"Compared to any other three-dimensional form, the cube lacks any aggressive force, implies no motion, and is least emotive. Therefore it is the best form to use as a basic unit for any more elaborate function, the grammatical device from which the work may proceed."
Sol LeWitt was a masterfully innovative and particularly prolific artist, credited with playing a pivotal role in founding Conceptual Art and pioneering the Minimalist Art movement. Throughout his career in the mid-to-late 20th century, LeWitt skillfully developed a precise visual lexicon with which he explored new possibilities for art production, utilizing only the most simplified elements of a distinct visual language. To LeWitt, the cube was a “grammatical device” with which he constructed remarkable works, such as Low in the Center, that amplified and explored the elegantly refined poetry found within line, form, serialization, and repetition. Through the basic use of repeated cubes, LeWitt created a participatory viewing experience in which his audience is able to complete the open structure conceptually.
Notably, LeWitt referred to his three-dimensional artworks not as sculptures but rather structures which both aptly describes the aesthetic qualities of these minimalist creations while also harkening back to his early architectural influences. In 1955, when the artist was just 27 years old and first exploring a professional interest in the visual arts, LeWitt took a job as a graphic designer in the office of the renowned architect I.M. Pei. Although the present work, Low in the Center, was produced years later, it still maintains many of the architectural influences that LeWitt was surrounded by during those formative years of his early artistic career. Just as an architect drafts his blueprints with profound authority, Sol LeWitt believed strongly that the idea preceding the physical construction of an artwork was of primary importance. His practice followed a mathematical consciousness in addition to an intuitive creative process which resulted in a uniquely meditative aesthetic experience for the artist and viewer alike.
