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I find that people who do not care very much for art at all | 0:00:05 | 0:00:08 | |
spend all their art time and energy with art that they don't like. | 0:00:08 | 0:00:12 | |
I just don't understand why people who were outraged by my art | 0:00:13 | 0:00:18 | |
bother with it at all. | 0:00:18 | 0:00:19 | |
This programme contains some strong language. | 0:00:20 | 0:00:27 | |
It consists of 120 bricks stacked in two layers. | 0:00:27 | 0:00:31 | |
Industrially-manufactured bricks, all of which, of course, | 0:00:35 | 0:00:38 | |
are made of the same substance and are therefore of the same hue. | 0:00:38 | 0:00:42 | |
Yeah, no, I totally remember it, yeah. | 0:00:47 | 0:00:48 | |
I remember my mum telling me that the Tate Gallery had bought bricks. | 0:00:48 | 0:00:52 | |
Oh, I do remember the bricks controversy. | 0:00:55 | 0:00:57 | |
I was...had just finished my foundation, so I'm really old! | 0:00:57 | 0:01:02 | |
And I remember being quite perplexed by it, really. | 0:01:02 | 0:01:05 | |
-Do you remember the bricks controversy? -I do, yeah, 1976. | 0:01:07 | 0:01:11 | |
Pile of bricks basically on the floor, and they called it art. | 0:01:16 | 0:01:20 | |
It's funny how it's lodged in public memory. | 0:01:28 | 0:01:31 | |
It was talked about all over the nation and it went on for months. | 0:01:31 | 0:01:34 | |
One can see it as the moment that modern art became something | 0:01:40 | 0:01:46 | |
that everybody had an opinion about. | 0:01:46 | 0:01:48 | |
The Tate art gallery in London hit the headlines today when it | 0:01:53 | 0:01:57 | |
was revealed that they'd paid a lot of money for a pile of old bricks. | 0:01:57 | 0:02:01 | |
It was 1976 that the whole thing broke. | 0:02:08 | 0:02:12 | |
The bricks fuss was one of those things that actually caught | 0:02:18 | 0:02:21 | |
like wildfire. | 0:02:21 | 0:02:22 | |
Suddenly, the whole press went mad about this work. | 0:02:28 | 0:02:31 | |
They're probably the most expensive bricks in the world. | 0:02:35 | 0:02:38 | |
The Tate's brickies laid out the 120 firebricks in the | 0:02:38 | 0:02:41 | |
rectangular pattern decreed by the sculptor. | 0:02:41 | 0:02:44 | |
It was a major media storm. | 0:02:44 | 0:02:46 | |
Most critics and mere mortals find this low-slung rectangle | 0:02:51 | 0:02:55 | |
laughable or loathsome. | 0:02:55 | 0:02:56 | |
It's bloody pretentious and stupid, and they need sending up! | 0:02:56 | 0:03:00 | |
It just seemed, in my opinion as a taxpayer, a complete waste of money. | 0:03:05 | 0:03:09 | |
I think they're making fun of us. People would say I'm wrong. | 0:03:18 | 0:03:24 | |
I admit, it's my opinion. | 0:03:24 | 0:03:27 | |
But I really believe that the person who believes himself that this | 0:03:27 | 0:03:31 | |
-sculpture is making fun of us. -What's your reaction? | 0:03:31 | 0:03:36 | |
-You've studied it closely, have you? -Yes, I've studied it. | 0:03:36 | 0:03:38 | |
-And what do you make of it? -It's a pile of bricks! | 0:03:38 | 0:03:41 | |
One of the main reasons why the public was upset about the bricks | 0:03:45 | 0:03:49 | |
was that it wasn't refined, you know, and that works of art, | 0:03:49 | 0:03:54 | |
you know, could not just be made out of ordinary stuff. | 0:03:54 | 0:03:57 | |
This is bricks being stacked, not even being kind of formed, | 0:03:59 | 0:04:03 | |
