Carl Andre
Carl Andre
Carl Andreis an American minimalist artist recognized for his ordered linear format and grid format sculptures. His sculptures range from large public artworksto more intimate tile patterns arranged on the floor of an exhibition space. In 1988, Andre was tried and acquitted in the death of his wife, artist Ana Mendieta...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionSculptor
Date of Birth16 September 1935
CountryUnited States of America
block space inward
I was never good at painting. The great turning point came when I had a block of wood and I carved a shape into the wood and put a small piece of timber into that space - like a negative - and so it made an endless column, only inward.
block way sculpture
Why carve? It's a better sculpture that way. I'll never improve the block. So I just started using uncarved blocks.
block kids littles
What do little kids do? They crawl on the floor and they build with blocks. I just continued to do that for the rest of my life.
art burden difficulty draining greatest meanings mind painful ridding seem work
I find that my greatest difficulty and the really most painful and difficult part of my work is draining and ridding my mind of that burden of meanings which I've absorbed through the culture-things that seem to have something to do with art but don't have anything to do with art at all.
artist firsts used
I was one of the first post-studio artists. I used to do my works in the streets. I used to find them in the streets, and I used to leave them in the streets.
publicity
Americans understand better than the Europeans and the English that any publicity is good.
children
I never stopped doing what I did as a child.
art children thinking
I think it was Henry Moore who was asked where he got his ideas for his sculptures, and he said something like, "I continue to do as an adult the things I did as a child." I think that's what art is about.
girl men thinking
You can always find somebody to beat up. This goes back to the schoolyard. Most men would think, Don't chum with girls. But I chummed with girls.
usage turns universal
Once you turn something into something, its universal usage is over.
people variation pieces
My works have always been unjoined. People were always making variations of my works, and I just said, "I don't want to know." You can't put limits on those pieces. You can't be there all of the time when they're installed.
found made streets
What I made depended on what I found on the street. At least in the beginning, my materials came from the street.
piano study
I didn't study the piano - the piano studied me.
art conspiracy abstract
Lenin thought abstract art was a conspiracy by the bourgeois to demoralize the proletariat. Yeah, socialist realism!