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FOUR

THE ART OF WAR

NEW BRITAIN (Special). For outstanding art ability and promise, Sol LeWitt, son of Mrs. Sophie LeWitt of 51 Cedar Street, has won three art prizes and scholarships for which he competed in recent weeks. This week he was notified that he had won a cash award of $300 by placing second in an oil painting and progress competition conducted by the John F. and Anna Lee Stacey Scholarship fund in Los Angeles, Calif.

Earlier, LeWitt won the $1000 scholarship of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Fund in New York for graphic arts study and a University of Illinois art scholarship for lithograph work. Native of Hartford and graduate of New Britain schools including the Senior High School in 1945, LeWitt was graduated from Syracuse University last June. He is now doing graduate work in art at University of Illinois.

Hartford Courant, October 6, 1949

A reader of the Courant at the time would get the impression that young LeWitt, rewarded for his diligence and academic record, had embarked on a steady path toward success—at least, as success is generally measured. The scholarship for work in lithography also came with a teaching assistantship, which ensured that two years in Illinois would be comfortable enough. But it wasn’t to be—at least not for more than a few months.

LeWitt’s comments over the years about going to Illinois show that his attitude about the experience ranged from ambivalent to extremely negative. In 1974, he said of the Illinois opportunity:

I thought it was good luck at the time. But it was the opposite…. By that time I was just plain fed up with school, and I didn’t really do very much. I wasn’t very popular with the faculty. And then I had gotten the thousand dollars, and, by the time Christmas came, I was so fed up, I just left school completely. Then I thought, “Well, I really wanted to do some more lithographs,” so I went to the Hartford Art School, and I just asked them if I could use their press, and I made some sort of deal with them. I don’t know whether I paid them or what. But I did that for a few months. Then I took off and went to Europe.¹

But even his recollections of Europe, where he saw great works that he had previously seen only in textbooks, were not very positive. He described the trip briefly to Paul Cummings in their interview:

MR. CUMMINGS: Was that just to travel and look around?

MR. LEWITT: I had that thousand dollars so I figured, “Well, I didn’t expect to get it so I might as well do something I didn’t expect to do.”

MR. CUMMINGS: Well, in the 1950s you could do a lot with a thousand dollars in Europe.

MR. LEWITT: Right. It lasted pretty much the whole time.

MR. CUMMINGS: Where did you go and what kind of activities did you do?

MR. LEWITT: Oh, I went to England and France, Italy, the Scandinavian countries. Oh, I don’t know, I wasn’t really interested in seeing museums and things like that. I saw some, and I just wanted—

MR. CUMMINGS: To see what the rest of the world was like.

MR. LEWITT: And at that time the Korean War had started so when I returned I knew I was going to be drafted.²

There is no reference here to the two college buddies who went with LeWitt, Alan Nevas and Russell North. Nevas, the surviving member of the three, recalled, “I was in law school [at New York University], and our pal from Syracuse, Russ [North], was also living in New York. He called one day and said, ‘Sol and I are going to Europe. Do you want to go with us?’ I was working my tail off in law school. It was very hard. And though my parents wouldn’t give me any money at the time, I had saved some, and I thought, why not [take the summer off]?”³

Nevas recalled that the trio arranged an economical voyage, securing triple-decker bunks in the hold of the Washington, originally built as a battleship for World War II and was newly recommissioned as a transport. Nevas said:

The ship was loaded with young people going to Europe for the summer. The voyage took about a week. We stopped first in Ireland, let people off, and then [went on to] Southampton. From there, we took the train up to London and stayed at the YMCA for about a dollar [a] night. We went to galleries during the day, and it was my introduction to art. One night at a pub we met an English guy who latched on to us, and he took us to other pubs and clubs. He had been in the [Royal Air Force] and took a liking to Americans. He told us there was a softball game at Hyde Park every Sunday morning. So we played there. Russ pitched. Sol and I played outfield.⁴

LeWitt provided some details about London and what followed in a sketchbook.⁵ One sketch, drawn on June 10, 1950, shows a double-decker bus at Trafalgar Square, and another from the following day shows a view from Waterloo Bridge.

Nevas recalled:

From London we took the train to the Channel, and then an overnight ferry to the hook of Holland. We bought the cheapest tickets so we had no bed, just chairs to sit on. So that night, Sol [and] I were determined to find a place to sleep. We went to the upper deck, where the staterooms were—which of course you had to pay extra for. We tried all the doors until we found one that was unlocked, and [the room] was unoccupied. We went in, locked the door, and went to sleep. The next morning we found Russ. He’d been sleeping downstairs, on a chair.

