■ carl andre
These questions were drafted by Jack Risley and John Zinsser in April of 1990 and submitted to Carl Andre in written form. Andre’s responses of May 19, 1990 follow.
questions
1) A question about political content and meaning: Is there a
continuing embrace of a particular subject in your work? Should your
work be seen as the exemplification of a political theory?
2) Given your personal political philosophy, what room does it
give for the manner in which the work is actually configured? How
does your ideology inform the configuration?
3) Does being an artist bestow one with a specific authority
in our society?
4) Given that your work is believed to have a political
nature, how do you feel about the role it assumes in the art world:
as commodity with dollar value attached?
5) What, in your mind, is the difference between public and
private art? What obligation does the artist have to the public?
6) You were an artist at one time associated with a particular
peer group. Now the public may perceive you as more out on your own,
isolated and apart. How does this affect your working methodology?
7) For you, what form can dialogue now take? Is there a place
for dialogue in your work?
8) Does your work come out of a particular time, respond to a
particular cultural moment? How should it be seen in relation to
history?
9) What properties in materials do you identify with? Why do
you continue to use the same materials? What is it that changes in
your work from piece to piece?
answers
3) Money bestows authority in our society.
4) In any society, people exchange goods & services in order
to survive.
5) A society which cannot afford clean, attended public
sanitary facilities does not deserve public art.
8) By the age of five, human temperament is determined.
9) My formulation for sculpture (form-structure-place) left
out my main concern: matter.
7) It was less lonely when the Art Workers Coalition was
meeting every week.
1) Art is about human fertility.
2) Donald Trump’s Atlantic City is exactly the destiny of
America: a garbage dump for the idle rich & the idle poor.
6) Everyone is alone.
Text: © Copyright, Journal of Contemporary Art, Inc. and the authors.