Sentences on Conceptual Art
Sol LeWitt's 1969 set of 35 numbered sentences arguing the idea, not the executed object, is the artwork, and that once decided the process must run mechanically to completion.
What is in it
The corpus records this as thirty-five numbered sentences, dated 1969. No paragraphs, no argument built across them — each of the ones quoted here stands alone as a claim. Sol LeWitt draws a hard line between concept and idea (“The former implies a general direction while the latter is the component. Ideas implement the concept.”) and states that an idea need not become an object at all: “Ideas can be works of art; they are in a chain of development that may eventually find some form. All ideas need not be made physical.” The sentence that matters most for anyone writing rules instead of making objects by hand: “The process is mechanical and should not be tampered with. It should run its course.” LeWitt refuses even the text itself a privileged status — “These sentences comment on art, but are not art.”
What you can do after reading it
That is the plain statement of a rule set loose to run — and a reader who writes a program to make decisions for them is doing what those sentences describe. If you write a generative program, you have already split concept from idea the way LeWitt does: the rule you wrote is the concept, and each run of it is one idea the concept permits. His discipline is specific and checkable against your own habits — once the process is running, you do not reach in and nudge a parameter because this particular output looks better than the last one. That instinct, to intervene mid-run toward a result you already had in mind, is exactly what “should not be tampered with” forbids. If you find yourself doing it, you are not running the process you specified; you are hand-finishing it and calling it generative.
Which entities it covers
None in the sentences quoted here, which are general claims about concept, idea and process. What the rest of the text names is not in this evidence.
How to get it
Read it whole in ten minutes at the Tufts-hosted copy — there is no substitute for the numbering; it is short enough that summarizing it here would only be a worse copy.