In Amsterdam, we went to the Rijksmuseum. For me, I was along for the ride. Sol stayed in the museum for hours.⁶

Nevas didn’t recall how long his companion spent with the museum’s many masterpieces, such as Van Gogh’s Self Portrait (1887), Rembrandt’s The Night Watch (c. 1642), Vermeer’s Woman Reading a Letter (1663), and Fra Angelico’s Madonna of Humility (1434–35). But it was hard to get LeWitt out of the rooms that contained these paintings. His sketchbook shows no record of the museum visit but does contain many views of the city, including church steps, crowded streets, a canal, and a Newfoundland dog.

In Paris, the trio stayed in one room at the Hotel Noailles but often split up—LeWitt going to the Louvre or other museums or galleries; and Nevas and North assessing beauty in a different way, at the city’s cafes and bistros. At night LeWitt and North went to jazz clubs, while Nevas stayed at the hotel: “Sol and Marty saw [the clarinetist] Sidney Bechet perform at least five or six times.”⁷ LeWitt’s drawings show no Louvre masterpieces but include whimsical images of the visitors to the museum. There are many more sketches of Paris and its environs: Place Pigalle, a flea market, Versailles gardens and a sculpture in one of them, a Montparnasse scene, and a flamenco bar. He made no sketch, though, of a headline in the Paris edition of the Herald Tribune that would affect him significantly.

There was startling news from the Korean peninsula. About 75,000 North Korean troops, aided by China and the Soviet Union, crossed the thirty-eighth parallel, the line that divided North and South Korea. Pressure mounted on the United States to react to what the United Nations termed an invasion. The action was seen in the United States as hard evidence of the Soviet plan to spread communism worldwide and, hence, required an armed response. President Harry S. Truman, articulating what eventually became known as the domino theory, said, “If we let Korea down, the Soviets will keep right on going and swallow up one [place] after another.”⁸ The military draft, the infrastructure of which was still in force from World War II, began to target hundreds of thousands of young men. The three potential draftees from Syracuse tried not to dwell on the inevitable as they made their way via train toward the south of France.

In Nice they rented bikes and rode along the Riviera to Cannes. Nevas recalled: “We were riding along. Coming in the other direction were guys on bikes. They stopped when they saw us. One of them was Bob Sugarman, who was a friend of Sol and Russ. Imagine that. We all stayed together on the beach. It’s the first time we saw bikinis and topless women. As I recall, Sol wasn’t interested.”⁹ (This point, though, is undermined by the evidence of a sketch: LeWitt drew a woman in a revealing bathing suit, though most of his subjects were less titillating—such as a man on a motorbike, a market, and the view from the hotel window.)

“We’d talk to women, try to connect, but Sol would hang back,” Nevas added.¹⁰ This portrait of the young LeWitt as shy around women is in direct contrast to what would happen in later years.

The trio then took the train, stopping off in Florence to spend time at the Uffizi Gallery,¹¹ and then going on to Rome and Venice. “Every city, we stayed at a cheap place,” Nevas recalled. “In Venice somebody sent us to this place, a dollar a night. We went to sleep and, during the night, we heard footsteps back and forth in the hallway. We realized it was a whorehouse, and the people going back and forth were customers.”¹²

Though Nevas offered no specific references to LeWitt’s art discoveries in Italy, there is evidence that this trip proved greatly influential. Le-Witt’s sketchbook shows more drawings from this part of trip than any other, including a visual accounting of a day in Assisi. At the Basilica di San Francesco, LeWitt saw the frescoes that many historians attribute to Giotto, who is considered the first of the great artists of the Italian Renaissance and who set, in the view of the awed young LeWitt, an unreachable standard.

Other works that stuck in LeWitt’s mind from his initial visit to Italy included many by Piero della Francesca and Sandro Botticelli. In an interview in 1993 he said, “Piero appealed to me for his sense of order, superimposed on which was a sense of passion and ritual.”¹³

From Venice (LeWitt, of course, sketched gondoliers), the three young travelers took the overnight train to Munich. In the morning they saw a bombed-out city, still in ruins five years after the end of World War II. The city gave Nevas chills, particularly when he heard a frequently used word, “Achtung!” That proved to be the last destination on his foreign tour before returning to Paris for the trip home. LeWitt and North went on to Scandinavia, as he headed back alone to the United States to get ready for his fall semester. Nevas recalled, “Somewhere along the way, I can’t remember where, we’d met some English girls, and they were planning to see them. When they got back to the States, they told me they did.”¹⁴

It was an ironic last party before heading off to a different war, because draft papers were indeed awaiting LeWitt.