joined, carved or anything happening to them, | 0:04:03 | 0:04:05 | |
just being put in this simple rectilinear arrangement. | 0:04:05 | 0:04:10 | |
And I think it felt, for many people, | 0:04:10 | 0:04:12 | |
like the artist was just taking the piss. | 0:04:12 | 0:04:15 | |
Waste of taxpayers' money and a waste of space in the Tate Gallery. | 0:04:15 | 0:04:19 | |
Of course, all the popular press picked up the thing about what | 0:04:19 | 0:04:23 | |
a waste of money, what a load of rubbish. | 0:04:23 | 0:04:25 | |
Here is this gallery, funded by the state, they get 500,000 quid | 0:04:25 | 0:04:29 | |
a year for acquisitions, what do they spend their money on? | 0:04:29 | 0:04:32 | |
They spend it on a pile of bricks, claiming that it's a work of art. | 0:04:32 | 0:04:36 | |
The bricks controversy, like all great controversies, | 0:04:46 | 0:04:49 | |
it's a period piece, it's something of its time. | 0:04:49 | 0:04:52 | |
# He loves to dance He's got to dance | 0:04:52 | 0:04:54 | |
# Oh, I love to love... # | 0:04:54 | 0:04:56 | |
If you'd opened a newspaper in the sort of early weeks of 1976, | 0:04:56 | 0:05:01 | |
it was just sort of one bit of bad news after another... | 0:05:01 | 0:05:05 | |
Today's decision means that over 100 men will turn up tomorrow | 0:05:05 | 0:05:09 | |
knowing they'll either be asked to go home or told they'll get no pay. | 0:05:09 | 0:05:13 | |
..a strike, a set of terrible economic figures. | 0:05:13 | 0:05:17 | |
The pound has never fallen so far so fast. | 0:05:17 | 0:05:20 | |
# The minute the band begins to swing it | 0:05:20 | 0:05:22 | |
# He's on his feet to dig it | 0:05:22 | 0:05:25 | |
# And dance the night away... # | 0:05:25 | 0:05:28 | |
There was double-digit inflation, there was a world recession, | 0:05:28 | 0:05:31 | |
oil prices were rising. | 0:05:31 | 0:05:33 | |
It was a period not of expansion but of restraint. | 0:05:33 | 0:05:36 | |
# If I had my way | 0:05:36 | 0:05:38 | |
# Oh, I love to love | 0:05:38 | 0:05:41 | |
# But my baby... # | 0:05:41 | 0:05:42 | |
And I think that, when people find out that when there's | 0:05:42 | 0:05:44 | |
so little money to play with and when | 0:05:44 | 0:05:46 | |
so many ordinary households are kind of under financial pressure, | 0:05:46 | 0:05:49 | |
when they find out that public money is going on some bricks, | 0:05:49 | 0:05:54 | |
they see that, I think, a lot of people saw that, | 0:05:54 | 0:05:56 | |
as the perfect symbol of a kind of society and of | 0:05:56 | 0:05:59 | |
a kind of high culture, if you like, that had lost its way. | 0:05:59 | 0:06:03 | |
I've never seen anything so stupid in my life! | 0:06:03 | 0:06:06 | |
I'm afraid I don't see any art in it or any beauty. | 0:06:06 | 0:06:11 | |
Very nice in my back garden but not in an art gallery. | 0:06:11 | 0:06:14 | |
In Arena this week, | 0:06:19 | 0:06:21 | |
the controversial American artist Carl Andre talks about those bricks. | 0:06:21 | 0:06:25 | |
Well, maybe I've learned from my experience in Britain that | 0:06:28 | 0:06:32 | |
my work poses questions. | 0:06:32 | 0:06:34 | |
I'm not sure I have any answers. | 0:06:34 | 0:06:35 | |
MUSIC: Autobahn by Kraftwerk | 0:06:36 | 0:06:41 | |
Carl Andre was an American artist born in 1935 and he was brought up | 0:06:41 | 0:06:46 | |
in Massachusetts in a town called Quincy, which was very industrial. | 0:06:46 | 0:06:52 | |
