Carl Andre Quotes (1935-2024)

“People keep on wanting fetish figures, and things like that are very popular. That's pop art. There was an enormous resistance to Abstract Expressionism and there still is to that school, which is not dead at all. But pop art came as a reaction to that because kids can't paint abstract expressionism unless they're under five year of age. Because it really is tremendously hard work and it' very challenging. But the point is, people love an immediately recognizable word – if you put a word in anything, they lie it.. ..I am not interested in culture at all. Once a work of art has gotten into the culture, its dead as far as I'm concerned. I think there is a difference between art and culture. Or as the sage once said, "Art is what we do"; culture is what is done to us.”

“People keep on wanting fetish figures, and things like that are very popular. That's pop art. There was an enormous resistance to Abstract Expressionism and there still is to that school, which is not dead at all. But Pop art came as a reaction to that because kids can't paint abstract expressionism unless they're under five year of age. Because it really is tremendously hard work and it's very challenging. But the point is, people love an immediately recognizable word – if you put a word in anything, they like it.. .I am not interested in culture at all. Once a work of art has gotten into the culture, its dead as far as I'm concerned. I think there is a difference between art and culture. Or as the sage once said, 'Art is what we do; culture is what is done to us'.”

“Well sure, my sculptures are floor pieces. Each one, like any area on the surface of the earth,, supports a column of air that weighs – what is it? – 14.7 pounds per square inch. So in a sense, that might represent a column. It’s not an idea, it’s a sense of something you know, a demarked place. Somehow I think I always thought of it going that way, rather than an idea of a narrowing triangle going to the center of the earth... I have nothing to do with conceptual art. I’m not interested in ideas. If I were interested in ideas, I’d be in a field where what we think in is ideas... I don’t really know what an idea is. One thing for me is that if I can frame something in language, I would never make art out of it. I make art out of things which cannot be framed in any other way. (December 1969, talking with the audience)”

“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.”

“And again to quote Blake: “It is better to murder an infant in the cradle than to nurse an ungratified desire.””

“My conscious tradition is through Constantin Brâncuși, and Brâncuși just strikes me as an infinitely wiser and infinitely more talented, an infinitely stronger figure than [Marcel Duchamp|Duchamp]]. I think I could have done my work if Duchamp had not lived. I could not have done my work if Brâncuși had not lived.”

“I mean artists like Joseph Beuys, who is really a tough, strong artist. B E U Y S. He's been working in Germany for years. He doesn't bother with the burden of ideas. What he desires to do is fill your house with margarine. Let you live encased in fat, die encased in fat. He would take three hundred pounds of margarine and put it exactly where Pat Kelly is now, and then leave it there. That's sort of the tenor of his work.”

“Talking about the particles, I know I don’t have any special theory of particles. It’s just the way it came out and that’s the way I want to do it. Also, there are advantages to particles: you can’t break them; they don’t break apart. They don’t have any rigid connections; there are no rigid connections to break. The particles are always shifting around a little bit and you have to kick them back into shape. It’s like tuning a piano every once in a while. I like the idea of something being permanent by being non-rigid, being absolutely non-rigid but not having a rigid form that can be broken. But a theory of particles, I don’t know. Maybe late one night after a few drinks I explained to Lucy Lippard a theory of particles. I’m sure I didn't remember the next day.”

“The sculpture of Carl Andre is more than simply flat.. .Andre demonstrates a new use or possibly non-use of space. Several conclusions can be drawn from these sculptures ['The Razed Sites']: that it is the lowest level of space that counts most; that the space above that level can be filled without being enclosed; and that, ultimately, it is human scale that determines sculptural space.”

“Mr. Andre is not opposed to visitors walking on his [floor] sculptures [during the show]. He said yesterday that the friction of their feet would keep it polished and bright.. .It was rather like a used steel railway.”

“That was always the thing with Minimalism, there was no content allowed of course, but only the thing in the space, that was what Sol LeWitt was always about, and Carl Andre – it was all about avoiding content. I was always very interested in this [content], right from the beginning, especially with my 'Ellipsoids' [she made 1981 - 1983]. They look like Minimalism, but in the end there is a lot going on there.”

“He [Carl Andre] does not mind that Minimalism is no longer the avantgarde, he accepts as inevitable that his art, which enjoyed a brief moment of glory in the 1960's and 1970's, will for some decades be regarded as passé.”

“Look, if you paint another painting I'm going to cut off your hands.. (I [= Carl Andre] asked Stella, 'Can't I become a good painter?') No, because you are a good sculptor now.”