"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 1960s and 1970s, will for some decades be regarded as passé."
Carl Andre was an American minimalist artist recognized for his ordered linear and grid format sculptures. His sculptures range from large public artworks, to large interior works exhibited on the floor, to small intimate works.
"My work is atheistic, materialistic and communistic. Its atheistic because its without transcendent form, without spiritual or intellectual quality. Materialistic because its made out of its own materials without pretension to other materials. And communistic because the form is equally accessible to all men."
"As I have said many times, for me an artist is a person who says hes an artist, and an artwork is what an artist says is an artwork. Although for myself, I am not interested in ideas as the burden of art.. ..the important thing about art is how it stimulates us. I think the more you are stimulated by more different kinds of art, the more demanding youre going to become on the level of your stimulation. The key to art is experience of it and proximity to it."
"You might say that a creative person is a person who simply has a desire to have something, to add something to the world thats not there yet, and goes about arranging fort that to happen.. ..when you desire a work of art and make it, youve added to the stock of art in the world. Artists are one of the people who can do that: add to the stock of things."
"It comes to me as a desire to have something in the world. And again to quote Blake, It is better to murder an infant in the cradle than to nurse an ungratified desire... .You might say that a creative person is a person who simply has a desire to have something, to add something to the world thats not there yet, and goes about arranging fort that to happen.. ..when you desire a work of art and make it, youve added to the stock of art in the world. Artists are one of the people who can do that: add to the stock of things."
"A work will be treated as art within a certain circle – that is, within the circle of lets say ten thousand people. There are about ten thousand in the world today who are prepared to take it on face value if you present anything to them as art, they deal with it straight on as art and tell you whether it stimulates them, moves them, or not. Some of them might even buy it.. .Anyway, it seems to me that within that ring of ten thousand, fortunately, that sincerity issue [the issue: is something art or not] is over. The reason why that issue failed is that it became obvious no one would live a life of art, a life of poverty, just to pull somebodys legs. In other words, there were compensating sacrifices for what people did."
"I like the description Physical art. I think maybe art emerged when man first began to distinguish himself from nature. Art is part of himself, which he returns perhaps as an homage to the nature which he left. Of course, he never left nature. The rise of consciousness, perhaps.. .The main thing we believe, that separated us from not only animals but from the stones, is the fact that we are not stones, that we are not dogs. Now that is an assumption, perhaps its a false assumption. But anyway, somehow I think one of the greatest functions of art is that man can feed back to his own consciousness through the knowledge that he is not a stone or not a dog. [December 1969; quote from a talk with his audience]"