CARL ANDRE: From 1960 to 1964, | 0:06:55 | 0:06:57 | |
I worked as a freight brakeman on the Pennsylvania Railroad. | 0:06:57 | 0:07:02 | |
I think that was my final art academy - the railroad. | 0:07:02 | 0:07:05 | |
The idea of construction, building, bringing material order to | 0:07:07 | 0:07:12 | |
the world, you might say, was again one of my earliest memories. | 0:07:12 | 0:07:15 | |
Part of his job was to couple and uncouple the wagons, the trucks. | 0:07:17 | 0:07:20 | |
He was looking at steel lines travelling across the land, | 0:07:20 | 0:07:24 | |
working with very elemental materials. | 0:07:24 | 0:07:27 | |
And it all makes sense that his aesthetic comes out of that | 0:07:27 | 0:07:30 | |
experience. | 0:07:30 | 0:07:32 | |
He was one of the key artists of the movement known as minimalism, | 0:07:32 | 0:07:38 | |
which was a major, major art movement, along with just one | 0:07:38 | 0:07:41 | |
or two other artists, and then there were millions of followers. | 0:07:41 | 0:07:45 | |
Minimalism is a historic art movement that began in | 0:07:50 | 0:07:53 | |
the '60s in New York and, | 0:07:53 | 0:07:56 | |
although it has precedence in the earlier part of | 0:07:56 | 0:07:58 | |
the 20th century in very sort of cool, streamlined, | 0:07:58 | 0:08:02 | |
abstract art, it's really a '60s art movement. | 0:08:02 | 0:08:07 | |
It means objects, mostly sculpture but sometimes paintings, | 0:08:07 | 0:08:11 | |
reduced down to their most minimal aspects. | 0:08:11 | 0:08:16 | |
So all the attributes of painting or sculpture you can think of | 0:08:16 | 0:08:20 | |
are reduced down until you've got the barest minimum of what | 0:08:20 | 0:08:25 | |
it takes to be an artwork. | 0:08:25 | 0:08:28 | |
The main minimalists are all American - | 0:08:28 | 0:08:32 | |
Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Carl Andre. | 0:08:32 | 0:08:36 | |
There was a painter called Frank Stella, | 0:08:36 | 0:08:38 | |
who was Andre's friend. | 0:08:38 | 0:08:39 | |
There was Sol LeWitt among the sculptors. | 0:08:41 | 0:08:43 | |
Robert Morris and Robert Ryman. | 0:08:45 | 0:08:48 | |
Now, in that handful of names, | 0:08:48 | 0:08:49 | |
there's all sorts of materials being used. | 0:08:49 | 0:08:52 | |
Somebody's making minimalism out of neon light tubes and | 0:08:52 | 0:08:56 | |
someone's making minimalism out of forms that are just boxes. | 0:08:56 | 0:09:00 | |
Someone's making minimalism out of paintings that are all white. | 0:09:00 | 0:09:04 | |
Somebody else is doing paintings that are all stripes. | 0:09:04 | 0:09:07 | |
And in Andre's case, what distinguished him is that | 0:09:07 | 0:09:10 | |
he was doing sculptures which you could barely see. | 0:09:10 | 0:09:14 | |
When you did focus on them, | 0:09:15 | 0:09:17 | |
you could see that they were like the floor. | 0:09:17 | 0:09:20 | |
They were on the floor but there didn't seem to be anything | 0:09:20 | 0:09:22 | |
but the floor. | 0:09:22 | 0:09:23 | |
It was as if they were a floor upon a floor. | 0:09:23 | 0:09:25 | |
CARL ANDRE: People are always saying, | 0:09:25 | 0:09:27 | |
"What will the man on the street say about your work?" | 0:09:27 | 0:09:29 | |
Well, the child of the man on the street under the age of five | 0:09:29 | 0:09:32 | |
almost always loves my work so I'd rather go for the child. | 0:09:32 | 0:09:35 | |
