Visual Art

ON THE GRAND TIER
Through Fall 2026

SOL LEWITT

Wall Drawing #357
A 12-in (30-cm) grid covering the black wall. Within each 12-inch (30-cm) square, one arc from the midpoint of one side (the direction of the arcs and their placement are determined by the drafter).
White crayon, black pencil grid, black wall
First drawn by: Jo Watanabe
First installation: Zabriskie Gallery, New York, November 1981
Installation at New York City Center drawn by Lacey Fekishazy, Sarah Heinemann, and Gabriel Hurier
The LeWitt Estate and Paula Cooper Gallery, New York. Courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, New York.

New York City Center is honored to install a wall drawing by the renowned American artist Sol LeWitt in celebration of the performance on our stage in October 2023 of Lucinda Childs’s masterwork, Dance (1979), by the Lyon Opera Ballet.

LeWitt was a pioneer and leading figure of the Minimal and Conceptual Art movements.  He asserted that the artist is a generator of ideas and that the idea itself could be the work of art. His work ranged from sculpture, painting, and drawing to conceptual pieces that existed only as ideas or as components of the artistic process itself.

Wall Drawing #357, which is a development of the arc motif, was first made in November 1981 and is a tribute to choreographer Lucinda Childs. The arc, together with the straight line and the diagonal, comprise the formal range of her minimalist dances.

Lucinda Childs is known for her collaborations with visual artists, composers, directors, and designers such as John Adams, Philip Glass, Sol LeWitt, Peter Sellars, and Robert Wilson. Dance, encompassing three dances performed together without intermission, is set to the music of Phillip Glass with Sol LeWitt’s black-and-white film projected in front of the stage, creating instantaneous layerings of time.

LeWitt made his first-ever wall drawing for Paula Cooper Gallery in 1968, and it was considered radical, in part because this innovative form of drawing was intentionally temporary and often executed not just by LeWitt but also by other artists he invited to assist him. Each wall drawing begins as a set of instructions or a simple diagram to be followed. The drawing dimensions are variable to the size of the wall, and LeWitt entrusted many decisions in the execution of his work to the drafters.

LeWitt has been the subject of numerous one-artist exhibitions and his work is held in public collections worldwide. In 2008, MASS MoCA opened Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective, which will remain on view through 2033.

This is the first time this wall drawing has appeared in New York City since its initial installation at Zabriskie Gallery in 1981. It will remain on view at New York City Center until the fall of 2026.

TICKET HOLDERS

Audience members at mainstage performances throughout the season are invited to experience the installation before and after their performance.

SHUMAN LOUNGE
Jan – Nov 2024

Deborah Kass

Two for Sondheim

Day After Day, 2010 
Oil and acrylic on canvas 
6 x 21 feet 

Being Alive, 2012
9-color silkscreen and color blend on 2-ply museum board 
24 x 24 inches 
edition of 65

Deborah Kass (born 1952) is an American artist whose work explores American art, culture, and identity. Her early paintings mimic the styles of iconic male artists of the 20th century such as Andy Warhol, Ellsworth Kelly, and Frank Stella. Her use of appropriation is a commentary on the dominant position male artists have historically held. In more recent years, Kass has responded to the uncertain political and ecological climate by looking back on the 20th century with nostalgia. Day After Day (2010) is a monumental seven-panel painting inspired by Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics in “Not a Day Goes By” from the musical Merrily We Roll Along. Stylistically, it recalls the monochromatic paintings of Ellsworth Kelly, and the stenciled letters are a riff on Jasper Johns. It was made during the Obama administration when oil from a damaged BP rig was gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, day after day. It’s accompanied by a print of Kass’s painting Being Alive, taken from Sondheim’s musical Company and part of a series of work she calls “feel good paintings for feel bad times.”

Free to Ticket Holders

Audience members at mainstage performances throughout the season are invited to experience the exhibit before and after their performance.

Photo courtesy of the artist

ON THE GRAND TIER

Stephen Antonakos

Terrain #1, Terrain #4, Terrain #5, Terrain #3, 2011
Gold leaf on Tyvek, crumpled
17 x 14 inches 
Board: 23 x 20 inches
Signed “Antonakos” on board

Stephen Antonakos (St. Nicholas, Laconia, Greece, 1926 – New York, 2013) is known for his Direct Neons, Neon Panels, Neon Walls, Neon Rooms, Chapels, drawings, collages, Travel Collages, Artist’s Books, the conceptual Packages, more than 50 architecturally-sited Public Works, and more.

Throughout his almost 60-year practice, Antonakos explored ways that light activates space. His work is about “real things in real spaces in the here and now.” There are no representations or references. In these “Terrain” works—as with his best-known geometric work with neon—it is the material, the forms, and their relationships to their sites that define them. These are not images, but objects—abstract sculptures in frames.

The artist began his gold-leafed Tyvek sheets in 2010. Their titles—Site, Plain, Terrain, and Field—are clues that the works are, or at least start as, flat planes.

In the studio—after the proportions of each sheet and the specific shade, texture, and size of its gold-leaf squares had been decided and realized—Antonakos laid the work on his drawing table and simply looked until he knew what to do, whether one action of crumpling or several. “The important thing,” he said, “is to know when to stop.”

Even a flat gold-leafed sheet will look different according to the viewer’s angle of vision and the amount and direction of other light in the area. The complex, unpredictable reflections and shadows of the crumpled “Terrains” are practically endless—a gentle dynamism.

A major monograph by David Ebony covering 60 years of Antonakos’s practice was published by Rizzoli International in October 2023.

Courtesy Bookstein Projects, New York
Copyright © Stephen Antonakos Studio LLC

TICKET HOLDERS

Audience members at mainstage performances throughout the season are invited to experience the exhibit before and after their performance.

SPONSORS

Support for Visual Art at New York City Center is provided by
Deborah Goodman Davis and Gerald R. Davis