TEXTOS/ESSAYS > CARL ANDRE & DAN FLAVIN

To build up, transform, carve, mould, shape... Many verbs are associated with sculpture; with the act of sculpt. Despite the different ways of practices, all of them have one thing in common: the three dimensional object. That is the main criteria to classify a work of art as a sculpture; according to Tucker, a sculpture is by nature an object, in the world, “in a way in which painting, music, poetry are not” (107). Traditional concept tough, relates sculptures with heroic, mythological, religious or political contexts, mostly with an educational message to the public, intending to guide it to a certain path. It became an art in which “the taste and ambition of the public patron became the determining factor” (Tucker 19). Therefore, until the early 20th Century, sculptures used to be figurative, representing something already existing, images the people could identify with themselves. To clarify this concept, we are going to compare a work by French sculptor Auguste Rodin (The Burghers of Calais, 1889) representing traditional methods, Romanian born Constantin Brancusi’s Endless Column (1937) symbolizing a bridge between the old and the new system, and American minimalists artists Dan Flavin and Carl Andre, both with revolutionary works from the 1960s onwards – main examples being Flavin’s The diagonal of May 25, 1963 (to Constantin Brancusi) and Andre’s Lever (1966).

First approach is on the space, how the works have been positioned and their location within the environment. Since traditional sculptures were usually figures (mainly human), they were often placed straight on the ground, with a base to sustain the figure, or sometimes on pedestals depending on the importance of the images represented and/or the intention behind it. The Burghers of Calais is a group sculpture composed by six men with approximately two meters high each. This work has been casted a few times; some versions have the figures in one single block (e.g. The original one in Calais, France, or the Victoria Tower Gardens version, in London) while others are separated sculptures (e.g. The one in the Stanford University campus, California). The same happens in terms of their placement: some have been put on pedestals, others on the floor. Either way, the viewer could surround them, just like standing in front of another human being. In Brancusi’s Endless Column, the observer is confronted by a column almost thirty meters high in the middle of a field in the small Romanian town of Târgu Jiu. Despite of its impressive monumentality, walk around it is still a possible thing to do. When it comes to Flavin’s The diagonal of May 25, 1963 (to Constantin Brancusi) – which from now on will be referred in the text as The diagonal – it all falls apart. The work is a fluorescent light tube measuring two and a half meters, disposed on the wall not parallel to the floor or to the walls, but like the name says, in a diagonal, which is already a defying position. By doing so, Flavin makes it unviable for the viewer to see the object from “behind”, naturally a painting characteristic, not a sculptural one; also the effects of the light on the wall transforms the wall into a work of art by casting light on it, the work goes beyond the physical limitations and penetrates the viewer space. This also appears in other projects, such as his corner piece Monument for V. Tatlin (also a spot unexplored before in sculptures), in which “his use of the corner was key to his elimination of the frame and the projection of his work into real space” (Bell 42), and his works on the ceiling of a gallery in 1969 at his  solo show in Vancouver, like Feldman describes: “People walked under it slowly at the opening, watching the reflected light scoop vaults overhead, overcome as they were by the work in general.” (65). Minimalist artist Donald Judd considers “the light diffused throughout the surrounding space or cast upon nearby surfaces, and the arrangement together or placement upon surfaces of the fixtures and tubes” the main aspects of Flavin’s works, confirming his special interest in the sculpture outside the sculpture. Andre goes the other way around, no corners, ceilings or walls: the ground becomes the work. On Lever, a composition of 137 firebricks arranged in a sequence coming from the wall all the way to the middle of the gallery, the public could walk around the approximately nine meters laid down column on the floor (except the side on the wall), but why take the long road if it is possible to jump over? Or as the artist said himself: “I like this thing about being able to be in the middle of the work. I don’t mind people touching my sculpture at all” (144). He challenges all Tucker concepts in terms of the role of the base, as a physical support, a visual presentation for the object and a symbolic relation with the world (56), transforming the base itself in the sculpture – this comes to extremes in the flat metal pieces made later on his career. This was also a wise move to develop important concepts and ideas after that time: Carl Andre’s investigation of sculpture as ‘place’ has possibly resulted in the most drastic redefinition of three-dimensional art in the last 40 years. His terse account of the evolution of 20th-century sculpture from ‘form’ to ‘structure’, and from ‘sculpture’ to ‘place’ helped explain what was original in much Minimal sculpture and helped determine the character of a great deal of art made since the mid-‘60s. (Bourdon 13) The second aspect differing the minimalists from traditional sculptors is the medium. Rodin worked mainly with bronze, Brancusi with wood (even though Endless Column is an exception, made of cast iron and steel) and before them marble and other stones were the paramount materials used on the making of sculptures in history. Flavin and Andre used everyday materials, basic and industrial, such as bricks, lights and metals. This was also related to the idea of reproduction, something that has already been explored in the Pop Art paintings a few years before, as an attempt to get closer to the public. Andre defines it when talking on his metal floorpieces: “Those metals – aluminium, steel, iron, magnesium, copper, zinc, and lead – are called the construction metals. They are the common metals of everyday economic life and the ones we see around us and we employ all the time.” (140). Using these materials easily found and welcoming the idea of reproduction (Bell 114), they put the artist in equal position to the public, a regular and common man like any other. There is no carving, modelling or handicraft, as seen on Rodin’s or Brancusi’s works. The hand doesn’t make anything, it simply arranges what is already there, consequently the work itself does not represent other figures anymore, it is the original, as paradoxical as it might sound; and that is the fundamental concept of minimalism: it is what it is. Johnston brings it up when writing on Flavin’s tube lights: “the geometry of the tube is an absolute condition which speaks for itself”. There is no intention to deceive the public, it doesn’t want to be anything else than that and the observer can see it clearly at whatever level of attention he wants to give (Kalina).

