Diary
Pest Control
Pat Steir writes to Sol LeWitt, 1976
Pat Steir in California, 1974. Photo: Sol LeWitt. © 2024 The Sol LeWitt Estate / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
The painter Pat Steir and the conceptual artist Sol LeWitt met in the 1970s and lived and traveled together for years, remaining close friends and artistic compatriots long after their romantic relationship ended. Here, in an excerpt from an oral history project being conducted by Liza Zapol, Steir tells the story of a wry postcard she once sent to LeWitt and of Puss, LeWitt’s grizzled cat, who seemed to want to come between them.
At the time, LeWitt lived in a studio on Hester Street, on the Lower East Side, and Steir was nearby in SoHo, spending summers in Nova Scotia with friends like Richard Serra, Joan Jonas and Philip Glass. One day in New York, Steir recalls, she visited LeWitt’s studio and suddenly noticed an uninvited visitor:
“The rat was there in his kitchen. Puss was a twenty-one-year old cat. He was on the table with his hair standing up, hissing at the rat on the floor. The rat was bigger than the cat. So big. Sol was in the other room, drawing as usual, making beautiful things. Never mind the rat. But I thought he should pay attention to that rat! He said: ‘I’ll call the exterminator later.’
I left. I was really afraid of that rat.”
Steir adds that she was not so fond of the cat, either:
“Puss was not my friend. Puss pre-dated me.”
Postcard to Sol LeWitt (Beware Raty Lurks), 1976. Photo: Cultural Preservation Technologies. Courtesy of LeWitt Collection, Chester, CT
Postcard to Sol LeWitt (Beware Raty Lurks), 1976. Photo: Cultural Preservation Technologies. Courtesy of LeWitt Collection, Chester, CT
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Among the great innovators of contemporary painting, Pat Steir came to prominence in the late 1970s and early 1980s for her iconographic canvases and immersive wall drawings. By the late 1980s, her inventive approach to painting—the rigorous pouring technique seen in her Waterfall works, which harnessed the forces of gravity and gesture to achieve works of astonishing lyricism—attracted substantial critical acclaim. Informed by a deep engagement with art history and Eastern philosophy, and a passion for artistic advocacy in the visual and literary realms, Steir’s storied five-decade career continues to reach new heights through an intrepid commitment to material exploration.
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“Pat Steir: Painted Rain” is on view at Hauser & Wirth West Hollywood through May 4, 2024.