By the end of 1950, the profound difficulties of the Korean War had become clearer—even to some hawks who, still brimming with pride about American accomplishments in World War II, had argued that the job could be finished in relatively short order. This view proved wildly optimistic. In November, US Marines and infantry troops were surrounded by Chinese Communist forces at the Chosin Reservoir. Three days later, at a press conference, President Truman admitted that the United States was considering use of the atomic bomb. Three weeks later he declared a state of national emergency, and by the end of the month the evacuation of Seoul, the capital of South Korea, was being planned.

This was a situation that LeWitt and other draft-age men couldn’t escape. As with his comments on his education and his trip to Europe, LeWitt made matter-of-fact references to his life as a soldier. His New Britain classmate, Walter Friedenberg, who was drafted at the same time as LeWitt, prepared a more vivid account of the time for the purposes of this biography:

January 10, 1951, a cold morning. A special bus was parked in front of the Burritt Hotel just off the triangular main square in New Britain. Twenty or so men in their early 20s, shivering on the sidewalk. A couple of Army non-coms with a list of names. Induction Day.

And there was Sol LeWitt! We spotted each other right away. We had not seen each other since 1945, the year of our high school graduation. We greeted each other warmly and even before we boarded the bus began to get caught up. [I learned that] Sol had studied art at Syracuse. I had gone to Wake Forest College and was working as a reporter in Winston-Salem.

We discovered we had the same attitude toward being drafted. We had no dread of being killed, wounded or becoming a pow—that seemed distant and unlikely—but simply detested the idea of being in the army, with its regimentation and loss of freedom to continue the civilian work we each enjoyed. We gave no thought to—or I should say we did not discuss—the probability that the army intended to teach us how [to] use weapons and kill North Koreans and Chinese. We weren’t in the least bit patriotic about becoming soldiers, but neither could we claim to be conscientious objectors. So [we] were inducted. We shared a mood: reluctant and resigned.

We were bussed to Fort Devens, about thirty-five miles northwest of Boston, and got off into six inches of snow and the same biting cold. The rows of barracks, the headquarters buildings, the olive-drab trucks and jeeps, the olive-drab soldiers everywhere—we were in the army now….

After just a few weeks of drill-marching in the snow, chowing down … we got the word that we were to be sent to California as “fillers” for the 40th Infantry Division, which we were told was the Southern California National Guard….

The troop train was composed of several shopworn passenger cars. As it headed west, it became obvious there were a lot of New Yorkers aboard. There was a lot of poker playing and arguing….

By luck of the car assignment and some selection on our part, Sol and I became acquainted with two kindred spirits: Harry Ekblom, a New York lawyer, and Bob Fithian of, I recall vaguely, the rural Midwest. We were set apart by having completed college and started on careers, and [we] had similar attitudes about being in the army, and about life in general. We spent the daylight hours talking or reading [all the way to the destination, Camp Cooke, in Southern California].

That sprawling Army base (now Vandenberg Air Force Base) was located on the Pacific coast nine miles northwest of Lompoc. Doubtless because we were college graduates, we were assigned to a high level headquarters rather than an infantry line outfit, and in a group of 30 or 40 recruits were given basic training: marching in drills, firing rifles[,] etc.

Sol made an inept soldier. He couldn’t remember to start marching by putting his left foot forward, instead of his right foot. Our drill sergeant, a three-striper, once became so annoyed by Sol’s indifference that he halted our unit, picked up a grapefruit-sized rock and put [it] in Sol’s left hand with the advice/warning, “Here, that’s your left. Start with your left.” It seemed to work.

All four of us quickly concluded that the 40th Division, or what we saw of it, was a slipshod organization, not well disciplined or demanding. Taking advantage of the “wait” part of “hurry up and wait,” Sol carried a sketchpad and pencil in the thigh pocket of his fatigues and often sketched away (without showing his drawings). During downtime in the barracks Sol would frequently sketch on larger paper.