They're built very close to the ground and they're used to | 0:09:35 | 0:09:38 | |
noticing what's on the ground and the patterns that are on the ground. | 0:09:38 | 0:09:42 | |
Minimalism came in when there was a kind of reaction against | 0:09:48 | 0:09:51 | |
American abstract expressionism. | 0:09:51 | 0:09:54 | |
Jackson Pollock, as we know, | 0:09:54 | 0:09:55 | |
danced over his canvas with his drips and so on. | 0:09:55 | 0:09:59 | |
Pollock became a cult hero to his art public and was dubbed | 0:09:59 | 0:10:02 | |
Jack the Dripper in the press. | 0:10:02 | 0:10:04 | |
Fierce individuality was personified in the controlled | 0:10:04 | 0:10:07 | |
explosions of Pollock's volcanic talent. | 0:10:07 | 0:10:09 | |
Abstract expressionism, | 0:10:11 | 0:10:12 | |
which was all gesture and throwing paint around, Jackson Pollock, | 0:10:12 | 0:10:15 | |
you know, quite emotive, quite vibrant, colourful work. | 0:10:15 | 0:10:18 | |
Then there was this reaction to that, which was minimalism, | 0:10:20 | 0:10:23 | |
which is all quiet and sombre and stripped back to the raw materials | 0:10:23 | 0:10:28 | |
and, you know, no grandstanding of gesture, you know. | 0:10:28 | 0:10:31 | |
It was all about the absence of that. | 0:10:31 | 0:10:34 | |
And there was sort of a paring back, almost denying of emotion, | 0:10:34 | 0:10:37 | |
really, you know. | 0:10:37 | 0:10:39 | |
Minimalism seemed to be like emptying itself out of content. | 0:10:39 | 0:10:43 | |
Carl Andre's motive in making brick sculptures was to do with landscape. | 0:10:51 | 0:10:58 | |
He had been on a canoeing trip, canoeing across the lake | 0:10:59 | 0:11:03 | |
where you're inches from the water, this flat water. | 0:11:03 | 0:11:07 | |
He suddenly kind of got the idea. | 0:11:07 | 0:11:09 | |
And he found himself absentmindedly noticing the sheer glassy surface | 0:11:14 | 0:11:21 | |
upon which he was canoeing, and it came to him in a flash | 0:11:21 | 0:11:25 | |
that flatness - literal low flatness - was the way to go. | 0:11:25 | 0:11:30 | |
You can imagine that glassy surface. | 0:11:33 | 0:11:35 | |
And you can imagine it was some pleasure. | 0:11:37 | 0:11:40 | |
And so it sort of gives you a hint about | 0:11:40 | 0:11:42 | |
a better way to appreciate his art than to be angry with it. | 0:11:42 | 0:11:45 | |
It's to sort of enter into it and enter into its delicious | 0:11:45 | 0:11:50 | |
possibilities. | 0:11:50 | 0:11:51 | |
Well, he had decided to make eight sculptures out of 120 sand | 0:12:06 | 0:12:10 | |
lime bricks, and these sculptures had formed different geometrical | 0:12:10 | 0:12:14 | |
shapes and different formations. | 0:12:14 | 0:12:16 | |
# There were plants and birds and rocks and things | 0:12:16 | 0:12:20 | |
# There was sand and hills... # | 0:12:20 | 0:12:22 | |
So he's thinking about arrangements, | 0:12:22 | 0:12:23 | |
he's thinking about the object as a sort of cut into space. | 0:12:23 | 0:12:26 | |
# And the sky with no clouds... # | 0:12:27 | 0:12:30 | |
The first version of Equivalent was exhibited in 1966. | 0:12:31 | 0:12:39 | |
And they were shown at a gallery. None of them sold. | 0:12:39 | 0:12:42 | |
Someone from the then Tate Gallery, a few years later, | 0:12:42 | 0:12:46 | |
thought that it'd be a good idea if the Tate had one of them, | 0:12:46 | 0:12:49 | |
having seen it in a photo. But they didn't exist any more. | 0:12:49 | 0:12:51 | |
