Cubes

Sol LeWitt had a lifelong fascination with cubes, driven by his desire to blur the lines between arithmetic and art. Believing that “the idea becomes a machine that makes the art,” LeWitt viewed the six-sided cube as a boundless idea that could be manufactured again and again in a variety of forms, from patterns on paper to towering geometric sculptures. For example, in Incomplete Open Cubes (1974–1982), LeWitt calculated every way the shape could appear “incomplete” yet still three- dimensional, rendering his findings in a series of model cubes that had anywhere from one to nine missing limbs. In his own words, the cube “lacked the expressive force of more interesting forms and shapes,” so it was an ideal candidate for deconstruction and multiplication.