Cuts

Just as Carl Andre's sculptures are "cuts" of elemental materials, his writings arecondensed expressions, "cuts" of language that emphasize the part rather than the whole. Andre, acentral figure in minimalism and one of the most influential sculptors of our time, does not producethe usual critical essay. He has said that he is "not a writer of prose," and the texts included inCuts -- the most comprehensive collection of his writings yet published -- appear in a wide varietyof forms that are pithy and poetic rather than prosaic. Some texts are statements, many of themfifty words or less, written for catalog entries and press releases. Others are Socratic dialogues,interwoven statements, or in the form of questionnaires and interviews. Still others are letters --public and private, lengthy missives and postcards. Some are epigrams and maxims (for example, onDamian Hirst: I DON'T FEAR HIS SHARK. I FEAR HIS FORMALDEHYDE) and some are planar poems, words andletters arranged and rearranged into different patterns. They are organized alphabetically bysubject, under such entries as "Art and Capitalism," "Childhood," "Entropy (After Smithson),""Matter," "My Work," "Other Artists," and "Poetry," and they include Andre's reflections onMichelangelo and Duchamp, on Stein and Marx, and such contemporaries as Eva Hesse, Robert Smithson,Robert Morris, and Damien Hirst.Carl Andre's writing and its materiality -- its stress on the visualand tactile qualities of language -- takes its place beside his sculpture and its materiality, itsrevelation of "matter as matter rather than matter as symbol." Both assert the ethical and politicalprimacy of matter in a culture that prizes the replica, the insubstantial, and the virtual. "I amnot an idealist as an artist," says Andre. "I try to discover my visions in the conditions of theworld. It's the conditions which are important."

Carl Andre is a sculptor and poet.