They'd gone back to the brickyard | 0:12:51 | 0:12:53 | |
and he had to remake it out of | 0:12:53 | 0:12:56 | |
slightly different bricks than he originally used. | 0:12:56 | 0:12:58 | |
# La, la | 0:12:59 | 0:13:01 | |
# La, la, la, la, la | 0:13:01 | 0:13:03 | |
# La, la, la | 0:13:03 | 0:13:04 | |
# La, la | 0:13:04 | 0:13:05 | |
# After two days in the desert sun... # | 0:13:06 | 0:13:10 | |
This is where we press a small quantity of firebricks. We weigh | 0:13:10 | 0:13:14 | |
out the right amount of material, we fill the dye and then the press | 0:13:14 | 0:13:18 | |
presses it to the correct size. | 0:13:18 | 0:13:20 | |
This is the colour they are before they are fired. | 0:13:22 | 0:13:25 | |
They go from here to a kiln, | 0:13:25 | 0:13:26 | |
where they are taken to a high temperature and then | 0:13:26 | 0:13:28 | |
they look like bricks. | 0:13:28 | 0:13:30 | |
# You see, I've been through the desert on a horse with no name | 0:13:30 | 0:13:33 | |
# It felt good to be... # | 0:13:33 | 0:13:34 | |
They are different to normal bricks. | 0:13:34 | 0:13:36 | |
They don't have a frog or a gap in the bricks. That's because we | 0:13:36 | 0:13:40 | |
want to get a good seal when the bricks are used in service, | 0:13:40 | 0:13:45 | |
a hole would be a weakness. | 0:13:45 | 0:13:47 | |
# La, la, la, la, la | 0:13:47 | 0:13:49 | |
# La, la, la, la, la | 0:13:49 | 0:13:53 | |
# La, la, la, la, la | 0:13:53 | 0:13:56 | |
# La, la, la, la, la. # | 0:13:56 | 0:14:00 | |
Tate Gallery acquisitions file about Carl Andre from 1972 to '79. | 0:14:00 | 0:14:07 | |
How extraordinary. | 0:14:09 | 0:14:10 | |
This is a letter from me | 0:14:12 | 0:14:14 | |
to the John Weber Gallery in New York, | 0:14:14 | 0:14:17 | |
in 1972, asking if they could give us an update on | 0:14:17 | 0:14:21 | |
the position of available sculptures by Carl. | 0:14:21 | 0:14:25 | |
"Uniqueness, size or edition, and price - | 0:14:25 | 0:14:28 | |
"details of brick pieces would also be useful." | 0:14:28 | 0:14:31 | |
Well, little did I know what that was going to be the beginning of. | 0:14:31 | 0:14:35 | |
Very interesting to see that again after what must be 43 years. | 0:14:35 | 0:14:40 | |
Amazing! | 0:14:40 | 0:14:41 | |
# After two days in the desert sun | 0:14:41 | 0:14:45 | |
# My skin began to turn red | 0:14:45 | 0:14:49 | |
# After three days in the desert fun | 0:14:49 | 0:14:52 | |
# I was looking at... # | 0:14:52 | 0:14:53 | |
This is a note. | 0:14:53 | 0:14:54 | |
It says, the bricks arrived on the 22nd of May 1972 | 0:14:54 | 0:14:58 | |
at the container depot in Dagenham. | 0:14:58 | 0:15:01 | |
"Unable to get work released because of pickets." | 0:15:02 | 0:15:05 | |
Isn't it fantastic? | 0:15:05 | 0:15:07 | |
"All transport..." - that must be the name of a firm - | 0:15:07 | 0:15:10 | |
"..instructed to take no further action for the time being | 0:15:10 | 0:15:13 | |
"until more was know about the outcome of the dockers' dispute." | 0:15:13 | 0:15:17 | |
We will not back down in any way, shape or form. | 0:15:17 | 0:15:21 | |
We are dealing with the right to work and we want that right to work. | 0:15:21 | 0:15:26 | |
# Oh, you don't get me I'm part of the union | 0:15:27 | 0:15:31 | |
# You don't get me I'm part of the union | 0:15:31 | 0:15:34 | |
# You don't get me... # | 0:15:34 | 0:15:35 | |
So this is the first time I've ever known that | 0:15:35 | 0:15:38 | |
