Nasher Sculpture Center

A consistent theme of Sol LeWitt's sculpture has been to explore the relation of modular cubes to the two-dimensional grid, as in such works as Serial Project No. 1 (ABCD) (1966), Cube/ Base (1969), Cubes with Hidden Cubes (1977), as well as the Nasher collection Modular Cube/ Base (see Sol LeWitt, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1978, nos. 130, 67, 139, 65). These structures situate LeWitt's familiar cube forms on flat bases that are either square or rectangular and marked with grid patterns so that the three-dimensional element becomes an extension of-yet contrasts with-the two-dimensional pictorial space. Interested in mathematical structures and progressions and the different visual and physical effects they can yield, LeWitt selected the grid and the cube as constructive integers linked by "the same ratio of line (matter) to interval (space)." Logic and conceptual purity are further stressed by pristine fabrication and the use of even, white surface coatings. In the Nasher work, the basic module is six cubic units, repeated in the three dimensions of the central cube, in the symmetrical layout of the grid, and in the distance of the cube from the edge of the base.

This work was also made in a slightly smaller version (Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago) historically dated 1967 (one year earlier than the Nasher sculpture) but fabricated in 1972. Its ratio of cube to base, but with a module of one cubic unit rather than six, was repeated in the smaller Cube/ Base (1969).