The Slant Step is to the Californian artists of the 1960s what the Bicycle Wheel was to the Dadaist movement. The fascination with this curious object began in 1965, when William T. Wiley bought the anti-functional wooden object, covered in green linoleum, for 50 cents at a vintage store and gave it to Bruce Nauman. It was in Nauman’s studio that Phil Weidman had his own “coup de foudre”:

“I first saw the Slant Step in Bruce Nauman's studio on the University of California, Davis campus, in 1965. Didn't know what it was. Nauman wasn't there, so I asked Pete Gadberry, who shared the studio, about it. He said it was just a slanted step. I asked him what it was for. He didn't know. I was mystified. Couldn't get the thing out of my head.”

So begins the author’s preface, setting the stage for what unfolds as a witty and intriguing saga about a clumsy yet charismatic object. For several months, the Slant Step imagery circulated among a circle of art students before becoming, in September 1966, the protagonist of the eponymous group exhibition at the Berkeley Gallery in San Francisco. The exhibition featured more than twenty homage-works to the object by artists including Bruce Nauman, William T. Wiley, Robert Hudson, William Allan, and James Melchert.

According to Bruce Nauman’s anecdotal account, shortly after the opening, the original Slant Step was stolen by Richard Serra and taken to New York City, from where Serra sent postcards featuring the object. Thus began a snowballing story of fascination that continued for years, prompting artistic responses of all kinds, from the most sculptural to the most performative.

The original artefact, whose function remains a mystery, has inspired various speculations among artists and critics: it may have been a shoe-shining stand, a unique doorstop, or a homemade toilet footrest designed to elevate the feet and improve posture. It was eventually donated by the New York Society for the Preservation of the Slant Step to the Fine Arts Collection of the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at the University of California, Davis, where it is currently held.

Copiously documented with photographic reproductions, interviews with Bruce Nauman, and contributions by Ron Peetz, Dorothy Wiley, Bill Allan, William Witherup, William T. Wiley, Jack Edwards, Robert Leach, Richard C., Jack Ogden, Lawrence Dean Phillips, Peter Saul, Ray Johnson, Jack Fulton, Steve Kaltenbach, and others, this may well be one of the funniest books in the collection.