Remarkable in its lucidity, purity, and structural clarity, Incomplete Open Cube no. 6/17 demands intellectual grounding and visceral awe. Executed in 1974, the present work consists of three sleek and refined free-standing configurations. The open cube "structures," the term LeWitt coined for his three-dimensional works, have been fashioned in painted wood, and in steel and aluminum with a baked-on finish. The radically reconceptualised sculpture of the 1960s, in which artists rejected Abstract Expressionism in favour of an anti-aesthetic devoid of representation, included a priori conceptions of the art object, whereby fabricators used industrial materials in order to eliminate evidence of the artist’s hand. Minimalist artistic production is thus typically linear, geometric, and characterised by its anti-rationalistic tendencies, as artists strived for formal reduction.

“[The] most interesting characteristic of the cube is that it is relatively uninteresting. Compared to any other three-dimensional form, the cube lacks any aggressive force, implies no motion, and is least emotive…Because it is standard and universally recognized, no intention is required of the viewer. It is immediately understood that the cube represents the cube, a geometric figure that is incontestably itself”
(Sol LeWitt cited in: Alex Potts, The Sculptural Imagination: Figurative, Modernist, Minimalist, New Haven 2000, p. 289).

In the 1960s LeWitt began formulating freestanding modular units, evolving from his early ambition to create non-illusionistic artworks that were self-evident in form. Eliciting the expertise of Dr. Erna Herrey, a mathematician and physicist, LeWitt sought to discover every possible variant of the cube. As a result, the artist’s Variations of Incomplete Open Cube Series consists of 122 unique variations. For LeWitt, “[the] most interesting characteristic of the cube is that it is relatively uninteresting. Compared to any other three-dimensional form, the cube lacks any aggressive force, implies no motion, and is least emotive…Because it is standard and universally recognized, no intention is required of the viewer. It is immediately understood that the cube represents the cube, a geometric figure that is incontestably itself” (Sol LeWitt cited in: Alex Potts, The Sculptural Imagination: Figurative, Modernist, Minimalist, New Haven 2000, p. 289). Similarly, in her influential essay ‘The Originality of the Avant-Garde: A Postmodernist Repetition’ (1981), renowned art critic Rosalind Krauss stipulates that the simple geometric shape rejects narrative and representation as it is seen as a silent, non-hierarchical structure.

Sol LeWitt, Sight Gag, 1974
Artwork: © Frank Stella. ARS, NY and DACS, London 2020

Whilst LeWitt’s creative output is without doubt fixed to the cerebral, analytical, and geometric systems, the immediate experience is indeed visual. Minimal artists of this time were greatly influenced by Gestalt psychology and writings on Phenomenology; a philosophy referring to the way in which one’s senses perceive and understand via experience. In his idiosyncratic essay ‘Notes on Sculpture’ (1966) fellow contemporary Robert Morris commented on the importance of staging and spatial distancing, suggesting that “it is just this distance between object and subject that creates a more extended situation, because physical participation becomes necessary” (Robert Morris, 'Notes on Sculpture' in Gregory Battock, Minimal Art, a Critical Anthology, California 1995, p. 231). In placing the sensory experience of the viewer at the center of the work, Incomplete Open Cube no. 6/17 offers an investigation into the possibilities of forms using a restrained and elegant language. While the component parts appear arranged in a predetermined mathematical sequence, the rhythmic progression through the forms via experience reveals an innate and intimate artistic gesture.