Dagenham comes into the story of the bricks affair. | 0:15:38 | 0:15:43 | |
# Till the day I die | 0:15:43 | 0:15:46 | |
# Till the day I die | 0:15:46 | 0:15:49 | |
# You don't get me I'm part of the union | 0:15:49 | 0:15:52 | |
# You don't get me I'm part of the union | 0:15:52 | 0:15:55 | |
# You don't get me I'm part of the union | 0:15:55 | 0:15:59 | |
# Till the day I die | 0:15:59 | 0:16:01 | |
# Till the day I die. # | 0:16:01 | 0:16:04 | |
Equivalent VIII had been shown twice before the controversy broke. | 0:16:08 | 0:16:12 | |
The press office tried to drum up interest in the press | 0:16:12 | 0:16:17 | |
in this display, and didn't really have much success. | 0:16:17 | 0:16:21 | |
I mean, they were actually told by some newspapers, you know, | 0:16:21 | 0:16:24 | |
"Who would be interested in this sort of thing?" | 0:16:24 | 0:16:26 | |
It's absolutely amazing considering what happened. | 0:16:26 | 0:16:28 | |
There has been nothing about the bricks. | 0:16:28 | 0:16:30 | |
The bricks have been there, they've be bought for years. | 0:16:30 | 0:16:33 | |
Nobody has basically even noticed. | 0:16:33 | 0:16:35 | |
But then the Sunday Times wanted to put the boot in to the Tate | 0:16:35 | 0:16:38 | |
about its finances. And the guy who wrote the story saw the bricks as | 0:16:38 | 0:16:42 | |
the perfect symbol of this. | 0:16:42 | 0:16:43 | |
# There's a kind of hush | 0:16:51 | 0:16:54 | |
# All over the world... # | 0:16:54 | 0:16:57 | |
I hope I get it right. Cos it was 40-odd years ago. | 0:16:57 | 0:17:01 | |
# You can hear | 0:17:01 | 0:17:02 | |
# The sound of lovers in love | 0:17:02 | 0:17:05 | |
# You know what I mean | 0:17:05 | 0:17:07 | |
# Just the two of us... # | 0:17:07 | 0:17:09 | |
I was a reporter on the Sunday Times. | 0:17:09 | 0:17:13 | |
I was sent to write a few hundred words on the Constable exhibition | 0:17:13 | 0:17:16 | |
at the Tate Gallery. | 0:17:16 | 0:17:18 | |
I was shepherded around, | 0:17:19 | 0:17:21 | |
handed a copy of the biannual report. | 0:17:21 | 0:17:25 | |
# So listen carefully | 0:17:25 | 0:17:26 | |
# Get closer now and you will see what I mean... # | 0:17:26 | 0:17:30 | |
What happened was that an investigative journalist | 0:17:30 | 0:17:32 | |
called Colin Simpson got hold of the report and read though it, | 0:17:32 | 0:17:38 | |
and picked up that they had bought a pile of bricks | 0:17:38 | 0:17:42 | |
and had spent public money on it. | 0:17:42 | 0:17:43 | |
So I sat down in the Tate and wrote this. | 0:17:43 | 0:17:47 | |
# The only sound that you will hear | 0:17:47 | 0:17:51 | |
# Is when I whisper in your ear... # | 0:17:51 | 0:17:53 | |
I had to phone the story through. | 0:17:53 | 0:17:55 | |
"In the summer of 1965, whilst on a canoeing holiday, | 0:17:58 | 0:18:03 | |
"Andre suddenly decided it was time to create low sculpture. | 0:18:03 | 0:18:07 | |
"He bought..." | 0:18:07 | 0:18:08 | |
120 bricks from a brickyard. | 0:18:08 | 0:18:10 | |
Arranged them in a low pile on the floor of an art gallery, comma, | 0:18:10 | 0:18:14 | |
put a price tag of 12,000 on them and waited for customers. | 0:18:14 | 0:18:19 | |
None came. | 0:18:19 | 0:18:21 | |
"Being short of money, he took the bricks back to the brickyard | 0:18:21 | 0:18:24 | |
"and got his money back." | 0:18:24 | 0:18:26 | |
