew him he had yet to land on his mature direction. He gave me an old piece that was essentially a white ball protruding from a black panel. Soon he was playing with sort of Jasper Johnsian reliefs in primary colors. Then came the handsome lacquered sculptures. He made coffee tables in this mode for friends. Mine is next to me as I write. (I asked for orange, which was beautiful but later I painted it green; it passed through a white stage, and is now black.) He complained that the table was never visible, piled as it still is with books and magazines. The seeds of Printed Matter were sown around that table. When my son Ethan was born, Sol would call first before dropping in, to be sure the baby had eaten and wouldn’t spit spinach in his face. I assume that when later in life he and Carol had two daughters, he learned to deal with infantile table manners.
I remember hearing that when Sol was at Syracuse University his art teacher told him he would never be an artist. Luckily he didn’t listen and the teacher must have been red-faced for life. Sol’s influences on twentieth-century art and beyond are as multiple as the many directions he opened up in his own work. Irene Barberis, a friend since 1974 and the first artist to make work in his Chester studio, offering a fellow artist’s response to the space, has a far deeper knowledge of the source than most LeWitt admirers, having worked with Sol over decades, becoming a family friend in the process. Her art is indicative of the breadth and freedom of conceptual/minimal roots, which eventually he himself bent to new desires. Like the artist’s younger daughter Eva LeWitt, Barberis has built her own unique statements on LeWittean roots. Along with the grids, the primary colors, her training as a dancer and the music she shared with her mentor is evident in the unexpected shapes and jazzy spacings of color bricks.
The texts here trigger the memories so many of us cherish, of Hester and Chester, of LeWitt’s calm generosity, wry humor, aesthetic flexibility, and immense talent.
Lucy R. Lippard
Sol’s generosity was epic. Once he arrived at his true path, and his career took off, he traveled a lot, meeting artists all over the world and bringing the news back to our New York community. One Christmas in the mid ‘60s he laid out some Hilla and Berndt Becher photographs on the floor and said I could choose one. I couldn’t make up my mind, so he gave me two. He gave his art away to friends and assistants, traded with young and unknown artists, often women, and purchased their art. The huge collection housed in Chester can be read as a kind of diary of his travels and friendships.
It is fascinating to read these fond accounts of the LeWitt family’s life. I was spending time in the west, then moved to New Mexico in 1993, and was only in Chester once or twice. Our long friendship started in 1960, when Sol and I were both flunkies at MoMA. (He nourished my reading habits in those years, thanks to the Donnell Library across the street.) We mostly saw each other in Lower Manhattan. By 1961, I was living in a loft on the Bowery with my then- husband Bob Ryman. Eva Hesse and her then-husband Tom Doyle lived a block away. Sol’s tiny loft on nearby Hester Street, with the pickle store on the street, rang with classical music, and his old cat Puss reigned. It was an intellectual source for many of us younger artworkers, especially for Hesse.
Sol was older, but when I first knew him he had yet to land on his mature direction. He gave me an old piece that was essentially a white ball protruding from a black panel. Soon he was playing with sort of Jasper Johnsian reliefs in primary colors. Then came the handsome lacquered sculptures. He made coffee tables in this mode for friends. Mine is next to me as I write. (I asked for orange, which was beautiful but later I painted it green; it passed through a white stage, and is now black.) He complained that the table was never visible, piled as it still is with books and magazines. The seeds of Printed Matter were sown around that table. When my son Ethan was born, Sol would call first before dropping in, to be sure the baby had eaten and wouldn’t spit spinach in his face. I assume that when later in life he and Carol had two daughters, he learned to deal with infantile table manners.
I remember hearing that when Sol was at Syracuse University his art teacher told him he would never be an artist. Luckily he didn’t listen and the teacher must have been red-faced for life. Sol’s influences on twentieth-century art and beyond are as multiple as the many directions he opened up in his own work. Irene Barberis, a friend since 1974 and the first artist to make work in his Chester studio, offering a fellow artist’s response to the space, has a far deeper knowledge of the source than most LeWitt admirers, having worked with Sol over decades, becoming a family friend in the process. Her art is indicative of the breadth and freedom of conceptual/minimal roots, which eventually he himself bent to new desires. Like the artist’s younger daughter Eva LeWitt, Barberis has built her own unique statements on LeWittean roots. Along with the grids, the primary colors, her training as a dancer and the music she shared with her mentor is evident in the unexpected shapes and jazzy spacings of color bricks.
The texts here trigger the memories so many of us cherish, of Hester and Chester, of LeWitt’s calm generosity, wry humor, aesthetic flexibility, and immense talent.