ART + Architecture
Bechtler Museum. Photo by Eric Bahrs. two Botta buildings in the country, the other being San Francisco’s MoMA. Bechtler’s family began collecting modern art in Switzerland in the 1950s, and they forged lasting relationships with artists who were then just emerging. The relational nature of their manner of collecting came to define the collection as a whole. The Bechtlers eventually amassed a remarkable array of modern art, and Andreas not only inherited much of the collection, but also the reverence for the artist/patron relationship that his family had fostered. Andreas Bechtler eventually committed his collection to the city of Charlotte, and while the collection is primarily modernist, it is a contemporary piece, a gigantic Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing #995, that greets you passionately as you enter the museum. The piece is an
exploration of primary color and geometry and gleefully stretches across the lobby, demanding the gaze and attention of those who enter the atrium. The wall drawing measures just over 23 feet by 27 feet, and, despite being a piece by Sol LeWitt, it was actually painted onto the wall at the Bechtler by a team of eight draftsmen who never met the artist. LeWitt was a conceptual artist, and as such was much more concerned with the idea of his work over its actual execution. LeWitt began experimenting with wall drawings in the late 1960s, and they were immediately considered radical due to the fact that the drawings were often meant to be temporary and were installed by a cadre of artists which may or may not have included LeWitt himself. LeWitt would develop the design and map out a set of intricate, detailed instructions which then could be implemented by qualified draftsmen. LeWitt died in 2007, and yet a new installation of Wall Drawing #995, created in 2001, went up at the Bechtler in 2010—it appears conceptual art is alive and well in Charlotte. The lobby to the Bechtler also houses a captivating family portrait of the Bechtlers by Andy Warhol. The vibrant, saturated portrait reveals the joy that this family has taken in collecting.
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