Wall Drawing 880

Loopy Doopy (orange and green).

September 1998

Acrylic paint

Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts; partial gift of the artist and partial museum purchase with funds from Mimi Won and anonymous donor.

First Installation
PaceWildenstein, New York

First Drawn By
Elizabeth Alderman, Sachiko Cho, Edy Ferguson, Anders Felix Paux Hedberg, Choichi Nishikawa, Jim Prez, Emily Ripley, Mio Takashima

MASS MoCA Building 7
Third Floor

Wall Drawing 880 is one of several wall drawings subtitled Loopy Doopy, which are based on drawings that Sol LeWitt made from taping two pencils together and twisting them across the paper to form an undulating pattern. The orange and green version of Loopy Doopy was first displayed alongside the black and white Loopy Doopy in an exhibit of new wall drawings at PaceWildenstein in 1998. For this exhibit it was executed on a 70-foot wall.

The Loopy Doopy series followed LeWitt’’s first painted wall drawings, which mostly featured monochrome or two-toned areas of color divided by curvy lines. In comparison to these earlier painted wall drawings, such as Wall Drawing 822 (also on display at MASS MoCA), the Loopy Doopy works appear much freer and more fluid in form. As in many of LeWitt’’s acrylic wall drawings, the vibrant colors of Wall Drawing 880 bounce off of each other, creating a vibrating optical effect.

Backstory
The combination of orange and green in Wall Drawing 880 creates such an intense contrast that the effect is dizzying, making it difficult for the draftsmen to execute the final touch-ups. For the bulk of the process only one color is visible at a time — the draftsmen apply the orange paint, and then mask it off with paper and tape before applying the green paint. However, for the touch-ups to the wall, both colors are uncovered so that the draftsmen can work on the barriers between the colors.