Carl Andre was one of the founders of the art movement known as Minimal, Systemic, or ABC Art. It is a type of art that seeks to remove everything decorative, additive, or extra and leave the bare components. This is the art.
Andre is a metal worker, brick layer, and a sculptor. His works range from small to room size, leaving the viewer in awe of his work. Andre’s work is a little harder to understand than most because using the minimal view on art, there is not much to look at. Take his work with brick laying for example. He takes bricks and stacks them, he may rearrange them and that is the art. This frustrates most people because they can’t see how a stack of bricks, in perfect formation is art. That is what the art is though; it is so minimal and systematic that it makes its own statement. One hundred and twenty two bricks can be laid down many different ways, many patterns, varying heights and widths. He chooses to lay them in his own systematic ways, using arithmetic as the bases for his work. The preciseness of his work and the lines that run through it give the pieces structure. They are minimal in style and maybe even function, but that is how Andre chooses to work.
With Andre’s art, you have to look beyond the object in front of you and think why the artist decided to lay them this way or present it this way. Is there meaning in its environment? Does this show me something new? Can I see what he is trying to convey or what is my conclusion to it? Andre’s work asks many questions of it viewers and I believe that is the art in it. If art doesn’t make us think, is it truly art?
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| Copper Galaxy |
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| Equivalent VIII, 1966 |
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| Lament for the children, 1976-1996 |
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| Magnesium Squares |
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| Sum Roma, 1997 |
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| Uncarved Blocks, Vancouver 1975 |
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