Tiré du site Artgallery : "The "Incomplete open cubes" are a sequence of open-sided cube structures, each missing between one and nine of their sides. At once repetitive and varied, this series lays out 122 possible variations on the concept. The 'Incomplete open cubes' exemplify LeWitt's conceptual practice and have been widely interpreted as embodying systematic rationality; they are based on an arithmetic concept which they then take to its logical extreme. While they are internally consistent, they also manifest an irrational, obsessive quality reflected in LeWitt's own comment that "irrational thoughts should be followed absolutely and logically". Here he presents a binary between the rational and the irrational."
"Books are the best medium for many artists working today," Sol LeWitt (1928-2007) once declared. A pioneer of artist's books, and co-founder of New York's Printed Matter bookstore in 1976, LeWitt is closely identified with the book as an art form. Starting with 1967's Serial Project No. 1 (from Aspen magazine), and closing with Chicago (Morning Star Publications, 2002), this book reproduces covers and spreads from Sol LeWitt's massive oeuvre of artist's books, almost all of which are now rarities. As artist's book historian Clive Phillpot notes, "the principle attribute of LeWitt's books is one common to all books: a dependence upon sequence, whether of families of marks or objects, or of single or permuted series which have clear beginnings and endings." Critical observations from LeWitt himself and a variety of scholars make this volume the most sustained treatment of LeWitt's prolific activity in this area to date.
131 Variations is a reinterpretation of Sol Lewitt's "122 Variations of Incomplete Open Cubes". Fleur van Dodewaard set about recreating and photographing the piece seeking to produce an exact copy. But in the process things went wrong: some cubes went missing, others appeared double and previously unknown variants arose. With her "131 Variations" Van Dodewaard demonstrates that the 122 variations listed and presented by Lewitt did not represent an exhaustive spectrum of all conceivable possibilities. Accordingly, the "failure" consciously introduces moments of arbitrariness, inconsistency and irrationality into this aleatory process to allow for an element of coincidence, thereby challenging mathematical logic.
A revised, updated edition of Peterson's classic work. Presents the latest information on mathematical proofs, fractals, prime numbers, and chaos, as well as new material on such intriguing topics as the relationship between mathematical knots and DNA; the application of cellular automata models to social questions; and the significant increase in the speed of factoring large composite numbers by means of computers based on quantum logic.
A fascinating look at LeWitt's deceptively simple geometric sculptures, which epitomize the artist's aim "to recreate art" by starting "from square one"
A revelatory consideration of the wide-ranging practice of one of the most influential American artists of the 20th century A pioneer of minimalism and conceptual art, Sol LeWitt (1928–2007) is best known for his monumental wall drawings. LeWitt’s broad artistic practice, however, also included sculpture, printmaking, photography, artist’s books, drawings, gouaches, and folded and ripped paper works. From the familiar to the underappreciated aspects of LeWitt’s oeuvre, this book examines the ways that his art was multidisciplinary, humorous, philosophical, and even religious. Locating Sol LeWitt contains nine new essays that explore the artist’s work across media and address topics such as LeWitt’s formative friendships with colleagues at the Museum of Modern Art in the early 1960s; his photographs of Manhattan’s Lower East Side; his 1979 collaboration with Lucinda Childs and Philip Glass and its impact on his printmaking; and his commissions linked to Jewish history and the Holocaust. The essays offer insights into the role of parody, experimentation, and uncertainty in the artist’s practice, and investigate issues of site, space, and movement. Together, these studies reveal the full scope of LeWitt’s creativity and offer a multifaceted reassessment of this singular and influential artist.
Fiction. A war veteran has a crisis on a beach. A woman experiences the stopping of time and is humbled and energized. A family takes a trip through Virginia. A college graduate gets a job as a cook on a boat. A little girl selects a gift for her grandmother. A little boy has a halting conversation with his parents before he leaves the house. A woman remembers an affair. A house is struck by lightning. We sit, hunched over the words that appear on our smartphone screens, altogether unaware of the story of our lives that is going on around us, even as we focus on the minutiae of our social media "friends'" daily activities. These are the stories that draw our undivided attention, and these are the types of deftly observed, wholly engrossing narratives that make up Stephen Thomas's debut flash-fiction collection, THE JOKES. Presented in the form of a series of moments in a social media-like 'feed, ' this collection of very short stories riffs on the form of 'the joke, ' but as this might be understood by the best culture-critical comedians of our time: Andy Kaufman, Stephen Wright, Norm McDonald, Jon Stewart, Richard Pryor. And much like those stand-up artists who sanctified the joke-form, these stories deal with sometimes-intense subjects, yet with a kind of SSRI-like placidity that allows readers to cling to each word as the narratives unfold. Sad and funny, hopeful and determined, nostalgic and cerebral, the vignettes in The Jokes offer a very personal, yet amazingly relatable entry-point into some of the big ideas that trouble our times-religion, sexuality, life and death, and ways of being in the world-all while coloured by touches of weird otherworldliness that living in someone else's social media feed can bring. "Stephen Thomas is a writer who's smart, thoughtful, engaging, but also mischievous, like a little kid who knows he shouldn't misbehave, but does it anyway. His debut collection, THE JOKES, feels to me like an absent-minded Lydia Davis trying to write deadpan comedy skits for Cartoon Network's Tim & Eric. It's anti-humour that's actually funny, sketches in which nothing is ever resolved, mini-stories that start at Point A and then seem to forget what they were even talking about. This is a book full of surprises." --Guillaume Morissette "Lydia Davis and Etgar Keret move in together and decide to adopt a son. They settle on Stephen Thomas. He has a pithy style and a funny bone. Years later, at the launch of his book THE JOKES, Stephen reads a little story. It packs a novel's worth of material into two short paragraphs. At the back of the room, sipping their red wine, Lydia and Etgar beam."--Neil Smith "Stephen Thomas writes little stories, but be wary of little things: they punch and expand and bruise and heal and break and reveal; they are revelatory. If you are an addict, the stories in Stephen Thomas's THE JOKES will be your next drug of choice. Not only can you not read just one, you must binge--and so you turn the page, blissful and aching."--Lily Hoang
