About Carl Andre

A thorough and well-illustrated account of the leading Minimalist artist, Carl Andre.

A major retrospective catalogue on the career of minimalist sculptor and poet Carl Andre Carl Andre (b. 1935) redefined the parameters of abstract sculpture in the 1960s and 1970s. He was a highly influential voice in the American minimalist movement, recognized for his ordered linear and grid formats. In the early 1960s, Andre's creative focus shifted to writing poetry when he took a job as a freight brakeman and conductor for the Pennsylvania Railroad. His poems echoed and extended the themes in his sculptural work, and his experience with the railroad significantly influenced his choice of materials in later years. In this stunning catalogue, which accompanies the first retrospective of Andre's work since 1970, the artist's legacy is examined in eleven essays by international scholars. The book presents a broad range of sculpture made over the past fifty years, including Andre's emblematic floor and corner pieces, highlighting his radical use of standardized units of industrial material such as timber planks, concrete blocks, and metal plates. A vast selection of Andre's previously unpublished concrete poems, together with letters, postcards, ephemera, and documentation of important installations, further complements our understanding of an essential figure in the history of contemporary art.

Statements, dialogue, letters, epigrams, and poems by sculptor Carl Andre, a central figure in minimalism. Just as Carl Andre's sculptures are "cuts" of elemental materials, his writings are condensed expressions, "cuts" of language that emphasize the part rather than the whole. Andre, a central figure in minimalism and one of the most influential sculptors of our time, does not produce the usual critical essay. He has said that he is "not a writer of prose," and the texts included in Cuts—the most comprehensive collection of his writings yet published—appear in a wide variety of forms that are pithy and poetic rather than prosaic. Some texts are statements, many of them fifty words or less, written for catalog entries and press releases. Others are Socratic dialogues, interwoven statements, or in the form of questionnaires and interviews. Still others are letters—public and private, lengthy missives and postcards. Some are epigrams and maxims (for example, on Damian Hirst: I DON'T FEAR HIS SHARK. I FEAR HIS FORMALDEHYDE) and some are planar poems, words and letters arranged and rearranged into different patterns. They are organized alphabetically by subject, under such entries as "Art and Capitalism," "Childhood," "Entropy (After Smithson)," "Matter," "My Work," "Other Artists," and "Poetry," and they include Andre's reflections on Michelangelo and Duchamp, on Stein and Marx, and such contemporaries as Eva Hesse, Robert Smithson, Robert Morris, and Damien Hirst. Carl Andre's writing and its materiality—its stress on the visual and tactile qualities of language—takes its place beside his sculpture and its materiality, its revelation of "matter as matter rather than matter as symbol." Both assert the ethical and political primacy of matter in a culture that prizes the replica, the insubstantial, and the virtual. "I am not an idealist as an artist," says Andre. "I try to discover my visions in the conditions of the world. It's the conditions which are important."

Carl Andre is one of the most significant and influential artists of his generation. Alongside contemporaries such as Robert Morris and Donald Judd, his radically minimalist sculpture and poetry has fundamentally shifted the definitions and boundaries of art. Spanning four decades, this book charts the gradual evolution of consensus about the meaning of his art. The most significant essays and exhibition reviews have been collated into one volume, including texts written by some of the most influential art historians and critics: Clement Greenberg, Donald Kuspit, Lucy R. Lippard, Robert C. Morgan, Barbara Rose and Roberta Smith. Some essays appear here in English for the first time. This volume is an indispensable anthology on one of the central figures of Minimalism.

Tiré du site Internet de Primary Information: "Quincy is an artist book that provides immediate insight into Carl Andre's development as a sculptor. In lieu of creating an exhibition catalog for his 1973 solo show at the Addison Gallery, Andre hired a commercial photographer to document landscapes from his hometown, Quincy, Massachusetts. These stark black and white photographs depict scenes and raw materials that were the inspiration for much of his work."

A wildly entertaining and surprisingly educational dive into art history as you've never seen it before, from the host of the beloved ArtCurious podcast We're all familiar with the works of Claude Monet, thanks in no small part to the ubiquitous reproductions of his water lilies on umbrellas, handbags, scarves, and dorm-room posters. But did you also know that Monet and his cohort were trailblazing rebels whose works were originally deemed unbelievably ugly and vulgar? And while you probably know the tale of Vincent van Gogh's suicide, you may not be aware that there's pretty compelling evidence that the artist didn't die by his own hand but was accidentally killed--or even murdered. Or how about the fact that one of Andy Warhol's most enduring legacies involves Caroline Kennedy's moldy birthday cake and a collection of toenail clippings? ArtCurious is a colorful look at the world of art history, revealing some of the strangest, funniest, and most fascinating stories behind the world's great artists and masterpieces. Through these and other incredible, weird, and wonderful tales, ArtCurious presents an engaging look at why art history is, and continues to be, a riveting and relevant world to explore.