In the run up to the opening this Sunday of the big 25-year installation Sol LeWitt wall drawings at MASS MoCA, I’ve been thinking about what made those drawings fascinating. LeWitt was one of the earliest Conceptual artists, a pioneer of the idea that the idea behind a work of art was more important than the execution. As an artist and a polemicist, he was counted among the Conceptualist and Minimalists who were bringing art back to square one, reducing it to its essentials. Early in his career, in the mid-60s, he was probably best known for white cube gridwork sculptures — he preferred to call them structures — physical expressions of ideas about relation and sequence. Ideas, really, of pure order.
Open Geometric Structure 2-2, 1-1, 1991/ © The LeWitt Collection
60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley died of leukemia today at age 65. His condition was not widely publicized--he was still doing big pieces for the newsmagazine this fall, in his 26th season--so his death would have struck a chord regardless, but he will also be missed for who he was. It's common for a famous journalist to get an outsized goodbye when he passes away--especially from other journalists--but Bradley was one TV-news star who, in an era of polarization and distrust of the media, people just liked.
It shouldn't have to be said, but such is life, that Bradley was a rare and early example of a prominent, behind-the-desk and in-the-field African American in TV news. It was sadly fitting that, when CNN broke the news this morning, one of the anchors at the desk was Tony Harris, who, voice breaking, said Bradley was "first of all, an incredible role model for an African American in this business," such as Harris himself. There were few black TV journalists when he began his career, and while representation across the board has improved, 25 years after he joined the 60 Minutes staff, he remained one of the few true African American stars of TV news.
It would be an insult, though, to remember him only as "the black 60 Minutes star." He was a great interviewer, with a mellow but confident style that served well with subjects from artists to killers. And Bradley stood out as an unusual type: the hipster-journalist. He had a lifelong interest in music and worked as a jazz DJ in Philadelphia; he quit a job with WCBS in 1971, moved to Paris and wrote poetry; he was one of the few, and maybe the first, male TV journalists to wear an earring (and wear it well). These aren't just interesting trivia points--well, maybe the earring is--they're a sign of a diversity of interests, a broad cultural curiosity and an intellectual adventurism that is too rare among journalists in an age of hyperprofessionalism and wonky, laser-like specialization in a particular beat.
Bradley's death continues an ongoing changing of the guard at 60 Minutes, also marked by the departure of Dan Rather and the stepping back of Mike Wallace, among other shifts. At this point, the newsmagazine is probably more about the brand than its people, and it will continue on. But the TV journalism business just got a little less interesting.
But in 1968 he made his first wall drawing at the Paula Cooper gallery in Manhattan, a drawing (which he executed himself) of a kind that not only brought drawing back to its most basic element — the straight line — but which eventually didn’t require the artist himself to execute it. LeWitt very soon understood that a LeWitt drawing could simply be a set of instructions to assistants — or to anybody — fastidious directives that described a structure of vertical, horizontal and diagonal lines that the drawing would make make visible.
The earliest LeWitt at MASS MoCA, Drawing #11, which was executed at Paula Cooper in 1969 by LeWitt and two other artists, is like that. The instructions describe “a wall divided horizontally and vertically into four equal parts. Within each part, three of the four kinds of lines are superimposed.”
The outcome looks like this.
Wall Drawing 11, 1969 / Yale University Art Gallery
One more post about the racist who keeps on giving: in my column this week I discussed how, after Michael Richards' onstage meltdown, one of the first pressing questions was, How will this affect the DVD sales? Well, according to the good folks at TMZ.com, who first posted the Richards video, we have our answer. The site--in turn citing DVDempire.com--says, "Sales of season seven of "Seinfeld" are up 75% over season six and 90% over season five."
All hate-filled racist publicity is good hate-filled racist publicity! You may now commence showering.
The lovely paradox of course was that these stringent rules could produce strangely beautiful drawings, not just diagrams but angular forcefields and cloudy, fluctuating surfaces. Much more than his sculpture, which was just as hard as the thinking behind it, the drawings eventually took on a lyrical quality.
It wasn’t long before LeWitt added color to the mix, first colored pencils, then latex paints, India ink and acrylics.
Wall Drawing 340 (detail), 1980/photo: Lacayo
Friday Night Lights goes back to school this Friday. NBC Photo: Bill Records
Aaron Barnhart and I do not call each other up and plan what to write about any given day, what to wear (he's better dressed than I am) or anything else. But the same morning that I used
my Aliens in America review to confess that I never felt the Summer of Love for The Wonder Years, Barnhart matches me blasphemy for blasphemy, volunteering that
he never cared for Freaks and Geeks.
People are especially invested in TV shows about school, I think, because while we may not all have been cops or bionic women, we've just about all sat through assemblies and climbed (or descended) the popularity ladder. Anyway, it sounds like a challenge to me, and it's time to pick sides:
What's your favorite TV series set in school? And as a sub-question, do you like your school shows realistic or escapist? (Barnhart, I should note, says F&G turned him off for much the same reason I liked it--it was too close to homeroom). [
Update: Commenter Allison reminds me of
Tim Goodman's entry on the subject, of which my post is a total, 100% ripoff.]
It's probably clear that F&G is tops for me, but I'd have to give close runner-up spots to Daria and the first year and a half of The O.C, off the top of my head. (And, if you expand the field to college, to my much-maligned top-100 list choice, Felicity.) As for current shows, Friday Night Lights is my undisputed state champion. But enough about me. Boy Meets World fans, represent!
