Carl Andre

Sculptor, Poet

• Born: September 16, 1935
• Place of Birth: Quincy, Massachusetts
• Died: January 24, 2024
• Place of Death: New York, New York

• Education: Kenyon College
• Significance: Carl Andre is an American sculptor and poet. He is best known for his minimalist sculptures, which are usually pieced together from timber, metal plates, bricks, and bars. Andre's work has been controversial since 1985, when his wife, a fellow artist, fell from their apartment window and died. Andre was charged with her murder, but he was acquitted.

Background

Carl Andre was born September 16, 1935, in Quincy, Massachusetts. He was interested in art from a young age. His father was a marine draftsman, and his mother was a poet. He studied poetry at the Phillips Academy, Andover. He also attended Kenyon College in Ohio for a brief time, but soon dropped out. He worked for a few years and then did a year of service in the army at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.

In 1957, Andre moved to New York City, where he would spend the rest of his career. He worked for a publisher and started writing poems. He crafted many of his poems by using words and phrases from other sources and arranging them in different ways. For example, he might arrange them alphabetically, by length, or by other means. Andre's early work was political, making statements about the treatment of marginalized groups in the United States. He would continue his political expression throughout his life, though his later message would be more abstract. Andre worked as a railroad freight brakeman and conductor on the Pennsylvania Railroad in the early 1960s. At the same time, he started experimenting with creating sculptures.

Life's Work

Painter Frank Stella and sculptor Constantin Brâncuşi influenced Andre. These artists, whom he met while working on his poetry, influenced his artistic sensibilities. Andre soon began carving geometric shapes from found wood blocks. Andre honed his style even more and began constructing his sculptures from materials without carving or molding the materials in any way. This made Andre's work distinct from many other artists of the time. His work first appeared in an art show in 1964.

Andre's popularity grew during the 1960s. He had his first solo at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York, in 1965. Andre arranged and placed materials into sculptures. His work was made from rough materials, such as timber, ribbons, metal plates, bricks, and ingots. Andre presented those objects in a specific form or pattern, so that observers could examine the matter. He usually assembled his pieces in the locations where they would be showcased. Therefore, his sculptures had to be assembled each time they were presented. Andre placed all his original sculptures himself. The different pieces of the sculptures—such as the individual bricks or timbers—were not joined or connected to each other. Instead, Andre arranged them by putting them side by side or by stacking them in various ways. Since the pieces were not joined together, each work had to be taken apart, packed, and reassembled when the art was moved to a new venue.

In the 1970s, Andre had his first major retrospective exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. By this time, much of Andre's work was built very low to the ground and not many sculptures were built vertically. He preferred to have his work laid out horizontally. Some of the pieces, such as sculptures made of metal plates, were placed on the floor and viewers were allowed to step on them. This was another way that Andre's work helped challenge norms in the art world.

In 1985, Andre married his third wife, Ana Mendieta, who was a famous Cuban American artist. She was an avant-garde artist who worked in painting, sculpture, photography, and other mediums. Mendieta was an up-and-coming artist with great promise. In September 1985, she fell from the 34th-floor window of the Greenwich Village apartment she shared with Andre. A doorman in the area heard screams of "No, no, no" before Mendieta fell. Others reported that Mendieta and Andre had fought just before she fell. Andre was charged with her murder. However, he was acquitted on all charges in 1988.

Andre's work became controversial after his wife's death, but he continued to work. In 2014, the New York's Dia Art Foundation held a retrospective of Andre's art called "Carl Andre: Sculpture as Place, 1958–2010." Many of Andre's works were exhibited, but the retrospective was controversial. Some people protested the exhibition, saying that Andre was a suspected murder who should not be honored in this manner. In 2015, similar protests occurred at the Tate Modern museum when one of Andre's pieces was included in a modern exhibit but none of Mendieta's work was included.

Impact

Minimalist works such as Andre's have sometimes been criticized for being too simplistic. For example, some of Andre's works consist only of bricks, bars, or timber. Some critics question why simple arrangements of everyday objects constitute art. Despite these criticisms, Andre's work is well regarded in the art world and has had a significant impact on other artists. Although his sculptures have been influential, they have also created controversy ever since Andre was accused of murdering Mendieta. Many feminist artists have been critical of Andre and of institutions where his art is shown. Such critics point out that Andre, a white man, is often featured at modern exhibits but Mendieta, a woman of color, is exhibited much less often. These critics have somewhat tarnished Andre's standing in the art world.

Personal Life

Andre married his first wife, a teacher named Barbara Brown, in 1959. He married his second wife, Rosemarie Castoro, in 1963. They divorced in 1970. He married Mendieta in 1985, the same year she died. He later married Melissa Kretschmer. Andre passed away in Manhattan, New York, on January 24, 2024. At the time of his death, Andre was 88 years old.

Bibliography

Alley, Ronald. "Carl Andre." Tate, www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/carl-andre-648. Accessed 10 Oct. 2024.

"Carl Andre." The Art Story, www.theartstory.org/artist-andre-carl-artworks.htm#pnt‗1. Accessed 10 Oct. 2024.

Cotter, Holland. "A Stonehenge for the Modern Age." New York Times, 29 May 2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/05/30/arts/design/carl-andres-epic-sculptures-united-at-diabeacon.html. Accessed 10 Oct. 2024.

Gurantz, Maya. "'Carl Broke Something': On Carl Andre, Ana Mendieta, and the Cult of the Male Genius." Los Angeles Review of Books, 10 July 2017, lareviewofbooks.org/article/carl-broke-something-on-carl-andre-ana-mendieta-and-the-cult-of-the-male-genius/#!. Accessed 10 Oct. 2024.

Seldes, Lee. "The Shape of Death." The Washington Post, 3 June 1990, www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1990/06/03/the-shape-of-death/0123612e-e7cc-45b1-861c-69edbeda2eaf/?utm‗term=.681e6159cddb. Accessed 10 Oct. 2024.

Tomkins, Calvin. "The Materialist." The New Yorker, 5 Dec. 2011, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/12/05/the-materialist. Accessed 10 Oct. 2024.

Voien, Guelda. "The Remarkable Story of a Rebel Artist, Her Mysterious Death and Cult Resurgence." Observer, 30 Nov. 2015, observer.com/2015/11/three-decades-after-her-sordid-death-ana-mendietas-work-is-finally-getting-its-due/. Accessed 10 Oct. 2024.