(Sol made a pencil sketch of me. Through the years I treasured it, but through many packings and storings the bottom edge became frayed, so I finally trimmed it off, including Sol’s signature. Years later, after Sol became famous, I wrote him jovially to ask if he would re-sign it. He wrote back, in the same tone, “I’d have to see it first. I might not want to.” The drawing is framed and on my study wall, as is, and I occasionally tell a new visitor, “This my LeWitt.”)

After a few weeks we recruits were let out for a weekend and the four of us headed to Hollywood. We got as far as Santa Barbara. We were all so entranced by the Spanish Colonial–style architecture that we got no farther—that weekend or the next two weekends. We all loved drinking in quiet bars, eating in pretty-good restaurants, and lolling on the beach.

[One day] Sol invited me to accompany him on a visit to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. With Sol leading the way, we cursorily toured the exhibits, then headed to what few Impressionists and Post-Impressionists there were. As we left, Sol said of the museum, “Not much.” Out of the blue he said he greatly admired the paintings of Albert Ryder, for the finesse and feeling of his moody skies.

After perhaps three months, word got around that the 40th was to be shipped to Korea. That came as a scary bit of news for many of our fellow-recruits but not for the four of us, for we believed that we would stay far from combat, assigned to some higher-up headquarters, probably as clerks.

(I was less optimistic and concluded that if I would have to fight in a war I would have to learn how to do it, which our lackadaisical basic training did not teach us, so I volunteered to go to infantry Officers Candidate School at Ft. Benning, Ga.).¹⁵

By the time the two recruits from New Britain reached California, the involvement in Korea, though never declared a war by Congress, had intensified. Things had not gone well for the allied South Korean and US troops. Positions were seized, held, and then lost. North Korean troops were well trained and equipped, and they inflicted a great number of casualties. The war that supposedly pitted good against evil was not going as planned. Moreover, Mao Zedong had ordered Chinese troops to the peninsula as a result of what he considered to be armed aggression against Chinese territory.

For the 40th Infantry Division headquartered in California, going to Korea seemed inevitable—even though, as Friedenberg reported, it was not an elite outfit at the time. To be sure, the division had served with valor in World Wars I and II, but its leaders and composition had changed. It would be necessary to train the division’s members not only in California, but also in Japan, before sending it to the Korean Peninsula.

LeWitt’s account of the period, as recorded in letters to his Syracuse pal and fellow draftee Arnold Libner, begins with impressions of the domestic training and advice for his friend:

January 26, 1951

Hi Lib,

Here I am, sprawled out in my barracks, aching all over, and we haven’t even started our basic [training] yet. I got out here last Sunday after a five-day train trip. Before that I was at [Fort] Devens for a week. It’s hot as a crap-shooter making his twelfth straight pass with loaded dice in the middle of July out here…. We’ve been doing KP, digging ditches, shoveling gravel and drilling all the time. We do anything to keep us busy….

I have been assigned to Division Headquarters, which might turn out to be a good deal. Try and do as best you can on your classification tests that they give at the induction center—it might keep you out of the infantry.

I have saluted two officers so far and try to avoid them by pretending not to see them, walking across the street or about 50 yards out of my way.

There are a million rumors as to where this division is going when it goes. I won’t believe anything till I get on a boat….

Let me know when you expect to be inducted. Don’t go!

General Ike¹⁶

The next update was sent from Camp Cooke a month later, when Libner was training at Fort Devens, Massachusetts:

Dear General,

The shit has really been flying thick and fast since last Saturday when they announced that we are shipping out for Japan (and points west). I am not going with the division in March but will continue my training until the end of May and then join the division in Japan or wherever they are. I am still in HQ but all my training has been Infantry…. We have been getting different kinds of combat courses such as the infiltration course where you crawl 70 yards through barbed wire, over logs in sand while they fire machine guns over your head and TNT charges explode all over the place. When you’re through your rifle is still supposed to be clean…. We had another dandy, charging down a field and up a steep sandy hill firing from the hip—then double timing about a half mile. After that getting shot by some North Korean would be a pleasure….

