François Morellet/Sol LeWitt: A Case Study Revisited

Resuming his examination of pseudomorphism from October 154, Yve-Alain Bois argues that the striking resemblances between works by François Morellet and Sol LeWitt are the result of structurally different notions of systems. They each arrived at results that might look similar, but only from a superficial, morphological point of view. Very early on, Morellet set out to purge elements of personal taste—which seemed to him akin to the worst aspects of European postwar abstraction—from his systematic approach. It was through the attempt to suppress choice, and thus composition, that he finally adopted adopted chance as a master organizer of his work. While the premises of Morellet and LeWitt are often identical (both rejected the arbitrariness of composition and the subjectivism of gestural abstraction), and their respective toolkits have many elements in common, as in any other case of pseudomorphism, the works themselves have a different meaning—or assert differently their author's craving for meaninglessness—because the historical and geographical context of their occurrence is different.