All the artists are influenced by other artists, no exceptions. “Rodin revered Michelangelo’s genius and his titanic performance” (Wittkower 245), Brancusi inherited some of Rodin’s style (Andre 172; Tucker 43-45; Wittkower 255) and Brancusi’s influence on the minimalists artists is also notable (Andre 242, Feldman 131). Both Flavin’s and Andre’s works – Lever and The diagonal – are references to Brancusi’s Endless Column. Flavin has made clearly homage, as seen on the title. He takes the idea of the column and throws it on the wall, in a smaller scale, in a closed environment and in a different position. On his work tough, the light comes from inside the object – it doesn’t shimmer like the Column, it shines – it has no background or handicraft, while Brancusi’s work is full of Romanian folk significance and manufacturing. As for Andre, the relation is even closer, since he has worked with Brancusi before. His main objective was to put Brancusi’s column on the ground and transform verticality into horizontality, claiming that “The area above a horizontal work becomes much more part of its territory than does the area around a vertical stack. Horizontality is for me a more efficient distribution of matter than verticality. A road ten kilometres long is quite common. A tower ten kilometres high does not exist.” (109). One thing the three pieces have in common is the idea of repetition. The diagonal could easily be copied – so it is that officially there are three of them. Andre’s bricks are all alike and have the same measures. Brancusi’s monument is the unification of the same shape repeating from bottom to top. Their relation to infinity and eternity is the opposite tough: while Brancusi sees no boundaries for his work, the sky is the limit and the work seems to go into the ground, Andre states he needs these limits in order to make art: “Infinity and eternity have no scale and for me scale is the essence of art.” (114). Flavin on the other hand, trespasses all these edges, for light has no physical border and the fact that the bulbs have to be replaced keeps the work always renewed, on a continuous present where time doesn’t pass. (Bell 127)

Last but not least, these artist’s works are widely engaged with architecture and urban life aspects. Their exhibitions at the Guggenheim museum in New York offered the public not only the possibility to see their production from a different perspective, but also changed the impact of the building itself. Bell describes it vividly on Flavin’s 1992 show: “the large central column not only was a focal axis for the total installation, but it painted the exterior of the parapets around the spiral in a soft rose color, contrasting with the internal spaces of the ramp galleries articulated by a variation on the original system” (96). Bourdon does the same for Andre’s 1970 exhibit: “In contrast to the building’s high, domed space, sinuous curves and cream-colored walls, 37 Pieces of Work was flat, angular and shiny, holding its own within Frank Lloyd Wright’s tour de force.” (32). Change the way people see such a strong construction, play with their perception and senses, is not an easy task; that is when art and architecture mix, definitely innovative. The gallery’s interior, the so called white cube, is where these objects become sculptures; they need the building to become the art. Considering that traditional sculptures were normally made for external environments, where the public could praise them (Burghers of Calais, Endless Column), the new sculptures have turned it inside out, correction, outside in. “Flavin’s art is a celebration of this empire of light. His art isn’t afraid of becoming another part of the city’s decoration.” (Feldman 281). These works are not part of a strange unfamiliar atmosphere, time or space; they are what people live, what they know, when and where they are. Like Andre said himself: “My works do not explain the world, they change it"

Works Cited

Andre, Carl. Cuts: texts 1959-2004. Ed. James Meyer. United States: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2005.

Bell, Tiffany and Michael Govan. Dan Flavin: a retrospective. Washington DC: Yale University Press and Dia Art Foundation, 2004.

Bourdon, David. Carl Andre: Sculpture 1959-1977. United States: Jaap Rietman Inc., 1978.

Feldman, Paula and Karsten Schubert, eds. It is what it is: writings on Dan Flavin since 1964. United Kingdom: Thames & Hudson, 2004.

Johnston, Jill. “Reviews and previews: New names this Month.” Art News 63 (1965): 13.

Judd, Donald. Aspects of Flavin’s Work. National Gallery of Canada. fluorescent lights, etc. from Dan Flavin. Ottawa, 1969.

Kalina, Richard. “In Another Light.” Art in America 84 (1996): 68-73.

Tucker, William. The Language of Sculpture. London: Thames and Hudson, 1974.

Wittkower, Rudolf. Sculpture. London: Penguin Books Ltd., 1977.