As you was, Sol

On June 11, 1951, LeWitt and other late-arriving members of the 40th boarded the General J. C. Breckenridge in San Francisco, bound for Yokahama, Japan. When they came aboard, they were given a copy of the ship’s newsletter, with its welcome message: “May you look back on our 16-day voyage together as an opportunity to have met new friends, seen the vast Pacific, and travel by water to the Orient. We thank you for your cooperation throughout the trip and all of us about the GB wish you: the best of luck, happiness, and success in your new ventures.”¹⁷

In anticipation of the “new ventures,” the crew of the Breckinridge tried to provide the troops with a sense of home and comfort. The crew organized an orchestra, featuring Private Edwin J. Costa, of New York City, who had played vibes and piano with the Sam Donahue ensemble; Private Elmer “Skip” Allbrook, of Portsmouth, Virginia, who played violin and had toured with Dick LaSalle’s band; and others with significant credentials.

The newsletter staff quickly expanded and included a new cartoonist, introduced to the passengers as: “Pvt. Sol LeWITT, age 22, of New Britain, Conn., assigned to HQ Co., 40th Div., Japan. Sol was an artist before entering the Army and attended Syracuse University, N.Y.” His prolific output during the voyage expanded his penchant for wry commentary.

Among his cartoons is one of soldiers trying to sleep during a rainstorm. One of them says: “I had a very restful sleep last night on one of the hatches. The gentle pitter-patter of the rain on my sleeping bag made me sleep all the better.” LeWitt also showed the cramped conditions on board with a sailor holding a whip and saying, “After I woke up and took a leisurely shower I got into the chow line which really moves fast because it is a single line and no one crowds it.” Another chow line drawing was accompanied by the following text: “And the KPs and cooks are nice to us. Even though there are no cups or bowls and silverware they let us go thru the line anyway. The dining room is a huge, spacious place, air conditioned and filed to overflowing with smiles, and we talk about politics and world news.” In yet another cartoon about the chow line, he shows a lieutenant colonel saying to a much younger officer, “I’m sorry, Lieutenant, the cook says you can’t have any caviar.”

The newsletter included updates from the war, indicating the participation of Chinese troops. It is particularly candid for an official Navy document: “War News: U.S. 8th Army Headquarters, KOREA, June 26, 1951—Chinese forces formed a still resistant line against patrolling and attacking United Nations units on the central and western fronts yesterday and early today. Communist units offered light to heavy resistance in the area north of Wachon and northwest of Hangue while enemy activity was confined to platoon-sized engagements against Allied patrols from the east coast.”

When the voyage ended at Yokohama, Private Solomon LeWitt rejoined the 40th as it trained for duty in Korea. Japan would have an inspiring effect on him, some which is reflected in his letters to Libner. The only one that survives from Japan was written about the time the division shipped out for Korea. LeWitt’s arrival in Korea was about week after that of the new commander, General Matthew Ridgway, who replaced General Douglas MacArthur after he had been fired by President Truman.

December 28, 1951

Dear Lib,

… Right now the section is embroiled in a mighty production called “Once Upon a Holiday.” It is a real stinker by any standards except for a couple of numbers. I am property man—which means I get a free TDY [military shorthand for “temporary duty assignment”] to Tokyo when the show plays there on New Year’s Eve. We don’t come back until Jan. 5, which means one big last fling before we ship out….

I really was beginning to enjoy Japan, too. But I won’t be in any great danger [in Korea], since I think I’ll be in the PX section [post exchange]….

GENERAL KIMBELL (I think.)

The 40th Division was sent directly to the front in Korea, relieving the 24th Infantry Division. Over the next several months, the 40th participated in the battles of Sandbag Castle and Heartbreak Ridge, and while it inflicted heavy casualties, it suffered about 400 fatalities, with many more wounded. LeWitt, assigned to headquarters company, worked behind the lines, designing posters for events and working at the post exchange, where he was in charge of the warehouse in which general supplies and whiskey and beer were stored. Behind the lines, though, was not necessarily a safe address, as the next letter indicates.

LeWitt received his first promotion, to private first class, but he was still slightly outranked by Libner, who had yet to go to war. The letter begins with a mockery of Army regulations and refers to the point system—when soldiers received enough points, largely measured by in-country service, they were eligible to go home. And it is signed with the nickname of Dwight Eisenhower, former general and president:

To Pfc. Arnold Libner, 53rd Quartermaster Co.,

Fort Drum, NY,

Dear US51090148,

… Our division “rear” unit (mine) is moving about 7 miles to Chunchon which is closer to the 40th front than we are now. The place we have in Chunchon is supposed to be real jolly…. One side is the largest oil dump in Korea. On the other side is a large oil seaport. [Enemy units] apparently swoop down on the place. They also like to pick off guards….

