Carl Andre Paula Cooper Gallery Jan 9 - Feb 2, 2025

 Carl Andre, Paula Cooper Gallery

By MICHAEL KLEIN March 3, 2025

So many of the artists with whom I became familiar with contemporary art are now gone. Such is the case of Carl Andre, a sculpture master who provoked the art world with his geometric purity and devotion to the rules of Minimal art.

The present show is a great mini-survey of who he was and how the works, whether in wood, metal, or stone, are examples of a lot of careers [徐1] spanning some six decades. As the press release explains, he created some 2000 works in his lifetime.

One great aspect of Andres’ work is his discipline - not moved or excited by the ever-changing landscape of contemporary art - steadfast to his own rules and vision.

He intended to create a sculpture that tested how we define sculpture. Yes, three-dimensional forms, but such a dimension could be as thin as 1/4 of an inch, which is the thesis of his metal floor pieces. In this show, the gallery presents Ferox (1982), an elegant corner piece. Construction, too, is key to his vision: rows of stacked rectangular units stretching across the gallery floor. A Memorial to After Ages (1983) is a great example. Gesture is replaced by repetition and a regular, almost syncopated, placement of elements.

Another aspect of this work is its position within the gallery exhibition space and its relationship to architecture. Off the pedestal, it is now in dialogue, if you will, with walls and floors - and ultimately the viewer in the space in which it is presented. A dynamic dialogue exists, therefore, between the object and the space, replacing the tactile nature of sculpture with something totally visual.

The Paula Cooper gallery is a perfect space for these works, given its dimensions and scale.

Andre rejected the previous generations’ use of art that employed expressive, emotional, even irrational, and highly subjective methods and philosophy of art-making. Feelings, per se, were irrelevant here and stood in the way of seeing.

Carl Andre, Paula Cooper Gallery

His was a rational endeavor—a manifesto of aesthetic principles where geometry is king. Today, we accept Minimal art as another important movement in the history of art. However, in its early days, with shows at Fischbach and Green Galleries in New York, Andre and others like Donald Judd and Robert Morris turned heads and stood in dramatic opposition to the Abstract Expressionist painters and Pop artists of the time. Immediate acclaim followed Andre’s pioneering exhibition at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York, in 1965. The new terms began to be acknowledged by fellow artist Frank Stella, who exclaimed, “What you see is what you get,” speaking of his series of black paintings, but equally true for Andre as well.

So basic were Minimal art’s vocabulary of forms that the late critic Barbara Rose called it ABC Art in an Art in America article. She was attempting to both define and describe what she was seeing in this new, revolutionary, and for many then, startling work. Yet, these works and their authors are now classic examples in the evolution of American art, well worth our attention. WM

 [徐1]Exemplify a long career