Robert Mangold: Sol LeWitt & MoMA | "Exclusive" | Art21

Episode #181: Artist Robert Mangold, speaking from his upstate New York studio in 2011, explains how his friendship with the late artist Sol LeWitt, as well as his experience working as a security guard at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, influenced his approach to making art. Mangold worked at MoMA in the early 1960s, when guarding the museum's exhibitions was a common occupation for artists and poets, and it was here that he first met LeWitt (as well as Robert Ryman). LeWitt became one of Mangold's closest friends.

Robert Mangold translates the most basic of formal elements—shape, line, and color—into paintings, prints, and drawings whose simplicity of form expresses complex ideas. He renders the surface of each canvas with subtle color modulations and sinewy, hand-drawn graphite lines. Mangold works in multiple series of shaped canvases over many years, exploring variations on rings, columns, trapezoids, arches, and crosses, and compositions without centers. 

Learn more about the artist at:
http://www.art21.org/artists/robert-mangold

CREDITS: Producer: Ian Forster. Consulting Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Sollins. Camera: Joel Shapiro. Sound: Roger Phenix. Editor: Morgan Riles & Mark Sutton. Artwork Courtesy: Robert Mangold. Archival Images Courtesy: Robert Mangold & Sylvia Plimack Mangold. Photography: John Sherman. Theme Music: Peter Foley.

[Robert Mangold: Sol LeWitt & MoMA]

[SOUNDS OF BIRDS CHIRPING]

There was this area of pavement out there, behind the barn, and I have no idea why it was there.

There were three large blocks of concrete that made a paved area.

Every time I walked by it in the morning or the evening, I thought,

"This would be a great place for one of Sol's cement block sculptures."

So I showed him pictures of it and we made a trade for a large painting.

Sol was probably my best friend over the years.

We were friends for years and years and years.

We met at the MoMA when we were both guards in the early 60s.

Quite a few people worked there at that time, including Ryman,

and Flavin...although, Flavin wasn't there when I was there.

Tip of the hat to MoMA because they used to hire poets and painters

and writers of different types to be guards.

It was a nice job--the museum opened at 11 and closed at 5--

so it was not bad. [LAUGHS]

It was union wages and everybody liked it.

Although you got different assignments--

You might have one floor and another floor on different days, but...

To come in every day and be a part of the collection was great.

You got to stand around and look at people looking at art, and look at art.

I can remember going and seeing great paintings--contemporary paintings--

being in a hurry to get home and get in my studio

while that was still fresh in my mind.

While that intensity, that emotional high, was still...

So I could look at my painting and say,

"Does that have any of that or not?" [LAUGHS]

"Is there any of that in there?"

"I'd like there to be some of that in there."

Whenever I do new paintings--whenever I do new works--

I think of all kinds of these cultural connections.

You know, culture of the people you grew up with.

Art feeds off art, in a way,

and artists feed off artists.