Wall Drawing 579

Three concentric arches. The outside one is blue; the middle red; and the inside one is yellow.

November 1988

Color ink wash

Private collection, New York

First Installation
Sala 1, Rome

First Drawn By
Andrea Marescalchi

MASS MoCA Building 7
Second Floor

The original installation of Wall Drawing 579, at Sala 1 in Rome, Italy, featured curved bands of color filling the space beneath an arch. In the installation at MASS MoCA, the arch shape is drawn on a rectangular wall. While the drawing is positioned with respect to the wall’s particular shape and dimensions, it is not as reliant or respondent to its architectural support as in the original installation.

Backstory
Sol LeWitt was deeply involved with determining the layout of Building #7, the site of this retrospective. The effect of his overseeing the selection and placement of works in the exhibit is to provide insight into the way he, the artist, thought of his own body of work. The placement of Wall Drawing 579 on a square wall, for example, can be further discussed in terms of the drawings nearby. Most interesting, perhaps, is its proximity to several wall drawings that deal with irregular grids (Wall Drawing 614, Wall Drawing 766), revealing a tendency in LeWitt’’s practice to experiment with the non-logical side of the fundamental drafting techniques he emphasizes.