Personal Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Sol LeWitt
American; 20th-century
St. Louis, MO: Pulitzer Arts Foundation
68%
Table. 1981. Painted wood and glass
I saw this piece as part of a big show at the Pulitzer surveying the work of Scott Burton, who made sculptures with the features of furniture. This sculpture of LeWitt's is much different from anything Burton made. All of Burton's work thematizes the conceptual distinction between furniture (design) and sculpture (art) by way of negating or complexifying the purely "formal" aspects of looking; LeWitt's table, on the other hand, seems to be using the furniture-form as a pretext for (rather than a challenge to) serialized sculpture. This object's marquee feature is how the structural/functional demands of a table facilitate, even necessitate, series and duplications, not the fact that art and furniture are different but overlapping things. Burton, I guess, uses furniture to better see art; LeWitt's sculpture uses the art-context to better understand a type of furniture. For aesthetic purposes, Burton's method tends to be more productive. (2024)