Full stop. New para. | 0:18:26 | 0:18:28 | |
In 1972, the Tate saw a photograph of Andre's bricks | 0:18:28 | 0:18:32 | |
and offered to buy them. | 0:18:32 | 0:18:34 | |
"Andre went back to the brickyard only to find that it had closed." | 0:18:34 | 0:18:38 | |
Andre found some other bricks... | 0:18:38 | 0:18:41 | |
"..which, in due course, were crated and sent to London." | 0:18:41 | 0:18:44 | |
The Tate is understandably coy about how much it paid for this | 0:18:44 | 0:18:48 | |
insouciant masterpiece. | 0:18:48 | 0:18:50 | |
I was purely taking the piss, nothing else. | 0:18:59 | 0:19:03 | |
It was as simple as that. | 0:19:03 | 0:19:06 | |
# You will see what I mean... # | 0:19:06 | 0:19:08 | |
What I loved about it was what I worked into the piece, | 0:19:08 | 0:19:12 | |
which was that he took the bricks back to the brickyard to get | 0:19:12 | 0:19:15 | |
his money back. | 0:19:15 | 0:19:17 | |
# The only sound that you will hear | 0:19:17 | 0:19:18 | |
# Is when I whisper... # | 0:19:18 | 0:19:20 | |
The sheer brazen nerve of it, you know. | 0:19:20 | 0:19:23 | |
I admired him. | 0:19:23 | 0:19:24 | |
The shit hit the fan, as they say. | 0:19:27 | 0:19:29 | |
HE CHUCKLES | 0:19:29 | 0:19:31 | |
It's the section called business news. | 0:19:31 | 0:19:34 | |
There's this headline - The Tate Drops A Costly Brick | 0:19:36 | 0:19:40 | |
by Colin Simpson. | 0:19:40 | 0:19:42 | |
HE LAUGHS | 0:19:42 | 0:19:43 | |
I read it not having the faintest idea that it was going to | 0:19:43 | 0:19:48 | |
cause this amazing hullabaloo that followed. | 0:19:48 | 0:19:51 | |
The following Monday, the Daily Mirror had it | 0:19:58 | 0:20:01 | |
on its front page | 0:20:01 | 0:20:03 | |
and suddenly all the newspapers wanted to be in on the story. | 0:20:03 | 0:20:06 | |
You know. There's the advertising | 0:20:23 | 0:20:25 | |
industry not wanting to miss a trick. | 0:20:25 | 0:20:29 | |
It's pretty good, isn't it? | 0:20:29 | 0:20:30 | |
I mean, here we are two days after the Sunday Times. | 0:20:38 | 0:20:42 | |
And everybody expected | 0:20:42 | 0:20:44 | |
the minister to condemn it. He behaved extremely well | 0:20:44 | 0:20:47 | |
and absolutely didn't take up | 0:20:47 | 0:20:50 | |
the media provocation that the minister should somehow | 0:20:50 | 0:20:53 | |
be intervening on these crazy Tate trustees. | 0:20:53 | 0:20:55 | |
They hadn't actually been on show when the Sunday Times fuss started | 0:21:03 | 0:21:07 | |
and I think, quite rightly, the Tate brought them out | 0:21:07 | 0:21:09 | |
and allowed people to come and see them and have their own discussion. | 0:21:09 | 0:21:13 | |
Those in the know - and even those who aren't - | 0:21:13 | 0:21:15 | |
classify it as low sculpture. | 0:21:15 | 0:21:17 | |
Usually they are locked away in a store room, | 0:21:17 | 0:21:19 | |
but today the Tate put them on show. | 0:21:19 | 0:21:22 | |
Mr Burgess, I believe you have special instructions | 0:21:22 | 0:21:25 | |
for assembling the bricks. | 0:21:25 | 0:21:26 | |
Yes, we do. | 0:21:26 | 0:21:28 | |
Parallel to the wall and then lay down ten bricks in one line. | 0:21:28 | 0:21:34 | |
And just six wide. | 0:21:34 | 0:21:37 | |
We just build up off of that. | 0:21:37 | 0:21:39 | |
Now, do you think this is a work of art? | 0:21:39 | 0:21:42 | |
Well, everything in here is a work of art. | 0:21:42 | 0:21:44 | |
