Carl Andre

Carl André is a Artiste American plastics technician , being attached to the Minimalisme, born the September 16th 1935 with Quincy (Massachusetts).

Biography

Wire of a carpenter of the shipyards, Carl André is trained in the public schools of his birthplace of Quincy (Massachusetts) and with the Philips Academy with Andover (Massachusetts) (1951 - 1953) where he studies art under the direction of Patrick Morgan and becomes the friend of the scenario writer Hollis Frampton and of the photographer Michael Chapman. After being itself briefly registered in Kenyon College of Gambier (Ohio), he works for Boston Gear Works and saves sufficient money to accomplish a voyage in France and England (1954) during which he discovers the Mégalithe S of Stonehenge, which will exert a major influence on its work. He carries out his military service in the intelligence services in North Carolina (1955 - 1956) then settles with New York in 1957 where he works in a publisher and becomes acquainted with the painter Frank Stella near whom he studies painting.

He gradually gives up painting to direct himself towards the sculpture, developing woodcarvings influenced by Brancusi and black paintings of Frank Stella, then assemblies of blocks of wood in the rough. In parallel (1960 - 1964), he works as mechanic and driver for the Pennsylvania Railroad in the New Jersey. In 1965, it takes part with Robert Morris, Donald Judd and Larry Bell with the exposure “Shape and Structures” organized by Henry Geldzahler to the Gallery Tibor de Nagy in New York. A few months later it carries out its first personal exposure where it exposes assemblies of horizontal beams in styroforme (industrial plastic).

In the Years 1970, the artist carries out many large installations like Blocks and Stones for Center for the Visual Arts of Portland (Oregon) (1973). In 1972, the Tate Gallery London acquires of sound Equivalent VIII (1966), commonly called The Bricks ( the Bricks ), which consist of 120 refractory bricks arranged in rectangle, which had a success of international scandal. It carries out works in outside more and more, like Stone Field Sculpture (Hartford, 1977).

In 1970, it profits from a personal exposure to the Musée Guggenheim of New York and, since then, it exposes regularly, either only or in group, in the principal museums, galleries and centers of art in America and Europe, among which one can quote Laguna Gloria Art Museum with Austin (Texas) in 1978, Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum with Eindhoven (Netherlands) in 1987, the Museum off Modern Art of Oxford (the United Kingdom) in 1996 and the Cantini Museum of Marseilles (France) in 1997. Andre also composes of concrete poetry, laying out the words on the page as if they were drawings. This work was presented in America and Europe, and including one important collection was gathered by Stedjlik Museum of Amsterdam.

Because André lives and works in New York. He is represented by the Gallery Paula Cooper of New York.

In 1986, it was discharged murder of his wife, the artist Anna Mendieta. He is the nephew of the man of radio operator British Raymond Baxter, who frequently defended his work.

Work

Carl André installs four major concepts as a whole of his work:

flatness;
sculpture like place;
the modular composition;
use of rough materials.

The most outstanding characteristic of the work of Carl André is the setting with bottom of the fundamental characteristic of the sculpture, verticality. The sculpture ceases being an autonomous form, it concentrates and retains the energy which thus constitutes it space becomes the essential component. The sculpture became place: place in oneself and in the place which contains it.

Carl André affirms that it creates according to spaces of presentation. Work minimalist of Carl André appears by great simplicity in the use which it makes of rough materials. He does not invent technique nor of particular know-how relegating the traditional one to formerly of the sculpture. The gestural one is thus refused and the attention of the spectator sets on material itself. Thus the sculpture refuses with only occupying space: it is seized some.

Industrial metal plates posed on the ground constitute since the beginning of the Années 1970 the most known aspect of the work of Carl André. The artist carries out parts thus where the flatness of the ground is in perfect adequacy with the flat aspect of material. By horizontalisant his sculpture, the artist defines it as a place which the spectator is invited besides to traverse while walking above (it is one from the points of view of experimentation of work).

“I do not make, says it, that to pose the " Column without fin" of Brancusi to very the ground, instead of drawing up it towards the sky… ”. Carl Andre with the practice to say that the ideal for him is a road made up of a simple juxtaposition of units standards of industrial plates posed on the ground the ones following the others without any hierarchy of place nor of volume and where any module can be replaced by another.

Its esthetics is also expressed by the matter and tends to bring closer the end and the means. One finds there no romanticism of the gesture of the craftsman harnessed with his confrontation with the matter. Its sculptures are not the result of a sculptural act printed with material in order to inflect it, there is rather a way of revealing the matter through esthetic qualities which are clean for him. If the material is used machined in the most neutral possible form they is because the artist respects the concept of mass, gravity, of density, all of the characteristics which the spectator must be able to feel naturally in front of his works. Finally the space which accommodates it is left such as it is and very often determines the realization of the sculpture with which it amalgamates to constitute whole work: in other words space is one of the components of work.

Principal works

Equivalent VIII , 1966: 120 refractory bricks arranged in rectangle (London, Touches Gallery)
10 Steel Row , 1967, 1 X 60 X 300 cm: 10 steel flagstones aligned directly on the floor; this work marks the beginning of the use of metal plates (photography)
2 X 18 Aluminum Lock , 1968: 36 rectangular units out of aluminum of 1 X 100 X 100 cm each one, 1 X 200 X 1800 cm on the whole (Collection The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York - The Panza Collection) (photography)
100 Magnesium Public gardens , 1970: 100 assembled magnesium flagstones
144 Chock Public garden , 1975: 144 tin squares of 30,5 X 30,5 cm each one, 367 X 367 cm on the whole (Paris, National museum of Modern art)
Hearth (Hearth) , 1980: work realized with Düsseldorf, 44 rough beams of sawmill out of wooden of red cedar of 30 X 90 X 30 cm each one, 120,5 X 469 X 90 cm on the whole: Carl André joins again here with a practice adopted as of his beginnings, the use and the development of wood not transformed (Paris, National museum of Modern art)

References

Sources

Biographical note of the Foundation Guggenheim

External bonds

Note on Carl Andre

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