Sol Lewitt went tets up and Jerry Saltz takes a moment to let us know. There is the usual he was a great artist stuff - but what I find interesting is Jerry's not so subtle dig at the contemporary art world. "To his credit and detriment, LeWitt was the number one jewel in the Conceptual-Minimalist crown -- the best of a good thing that started a long time ago, just kept going and now has gone stale. Call it Installationism, our equivalent of the French Academy; in this ism institutions fill exhibition halls, atriums, corridors and stairwells with permanent or provisional arrangements that everyone agrees are works of art but pretends are radical and revolutionary, all the same. Like the old academy, the new academy has kept mediocre artists busy, boardmembers happy and audiences from getting bored." Poor old Sol. But Jerry makes the point that Sol was the best of the bunch, the top banana, the big cheese, the head of lettuce, the big tomato and any other ridiculous food reference you can make. I happen to like Sol's writings, but I never warmed to the art. I always felt like it was too interior design, too pretty and meaningless, sort of like famous people on TV. Great to look at, but someone I would walk right past after meeting them. Hey isn't that so & so, yep now where's the food - and I'd head off to look at Dekooning.
Sol Lewitt was an iconoclast - the last of a generation intent on making something new and revolutionary - but as Jerry implies in his article - once that generation achieved the power - they did nothing with it. It became an endless parade of the same stuff. From revolutionary to professional in one easy step. It is the same critique that Baudrillard made for the generation of 1968 and it holds true today in our lackluster world of POMO insidiousness.
Did Sol approve? Who knows? But he did leave a legacy of thought that we should understand and use!