Don’t Paint Over It: The History of Sol LeWitt’s Wall Drawing #849: Irregular Blobs of Color

By Georgia Cantrell

You know the “random” mural painted in the Cornelia Center? The one you’ve probably heard people complain about. Well, it isn’t so random and I’m here to tell you why and hopefully at the end you’ll have a different perspective and a deeper understanding. With that, here’s a brief history on Sol LeWitt’s Wall Drawing #849: Irregular Blobs of Color.

First, some background on the artist himself. Sol LeWitt was born in Hartford, CT in 1928. LeWitt received is BFA from Syracuse University and served in the US Army during the Korean War. In 1953 he moved to New York where he worked for Seventeen magazine. He is now regarded as a founder of both Minimal and Conceptual art as he believed “the idea becomes a machine that makes the art”. His works are now a part of museum collections across the United States including the MOMA, Wadsworth Atheneum, Guggenheim, and the SFMOMA just to name a few. Unfortunately, LeWitt died in New York in 2007 leaving behind his wife Carol and an incredible career in art.

Now on to the piece itself. Wall Drawing #849, was offered to the school as a favor to Art History Professor Alden Gordon ’69. During this project LeWitt recalled fond memories of Trinity’s campus and the surrounding neighborhood where he would play as a child. The artist proposed three versions for the project as conceptual colored prototypes which the school owns. From these, the Irregular Blobs of Color version was chosen. The final drawing seen in the Cornelia Center was completed in June and July of 1998 through a collaboration with LeWitt’s team of assistants and the college’s own students and faculty. Making Trinity College the proud owner of what is believed to be the only convex-concave two-part design the artist ever made for a Wall Drawing.

At this point you might be wondering, “so he didn’t actually paint the piece himself?” Well, not exactly. The team of assistants and Trinity College participants were responsible for transferring the design to the walls through taping the contours and painting. In discussion with Professor Gordon he recalls, “Sol LeWitt may have come to see it in progress only once to talk to his studio assistants about the preparation of the wall. He never himself went up on scaffolding to do any taping or painting”. This leads me to my next and final point.

In the process of creating a Wall Drawing, LeWitt writes up a set of instructions that are both vague enough and strict enough to result in a one-of-a-kind piece. For example, let’s say his instructions were “draw four lines not touching, draw six cubes 3 inches below a circle…” my drawing would look completely different from someone else’s. This is because my interpretation of the instructions is going to be different, I might choose to use black ink for my lines and a fuchsia oil pastel for my circle. While you might choose a neon yellow highlighter for your lines and red ink for your cubes. Either way, we are both creating a Sol LeWitt drawing by following his instructions and his idea. Which goes back to the point of “the idea becomes a machine that makes the art”. Through this the artist breaks down the often expense barrier of entry in creating art and allows for the creation of art to be more publicly accessible. By following a simple set of instructions anyone can be an artist.

This is the cultural significance Sol LeWitt holds as an artist. By allowing for the idea to create the piece of art it causes the form of the piece to follow the concept of the idea. LeWitt’s revolutionary way of looking at the artistic process brought him to the forefront of conceptual art movement.