We just finished our inventory here and happily were only a couple of hundred dollars behind. We aren’t supposed to make money here and are allowed one and one half percent loss—about $2,000….

With any luck I’ll leave this favored land in the middle of summer. That is if 36 points are still the criteria. I now have 24 points.

The only contact I still have with the army is guard duty but even that is a joke now. We show up late to our posts, don’t bother sleeping in the guardhouse, always have dirty weapons and sometimes don’t even bother to blouse our boots [arrange fatigue trousers so they puff out a bit at the boot line]. When on our posts we sit around and talk to other guards. Due to our semi-blackout we can hear the officer of the guard coming before he can see us….

Love and kisses,

IKE

April 4, 1952

PFC Sol LeWitt to CPL Arnold Libner

Fort Drum, NY

53rd Quartermaster Sub. Support Co.

Dear Stonewall [referring to Stonewall Jackson],

… At the end of this month the Lt. [lieutenant] promised me 10 days off in Japan. I don’t think I’ll have much difficulty in finding something to do.

Nothing new in the px business except I’m glad to be here even at 2 points a month. However, when I get out and people ask me about my peonage in this wonderland, I’ll say, “I’d rather not talk about it,” with an expression on my face that could be interpreted as “God, why must they crucify me by making me think about it.” It ought to be good for at least two or three pieces of ass until they begin to catch on….

Well, all’s well that ends, or so they say,

Yours truly,

Phalanx T. Phalanx

Before he wrote the next letter, LeWitt had received another promotion, to corporal, and had further explored Japan’s lures—cultural and quite otherwise:

May 4, 1952

CPL Arnold Libner,

53 Quartermaster Sub Sup Co., Fort Drum, NY

From CPL S. Lewitt

Hello Hector,

Just returned from Japan a couple of days ago after five days of uninterrupted bliss. It was like climbing out of a cesspool into a pink, scented cloud. A young lady friend and I did the town up and down with a couple of sideways thrown in. Never walked more than six feet, took cabs. Saw Kabuki theater, very nice but very long—started at 4:30, ended at 9:30. Slept between sheets for the first time in four months. Had a steam bath at the notorious Ginza Center, was massaged by two winsome flowers of Nippon. Took a motorboat ride thru the canals of Tokyo, almost as much algae floating around as there was in the water at Nice…. Drank many whiskey sours at Tokyo’s plush EM Club at 25 cents a throw. Missed May Day riots by a day, had to fly to Pusan to catch a batch of whiskey. Sent it off by boxcar, saw my Pusan girlsan, flew off to Seoul, then caught another plane to Chuchon, where I live (temporarily).

Tomorrow I go to Inchon to order and draw the division PX supplies. Will see my Ong Dung Po concubine if she hasn’t run off with the captain I am sharing her with…. Things could be worse.

*Cuttah Sipcio,

Edgar

*Go way, please (Korean)

Nov. 3, 1952

CPL Arnold Libner, Camp Drum, NY

Dear Libber,

As things stand now I’ll be out of here in nineteen days which isn’t bad when you consider that I started counting days at 140. Since I’m shortly to rotate I haven’t done “dick” in the last month.

… I’ll be home by Christmas and I hope that we’ll be able to get together for New York and have a ball, so to speak.

Yours for smaller armies,

Sol

The letters to Libner obviously serve a different purpose than analyzing the influence of the war on a supply corporal. Eventually, LeWitt reflected on that experience, notably in 1974 when he was asked in an interview about the effect his service had had on his work and way of thinking. He offered two responses, one of them general: “I think everything we do has some effect if you want to look into it.” The other specifically related the impact of Asian culture on him. He said of Japan: “It was really just a beautiful way of life that the people had. They still have quite a bit of the old tradition, class, dress, manners. There was a very aesthetic sense of life and … everything had a certain rightness to it and there was a simplicity, and everything was done with the most high sense of beauty. Which is kind of a relief from our civilization, which is quite the opposite.”¹⁸ Or, as he would write in more succinct fashion to a girlfriend twenty years later, “Japan makes Europe seem like New Jersey.”¹⁹

It was while he was in Japan that he began to collect art. He bought woodblock prints there wherever he could find them and shipped them back to New Britain. At that point he didn’t know much about them, but he thought they were exquisite—which was enough for him.

In all, LeWitt’s experiences in war and on its fringes of war provided him with training if not for military victory, at least for survival in his next tour of duty—trying to make a living as an artist in New York City.