I needed to get out of the city for a day. John, Allison and I ordered up a
Zip car and got the heck out of dodge, heading for Beacon, NY to visit Dia: Beacon and the Storm King. I got the biggest kick out of going over the George Washington Bridge:
And I made them stop at a scenic lookout to see the Upper Bronx:
The Dia Art Foundation has several sites around the country (and a long, somewhat controversial history) but its main permanent collection is housed in a former Nestle factory in Beacon. It's one of my absolute favorite places in the world. Whole floors devoted to Louise Bourgeois, Bruce Nauman, Richard Serra, Sol LeWitt, Andy Warhol, Donald Judd, Fred Sandback,....heaven. Simple, minimal, heaven. We especially lingered in the Sol LeWitt galleries. Sol LeWitt, who recently passed away, is one of the most important members of the art historical canon, contemporary or otherwise, in my opinion. Rather than creating art, he created ideas that were then translated into art. Lynn Cooke, curator at Dia describes this work better than I could (it's dense, I know, but it makes sense. Imagine reading all this stuff for my thesis!):
Drawing Series. . . exemplifies LeWitt's singular yet highly influential practice on manifold counts. Formulated from an initial idea outlined in a diagrammatic sketch accompanied by a set of instructions, it has been installed here by a team of trained assistants supplemented by volunteers, who rigorously followed the artist's directives, including his determination of its placement in relation to the particular configuration of Dia's galleries.5 In the work of Judd and other Minimalists, the specifics of the modular system underpinning any individual work are not necessarily overtly legible, although they may be intuited. In LeWitt's art, by contrast, the conceptual program that determines the composition is always self-evident. Irrespective of the resulting degree of complexity, the point of departure—the preset schema—is literally stated, in the title, the accompanying diagrammatic instructions, or both. The straightforward formulation of the preset idea of Drawing Series. . . has here been exhaustively realized: all 192 permutations of the black pencil version are present.
The work's basic unit, a square measuring one meter per side and divided into quarters, is grouped to make a larger square of four equal units, then stacked into four rows centered on each of the four walls of the gallery. A recurrent form in LeWitt's early drawings, the square, like the cube, from which most of his early sculptures were composed, is for him among the "least emotive" of any possible forms. "A more complex form would be too interesting in itself and obstruct the meaning of the whole. There is no need to invent new forms," he contends. "The square and cube are efficient and symmetrical." This elementary syntax constitutes "the best form to use as a base unit for any more elaborate function, the grammatical device from which the work may proceed." The four directions assumed by the lines in Drawing Series. . . represent the basic directions in which lines may be drawn: vertical, horizontal, diagonal from top left to bottom right, and diagonal from top right to bottom left. In accordance with the artist's preset plan, these lines have been overlaid in every possible combination so that the resulting sequence methodically exhausts every variation that may be derived from the given logic and within the formal limits established by the location. Light-toned and applied evenly with a near-uniform thickness and spacing, the lines create grids of varying tonality that nonetheless preserve the integrity of the surface plane even as they appear at one with it.
Detail
Drawing Series at Dia took 8 assistants 9 months to complete. It's one of those things you really must see to believe (and appreciate).
Photography is not allowed so these photographs are, uh, photoshopped.
Reflected in a Richter
John had never been to Dia, so he was understandably overcome in the Serras.
Outside of Dia
Auto-timer, on a bench!
Downtown Beacon, home of The World's Most Delicious Hamburger with Weird, Tasty Dipping Sauces
I had never been to
Storm King and don't know much about it as an institution but it was gorgeous. The only other sculpture park I've seen on this scale is outside of Liverpool, so this was a treat.
John was swept up by the Aronofsky works.
And became one with LeWitt.
Another self-timer, another bench!
These two monumental sculptures were my favorite in the park!
Kidding. It's a twig I stuck in the ground.
This chair was made out of half dollars!
And one bee.
We rode home with the windows down, my hair going wild, and all of us giddy.
Just when I thought this day couldn't get any better, I ran into Chris and Dina on my way home. Dina and I were dressed exactly the same. We did the sensible thing: sat in Washington Square Park blaring Michael Jackson (R.I.P.) from an iPhone before going to a gallery opening. I then met up with Queenie, Amber, Elaine and Erin for dinner at
Joe Doe. It was delicious, but maybe avoid the prepared beers... they were, in a word, gross.
