12 minutes to discover the making of Sol LeWitt's work!

The Centre des monuments nationaux (CMN) and the Centre national des arts plastiques (Cnap) have embarked on the re-creation of Sol LeWitt's Wall Drawing #752, which will complete the major restoration work being carried out on the King's pavilion in 2020 and 2021.

The project to recreate Sol LeWitt's work ran from 14 March to 20 April 2022.

The King's pavilion was built for Louis Gouffier between 1625 and 1635. In 2020 and 2021, work was carried out to reinforce the foundations of certain parts of this 17th-century pavilion and to repair the damage that had occurred at various levels of the building. In the geometric figures room, it houses Sol LeWitt's Wall Drawing #752, commissioned by the Centre national des arts plastiques (CNAP) in 1994 as part of the Curios & Mirabilia series of works assembled by Jean-Hubert Martin.

Sol LeWitt's work takes the form of a collection of geometric figures covering the entire four walls of the room in chromatic combinations of red, blue, yellow and grey inks.

This work, inscribed on a lining of the walls, did not allow access to the original walls. With the agreement of the CNAP, it was essential to remove the work. In keeping with the artist's initial approach, Wall Drawing #752 can now be reinterpreted so that it can be seen by everyone in the King's pavilion.

Sol LeWitt, a major conceptual artist of twentieth-century art, has often used the metaphor of the music composer, whose work can be played for centuries from a score. The diagrams and instructions he provided for each of his works, like the musical score, are composed of a basic graphic vocabulary in which lines, shapes and colours are described. In this way, they make it possible to update a Wall Drawing.

Based on this principle, many of Sol LeWitt's works are preserved in the form of their diagrams alone, and recreated from time to time for temporary exhibitions by teams of "interpreters".

Most of the work is carried out by mixed teams, made up of people with experience of Wall Drawings and those without, opening the way to a freer interpretation of the diagram. Everyone is invited to follow the instructions and the diagram defined by Sol LeWitt, like musicians interpreting a score, with respect for the work in question. Each member of the team is an essential element in the interpretation of the work. For the recreation of Wall Drawing #752 at the Château d'Oiron, the work began by transferring the diagram onto the wall, which first involved positioning the points of intersection of the figures and then tracing the shapes. The colours are then applied in several stages, using different processes developed by the Sol LeWitt studio.

The team of interpreters is made up of representatives of the Sol LeWitt Studio (USA):

• John Hogan, Director of Wall Drawings Installations, Studio Sol LeWitt (USA)
• Andrew Colbert, Senior Draughtsman, Site Manager (USA/Finland)
• Johan Christ-Bertrand, draughtsman (France)
• Mahsa Razavi, designer (Iran/Italy)

Plus a local team of artists: Michel Dailler, Isabelle Dehay, Lou Villapadierna, Anthony Bodin for around a month's work.

Presented in the King's Pavilion, Wall Drawing #752 is a reminder of the Renaissance man's interest in geometry, particularly in the form of finely carved wooden or ivory polyhedra, and at Château d'Oiron in the ceiling of Claude Gouffier's former 16th-century flats.

Almost half a century after Claude Gouffier's commission, the work also echoes the gallery of paintings from 1547-1549, challenging its system of perspectival representation.