Early on he also started to produce directions that allowed his assistant more latitude in the drawing process. “Vertical lines, not straight, not touching, covering the wall evenly” — try doing that twice the same way.
And it’s here that I think LeWitt’s work took off in directions you wouldn’t have predicted. In the ’60s he could describe Conceptual art this way: “All decisions are made beforehand, so execution becomes a perfunctory affair.” But gradually a certain amount of subjectivity and individual decision making crept in. He conceived drawings that depended in the execution upon how tall the assistants were who drew them. And drawings that directed an assistant to make a wiggly line and then for other assistants to attempt to imitate it. Towards the end of his life there were dark, pulsing scribble drawings that will inevitably be different every time they’re executed.
Wall Drawing 1186, 2005/photo: MASS MoCA
David Oyelowo (As You Like It), as the missing woman's husband. HBO photo: Nick Brigg
HBO's miniseries Five Days is another victim of my new-season triage, but I'm going to try to keep up with it as it goes (Tuesdays, consecutive weeks though Oct. 30). Don't consider this a review, therefore, but from what I've watched so far, it looks worth a try for fans of the hard-nosed, Prime Suspect-like, bleak-smart-procedural genre. Coproduced with the BBC, it follows the disappearance of a young mother--who goes missing buying flowers at a roadside stand--and her two children, who wander off looking for her and disappear themselves. (Hence, fair warning to any of you who, like me, have a hard time dealing with children-in-peril plots.) The film--each episode set on a different day over the lengthy investigation--covers the search, the family fallout and the media circus. Caveat emptor, but what I've seen so far makes me want to watch further.
As for returning shows, I'm keeping Reaper on Tivo season pass. Cane, not so much. And you? Week two of the season, folks! Time to get ruthless!
In this he reminds me sometimes of Eva Hesse, the artist who was the great hinge on which a lot of possibilities turned. She was just 34 when she died in 1970 but she had time to extend the possibilities of Minimalism by using very basic forms — boxes, lines, coils — as a way to suggest all kinds of human dramas and anxieties, especially about the body. Anxiety wasn’t necessarily LeWitt’s concern, but he gradually re-admitted the human touch into what were supposed to be his immaculate conceptions. His drawings may begin as purely rational constructs…..
#1085 Drawing Series — Composite, Part I-IV, #1-24, A+B (detail), conceived 1968, executed 2006/ Estate of Sol LeWitt
This one's just for the other people who have to work today. The rest of you, go off somewhere and stuff yourselves with turkey-cranberry sandwiches or buy one of those 12-packs of Xbox 360s that Sam's Club has on sale or whatnot.
For my working people, whiling away the time on Tuned In on your boss's dime, a Leftover Day TV Tip: HBO debuts its new music-interview show Off the Record tonight at 11 p.m. E.T., with host Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics, sitting down with Bono and the Edge of U2.
U2 are kind of the Italian food of pop music--nobody doesn't like them. But the band is so universally praised, admired, sanctified and loved, or at least kind of liked, that I suspected there was nothing interesting left to hear about them. But even though I'm merely in the kind-of-like category--the last time I had any serious interest in them, I was in college and growing a Robert Smith haircut somewhere around the Joshua Tree era--I was pleasantly surprised.
Stewart is not exactly a put-'em-in-the-crosshairs interviewer: his idea of a rigorous question is "Tell me about Bad," or "Talk about when you were in Berlin," but something about the relaxed, musicians talking to musicians atmosphere elevates it above Inside the Actors Studio. True, most of the conversation involves Bono and The Edge each telling the other how great and overly modest he is. Yet it does result in an interesting dissection of why the band sounds like it does. For instance, The Edge explains that he developed his distinctive ringing, percussive style of guitar playing in part in reaction to Adam Clayton's aggressive bass playing--because Clayton plays so much more melodically than the typical bassist, The Edge considered himself and drummer Larry Mullen to be the rhythm section of the band.
The interview focuses surprisingly heavily on the early half of the band's career--up to around Achtung Baby--which I would say is fitting because that's when the band stopped being interesting and became megafamous. But you could just as well say is simply canny marketing to aging, I Love the '80s Gen Xers like myself, who will be intrigued by hearing Bono reveal that the man described in "Bullet the Blue Sky" ("
This guy comes up to me/ His face red like a rose on a thorn bush/ Like all the colors of a royal flush/ And he's peeling off those dollar bills...") is Ronald Reagan.
Not to mention, bless him for ending poverty and human sadness or whatever he's currently doing, but it is simply a blessed freaking relief to hear Bono talk about music for a change. Praise God and pass the cranberry sauce.
But they end as the signs of a human hand on the wall, a definition of art so basic and “minimal” it goes back to those prehistoric handprints in the caves in Lascaux.
Hand stencil in the Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave/photo: French Ministry of Culture
I'll be interviewed on the syndicated Satellite Sisters radio show today at 12:30 p.m. E.T., talking about the new TV season and my top-100 TV list. Where can you listen to it? Um... good question! You can stream the live show online (or download the podcast later)
here. (NOTE:
Does not actually require a satellite!)
Or you can look at
the affiliate list and see if a station near you carries the show. Ottumwa, Iowa, you lucky town! Big love to Radar O'Reilly!
