Cubes were "king" for LeWitt's art in the 1960s.

What is a cube? How many faces does it have?

LeWitt's structures are a great way to think cubically about art. He specialized in "permuting" the cube—arranging it in all possible ways—to make different art works.

Roll your mouse over Black Floor Structure to find other shapes and volumes within it.

Click the fractions below to see them highlighted in Floor Structure Black:

• 1/5
• 2/5
• 3/5
• 4/5
• 5/5=1

Patterns in the Pyramid

Four-Sided Pyramid is made of concrete blocks that look like cubes but are actually "double-cubes"—as if two cubes were attached side-by-side.

LeWitt became fascinated with the cube and the square in the 1960s. For him, they were "relatively uninteresting . . . and lacked the expressive force of more interesting forms and shapes." Their geometric regularity made them perfect basic components for his art because they could be evenly multiplied, patterned, and permuted into an infinite number of black or white, solid or open structures. LeWitt would come up with a concept or "system" for each structure that described a pattern or sequential relationship for the square or cube. When his plan was complete, he would hand it over—in the form of written notes—to his assistants to build.

How many cubes are in LeWitt's Four-Sided Pyramid? Complete the Pyramid Math worksheet and find out!