The mechanics of writing: Sol LeWitt, Stéphane Mallarmé and Roland Barthes

Abstract

Sol LeWitt's text ‘Sentences on Conceptual Art’ is one of the most cited artists’ writings of the 1960s, a decade when the stagnation of modernist criticism prompted an increasing number of practitioners to theorise their work. Since then, art historians have deployed LeWitt's ‘Sentences’ to interpret his artistic practice, seeking access to the artist's intentions in these terse pronouncements. Others have highlighted the contradictory nature of LeWitt's writings, not least when they address the relationship between art and language (see above). But for LeWitt, the ‘Sentences’ were neither a key to understanding his work, nor a deliberate foil to that endeavour. Instead, he described them cryptically as: ‘an operational diagram to automate art’. This article takes seriously LeWitt's playful suggestion that his ‘Sentences’ are a kind of diagram which, rather than simply explaining his practice, might enable it to function mechanically. Although LeWitt's interest in the machine has been previously noted, the author traces his vocabulary to an article on ‘Mallarmé and Serialist Thought’ LeWitt read during the mid-1960s. Stéphane Mallarmé’s description of his Book as a ‘mechanism’ set in motion by an ‘operator’ proved highly influential for LeWitt, who adopted similar language in his writings on conceptual art. By exploring this encounter the author will highlight their shared, mechanical vocabulary, and a common urge to displace the author by constructing a permutational system. Another text by LeWitt took the form of an instruction manual, published alongside Roland Barthes's ‘The Death of the Author’ in a 1967 issue of Aspen magazine dedicated to Mallarmé. Issues of authorship, appropriation and homage were paramount during this prolific moment in the recent history of artists’ writings.