Corner Wall #6 | Harvard Art Museums

Gallery Text

Constructed of interchangeable open cubes, LeWitt’s sculpture embodies his conception of minimalist art as an assembly system of simplified forms. In the 1960s he began to use cubes — sketched out on graph paper and made of wood or metal — as a basic unit for his work. To test the number of possible combinations, he arranged the cubes in multiple configurations, conceiving of his sculptures in linguistic terms, determined by a visual grammar. With their repeating and variant modular structures, these works demonstrate key attributes of minimalism. In the late 1960s and into the ’70s, LeWitt came to be identified with conceptual art, which grew out of minimalism and emphasized the idea behind a work of art over its visual qualities. Employing the terms of industrial production, he distanced his practice from notions of handicraft and manual dexterity. As he wrote in 1967, “The idea becomes the machine that makes the art.”

Identification and Creation

Object Number: 1991.175
People: Sol LeWitt, American (Hartford, CT 1928 - 2007 New York, NY)
Title: Corner Wall #6
Classification: Sculpture
Work Type: sculpture
Date: 1977
Places: Creation Place: North America, United States
Culture: American
Persistent Link: https://hvrd.art/o/226966

Physical Descriptions

Medium: White painted wood
Dimensions: 109.9 x 109.9 x 109.9 cm (43 1/4 x 43 1/4 x 43 1/4 in.)

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History: Herbert and Mildred Lee, Boston, Massachusetts, gift; to Harvard University Art Museums, 1991.

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line: Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gift of Mildred and Herbert Lee
Accession Year: 1991
Object Number: 1991.175
Division: Modern and Contemporary Art
Contact: am_moderncontemporary@harvard.edu
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Exhibition History

Contemporary Art from the Harvard University Art Museums Collections, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, 06/23/2007 - 01/31/2008
32Q: 1100 60’s Experiment, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 11/16/2014 - 04/07/2017

Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of Modern and Contemporary Art at am_moderncontemporary@harvard.edu

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1991.175: Corner Wall #6