In “Slant Step Forward,” a 1960s Thrift Store Find Links Two Generations of Artists

Cover of Phil Weidman’s Slant Step Book, 1969, the Art Co., Sacramento.
In 1965 William T. Wiley purchased a steeply inclined step stool covered in green linoleum from a salvage store in Mill Valley, California, and gifted it to his student Bruce Nauman. The two artists became obsessed with the ambiguity of the “slant step,” whose origins and function are still a mystery, and the object captured the imagination of numerous artists in their circle over the next several years. On