OF/FROM/FOR

Oral history interview with Sol LeWitt, 1974 July 15

MR. CUMMINGS: Did you ever make photographs like that?

MR. LeWITT: I did a few pieces using photographs. Well, there were two: they were called Muybridge 1 and Muybridge 2. The first one I had, I made a box which was about ten feet long, one foot high and about one foot, ten inches deep. They were made into ten compartments each, into the full room of the box. In each I had a photograph of a model walking towards the viewer. Muybridge always had them going at a perpendicular angle. But this one was walking directly towards the viewer. One, she was walking; the other, she was just sitting in a chair. It was a process of enlargement, using a same type of model. I did a couple others. A figure seen from four sides in a box. These were done about 1964. But those were the only things I did specifically using photographs.

MR. CUMMINGS: What happened, say, between ‘58 and ‘64? That’s quite a vast time.

MR. LeWITT: You mean in terms of my art? That’s when I went through the transition of the Abstract Expressionist to the still lifes to the smaller somersaulting figures. Back around ‘61, ‘62, I did things using one figure, the running figure repeated, and then like an arrow pointing that way, and then the word “run.” These things could be done on different levels. They were done as three dimensional paintings. I also was very intrigued by Albers, but the thing about Albers that I couldn’t grasp was that if he has colors that were receding, they should, I thought, physically recede; and if they advance, they should physically advance.

MR. CUMMINGS: Rather than an illusion, optical.

MR. LeWITT: Yeah, rather than an illusion. This, I think, was partially from the understanding of what Johns was doing, with three dimensional things were three dimensional, and two dimensional things were two dimensional. I thought this was a very good idea. Then I thought, “Well, it should be applied to Albers.” In the meantime I had all these Muybridge ideas in my head, so actually it came off much more simple than it seems. They had just too many things going on, too many ideas in them. Then I discarded the figure, and the word, and the symbol, and just started doing three dimensional things.

(Source: aaa.si.edu)