American

Sol Lewitt

U.S. b. 1928
Tower Maquette 91.0002

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Art movements in the 1960s focused on the tiredness of conventional painting and encouraged artists to avoid the elite position of art and artist. Many artists found themselves opposed to traditional objects, others wanted to ridicule the system and the market, while others felt confined by the gallery space. So artists held on to materials and jettisoned the object, stating that language and ideas are the true essence of art and the senses were secondary or even non-essential. The term "conceptual art" was coined in the 1960s to categorize just such artwork. LeWitt defined his wall drawings and minimalist white cubes as conceptual and wrote extensively in the 1960s and 1970s on the importance of the idea as the "machine that makes the art." His minimalist "structures" as he calls them, like Tower, usually involve permutations of basic geometrical elements arranged in a boxlike construction. Tower and the LeWitt wall drawings at the River Center were Davenport's first public art project in 1987. Tower was moved to the Figge Plaza from the River Center in October 2004.

 

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