Carl Andre on Frank Stella

“Art excludes the unnecessary. Frank Stella has found it necessary to paint stripes. There is nothing else in his painting. Stella is not interested in expression or sensitivity. He is interested in the necessity of painting. Symbols are counters passed among people. Frank Stella's painting is not symbolic. His stripes are the paths of brush on canvas. These path leads only into painting.”

“So I had carved one face with hollows curving in-out, in-out, very simple really. I set the timber upright and Stella came in [in Stella's own loft where Carl Andre was sculpting temporarily] and came over and looked at the chiseling and said it looked good. He turned around to the back of the piece which was uncut – the backside of the timber – and he said, you know that's sculpture too. I supposed what he meant to say was, that cutting was a good idea and the idea of not cutting was good too.”

“I've been educated in some pretty lively barrooms, like the Cedar Bar in New York. And I went to high school with Frank Stella and when he got out of college he went to New York and started painting ... I was working with sculpture in a kind of dilatory way, and he said to come up and work in his tiny loft when he wasn't there. At the same time I sort of dabbled in a little bit of painting, and a kind of confusion. I was an eye, ear, nose, and throat person too ... One day Frank Stella just said to me, "Look, if you paint another painting I'm going to cut off your hands." I asked, "Can't I become a good painter?" Frank said, "No, because you are a good sculptor now." That's really my formal education ... the company of artists is the great education.”