Wall Drawing 824

A black square divided in two parts by a wavy line. One part flat; one glossy.

April 1997

Acrylic paint

824A,B,C,E,F,H,J,K,L,M,N: Courtesy of the Estate of Sol LeWitt (Designated for Yale University Art Gallery)

824G: Lent by Alan Gibbs

First Installation
Ace Gallery, New York

First Drawn By
Artistides Dé Leon, Sachiko Cho, Derek Edwards, Naomi Fox, Henry Levine, Sunhee Lim, Jason Livingston, Emil Memon, Travis Molkenbur, Caroline Rothwell

MASS MoCA Building 7
Third Floor

Wall Drawing 824 demonstrates Sol LeWitt’’s interest in the effects of glossy and matte finishes on monochromatic paint. The wall drawing was created for an exhibit at the Ace Gallery, New York, at which LeWitt’’s first painted wall drawings were displayed. In several works in the exhibit, including Wall Drawing 824, LeWitt used a curvy line to divide the two areas and their different finishes. The drawing consists of a series of squares divided by various permutations of undulating lines. The iteration of the curvy line reveals LeWitt’’s interest in seriality, which began early in his artistic career and continued into his works which use paint as a medium.

Backstory
Though Wall Drawing 824 and most of the wall drawings created in the decade following 1997 are largely executed in acrylics, LeWitt continued to refer to them as ‘drawings’ rather than ‘murals,’ stressing the inclusion of these pieces in the rigorously intellectual continuum of his oeuvre.