At first glance — and from afar — it appears that the Indiana State Museum has acquired Johannes Vermeer’s 17th century painting, “Girl With a Pearl Earring.” But step close, and the truth emerges: this 1-to-1 ratio recreation of the Dutch artist’s painting is actually constructed from 1,694 Lego bricks. A round opalescent Lego piece serves as the pearl earring.
The Art of the Brick, open now at the Indiana State Museum, 650 W. Washington St. in Indianapolis, features more than 80 pieces from Lego artist Nathan Sawaya. The exhibit, featuring a range of two-dimensional and three-dimensional art, is so much more than a giant-sized Lego Store version of the Statue of Liberty or the Millennium Falcon or Batman. It is a walk through some serious out-of-the-box creativity.
The exhibit as a whole is really multiple exhibits in one, winding through several rooms of the museum.
In the first room, along with the Vermeer painting, visitors can view other well-known works of art, including Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” (4,573 pieces); a couple of Japanese prints; and a close-up of a section of Michelangelo’s ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (4,459 pieces). Sawaya more than recreates the two-dimensional painting of Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” (3,493 pieces) using layers of Lego bricks to simulate Van Gogh’s style of applying thick layers of paint to the canvas using a palette knife.
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The pathway through the exhibit seems to parallel Sawaya’s growth as an artist. Beyond the 2-D wall art, guests may recognize the familiar 2-D art now gone 3-D. A recreation of Edward Munsch’s “The Scream” (3,991 pieces) sports the brightly colored fluorescent background with a three-dimensional figure of the screamer poised in front. Further on, we see Lego brick versions of Edgar Degas’ “Little Dancer of Fourteen Years” (7,100 pieces); Auguste Rodin’s “The Thinker” (4,332 pieces); and Michelangelo’s “David” (16,349 pieces) as anatomically correct as you can get with Legos.
Following our lesson in art history, Sawaya demonstrates his fun side and a sense of humor with several larger-than-life sculptures of a ball and jacks (3,545 pieces); a gigantic pencil (9,800 pieces); and a complete set of fence-post sized crayons.
It is in the final room of the exhibit where visitors are treated to a fascinating multimedia mixture of art, technology, photography and Legos. We see a photo of a woman in a strapless red dress standing in front of a vintage movie theater. It is snowing. She looks as if she’s waiting for her date. Her dress, blowing out behind her, looks as if it is disintegrating in the weather.
As a stand-alone photograph, it offers much. It’s well-composed, and it tells a story. But, as with the art in the first room, when we step closer, we observe that her dress is made of Legos. It’s a “wow” moment, especially when you notice the dress — the entirely-made-from-Legos dress — is part of the exhibit behind glass, the disintegrating effect created by single Legos supported with fishing line.
It’s then the photographs become more than just intriguing images; they become “I Spy” scenarios as visitors seek out what random items in each scene might be made of Legos. A man stands in the rain along a city street; his red umbrella is made of Legos. A woman waters the lawn in front of her desert home with a Lego tree — obviously dead — near by.
An accompanying video documents not only the unusual partnership between Sawaya and photographer Dean West, but the detailed PhotoShop process used to imbed images of the Lego items into the scene.
The Art of the Brick will appeal to adults through the sheer scope of the ingenuity and patience required to mount such imaginative and time-consuming projects. It connects to children through the use of a common toy probably found in most households. The range of Sawaya’s artistic vision should inspire everyone to rethink our collective definition of art and rethink what it means to be creative. One thing is for sure, after a walk through The Art of the Brick, you’ll never step on Legos the same way again.
