at the same time, not present false testimony as he had in the I. M. Pei case. According to Doyle, when the inspector asked, “Do you live here, too?” LeWitt replied, “Would you live in such a place?”47 This answer, apparently, solved the issue.
In those days, as no artist in the circle could afford extravagance, they helped each other as best they could. For example, LeWitt became part of the construction crew when Doyle and Hesse moved from Eighteenth Street to the Bowery, an area where the rents were cheap, the working spaces were ample (their place, though ramshackle, had wide floorboards and two fireplaces), and the conveniences of life scarce. So was privacy and a sense of safety, though Doyle said, “the bums were so drunk they wouldn’t bother you.”48
Doyle had just finished building a studio for the jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman, and he needed immediate help to make a studio space for himself and Hesse. LeWitt arrived at the right time. He helped install plumbing in the bathroom, repair the plaster walls, and put in a toilet and bathtub. Doyle very much appreciated the help, though he noted that “Sol wasn’t a great mechanic.”49
When everything was done, Doyle and Hesse set up shop, with space enough to invite others in who had worked alongside of them before the move. So Grace Bakst Wapner and Ethelyn Honig also did their artwork in the Bowery district.
Still in her mid-twenties, Wapner became part of the LeWitt-Doyle-Hesse-MoMA circle in 1960 without any real intention of doing so. Though she had graduated with a bachelor of arts degree from Bennington College a few years earlier and had taken courses in sculpture and ceramics, she had followed a conventional path for young women at the time—marrying young, having children, and thinking of art as something of a hobby. She was convinced that her own talent, whatever it was, should be confined to producing things that would never be seen in public. Her attitude, in short, was a common one among female artists in a male-dominated profession.
Even so, on weekdays she took the kids to school and then rode buses from the Upper West Side to the Lower East Side to work on her art and pursue her blossoming friendship with Doyle, LeWitt, and Hesse.
LeWitt was known throughout this period and later for providing encouragement to artists without regard to gender, a rare gift in those days. Both Hesse and Wapner were recipients of his guidance. Wapner recalled:
I was a totally immature artist then, just beginning to find my way. I didn’t know Warhol, Lichtenstein, or [James] Rosenquist. Sol deliberately took me around to meet various artists: Judd, Flavin, [Carl] Andre. I remember that we had lunch with Carl, and he doodled on a napkin, and then Sol picked it up and put it in his pocket.
Sol helped me a great deal. There was something about his mind and the way it worked. We spent a lot of time together, he often came with me to pick up the kids from school, and we talked about everything.50
LeWitt gave Wapner other rare gifts. On Mozart’s birthday, he brought her keys from an old piano. And he gave her lists of books to read by Leo Tolstoy, Joseph Conrad, and Gustave Flaubert, as well as Jane Austin’s Emma. He was a Henry Higgins to her Eliza Doolittle, but much kinder than Higgins. He was also something of a Harry Houdini, or perhaps merely an ordinary thief.
One day Wapner discovered that “I was missing a piece from my [sculpture] work. There were a lot of scraps I had been putting together. I was sure I had this piece there somewhere, but couldn’t find it. Two weeks later, Sol showed up with box of primary colors on the outside, and little holes to peek through.”51 On the bottom it said, “The most important thing is on the inside.” It was her missing piece. Three years later that missing piece was still in the box that LeWitt had borrowed from her so that he could include it, titled Cube with Random Holes Containing an Object, as one of two pieces in his first gallery show—a piece that, obviously, asked the viewer to go beyond what could be seen.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
