CUBIC-MODULAR WALL STRUCTURE, BLACK
SOL LEWITT, 1966
So, most of this artwork belongs to the wall. Seriously. Twenty-five squares of plain white wall. LeWitt just put black wood around them and said, okay, look at these now. The title is Cubic-Modular Wall Structure, Black. Which makes it sound like industrial shelving. And, honestly, it kind of looks like industrial shelving. Except it's hanging where a painting should be. No picture. No center. Nothing hiding in the middle. Just twenty-five holes. Okay, so, LeWitt loved the cube because the cube brought almost nothing with it. A triangle points. A circle rolls. A cube just sits there. No tragedy. No sex. He called it "relatively uninteresting." "Relatively." Even LeWitt didn't want to be rude to the cube. But boring was useful. A dramatic shape can boss the whole work around. A cube can be one cube, then five, then twenty-five, then five hundred. He called it a "grammatical device." Which is a fancy way of saying it was a word he could keep making sentences with. Anyway. Look at it straight on. Twenty-five white squares. Now, step to the side. It sticks out about nine inches. The black strips get thicker. Shadows show up. The holes start closing. Move again and suddenly the wall disappears and the wood takes over. This thing with supposedly nothing going on can't stop changing. Oh, and, before LeWitt was "Sol LeWitt," he worked right here at MoMA. Book counter. Then the night desk. Dan Flavin worked here. Robert Ryman. Robert Mangold. Basically half a future art-history textbook, punching a clock.