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LeWitt Moves: Choreographing the Printed Image

This essay explores Sol LeWitt's printmaking from the 1970s and the 1990s, specifically a lithograph, a silkscreen, and several etchings that employ a medium-specific strategy of rotating the print matrix to produce single images or series. Interpreted in light of the artist's 1979 venture into film and dance (in collaboration with Lucinda Childs and Philip Glass), these prints reveal a system of choreographed moves (quarter turns, half turns, a reversal) that must be mentally and perceptually deciphered and thus re-created by viewers. Set in motion, LeWitt's lines and brushstrokes interact in unpredictable and chaotic ways, yet an organizing structure emerges.