Sol Lewitt: A Book Of Instructions And Drawings

INTRODUCTION "Conceptual Art" is a contemporary form of artistic representation, in which a specific concept or idea, often personal, complex and inclusive, takes shape in an abstract, nonconforming manner, based upon a negation of aesthetic principles. Conceptual art is art in which the concepts or ideas involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions. This method was fundamental to LeWitt's definition of Conceptual art, one of the first to appear in print. In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important
An example of Heuristic art, or a series of instructions for how to obtain an aesthetic experience. * 1965: A complex conceptual art piece by John Latham called Still and Chew. He invites art students to protest against the values of Clement Greenberg's Art and Culture much praised and taught in London's St. Martin's School of Art where Latham taught. Pages of Greenberg's book borrowed from the college library are chewed by the students, dissolved in acid and the resulting solution returned to the library bottled and labelled. Latham was then fired from his part-time position. Joseph Kosuth dates the concept of One and Three Chairs in the year 1965. The presentation of the work consists of a chair, its photo and a blow up of a definition of the word "chair". Kosuth has chosen the definition from a dictionary. Four versions with different definitions are known. * 1966: N.E. Thing Co. Ltd. Iain and Ingrid Baxter of Vancouver exhibited Bagged Place the contents of a four room apartment wrapped in plastic bags. The same year they registered as a corporation and subsequently organized their practice along corporate models, one of the first international examples of the "aesthetic of