This is the central space in Tate Britain | 0:21:46 | 0:21:51 | |
and at the time of the bricks affair, | 0:21:51 | 0:21:54 | |
in the north end of it, there was an enormous Constable exhibition | 0:21:54 | 0:21:59 | |
which aroused tremendous public interest and huge crowds. | 0:21:59 | 0:22:02 | |
But we had to put the sculpture | 0:22:02 | 0:22:04 | |
by Carl Andre on display very quickly | 0:22:04 | 0:22:07 | |
and the best place was in a gallery just through here. | 0:22:07 | 0:22:10 | |
And so, you had the two groups of people | 0:22:10 | 0:22:13 | |
surging up the sculpture hall simultaneously. | 0:22:13 | 0:22:15 | |
One lot going that way and one this way. | 0:22:15 | 0:22:18 | |
This room was just filled with chattering people. | 0:22:20 | 0:22:23 | |
Some of them chattering, | 0:22:23 | 0:22:25 | |
some of them just starring in awe and fascination and, | 0:22:25 | 0:22:30 | |
in some cases, I suppose, horror. | 0:22:30 | 0:22:33 | |
And it was placed around here. | 0:22:33 | 0:22:36 | |
The long axis that way and with an attendant's chair close by | 0:22:36 | 0:22:42 | |
to keep an eye on the public's behaviour towards the sculpture. | 0:22:42 | 0:22:46 | |
It's all very well for the private individual to buy | 0:23:02 | 0:23:05 | |
a weird painting or a weird piece of sculpture, | 0:23:05 | 0:23:09 | |
but when the Tate does it... | 0:23:09 | 0:23:11 | |
they are really trendsetters in this area. | 0:23:11 | 0:23:13 | |
And also, of course, the funds they're using | 0:23:13 | 0:23:16 | |
are those which come to them largely from the Arts Council. | 0:23:16 | 0:23:19 | |
I think the other factor was that it got onto television very quickly. | 0:23:20 | 0:23:24 | |
There was the moment of course where one thinks of it now as a clip of... | 0:23:24 | 0:23:27 | |
I think it was Fyfe Robertson sitting on the bricks | 0:23:27 | 0:23:29 | |
and actually holding one up. That was somehow extraordinary. | 0:23:29 | 0:23:32 | |
You might think in your innocence | 0:23:32 | 0:23:35 | |
that you could lay them down anywhere, but no so. | 0:23:35 | 0:23:38 | |
The American sculptor genius who fathered this, | 0:23:38 | 0:23:42 | |
carefully numbered each brick. | 0:23:42 | 0:23:44 | |
Even the BBC, you know, disgracefully really, | 0:23:44 | 0:23:47 | |
allowed that ridiculous scene with that awful man Fyfe Robertson. | 0:23:47 | 0:23:52 | |
Complete philistine. | 0:23:52 | 0:23:54 | |
It was a disaster, really. | 0:23:54 | 0:23:55 | |
They are doing great harm to art and to you and me | 0:23:55 | 0:23:59 | |
in our attitude to art. | 0:23:59 | 0:24:01 | |
And they are doing this by treating with all seriousness | 0:24:01 | 0:24:05 | |
way-out crap as art. | 0:24:05 | 0:24:08 | |
How do you think it would look in a gallery? | 0:24:08 | 0:24:11 | |
Splendid, rather than what we have seen on television at the moment. | 0:24:11 | 0:24:15 | |
Yes, there is more to it than just being flat on the floor. | 0:24:15 | 0:24:18 | |
Oh, yes. Quite. Yeah. Lot of work in this, really. | 0:24:18 | 0:24:20 | |
-What do you reckon, £12,000? -LAUGHTER | 0:24:20 | 0:24:23 | |
Well, for me, 15. | 0:24:23 | 0:24:25 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:24:25 | 0:24:27 | |
I remember a building site. A guy with a hod with bricks in. | 0:24:27 | 0:24:30 | |
Stood next to a pile of bricks. | 0:24:30 | 0:24:32 | |
I remember thinking it was a pile of bricks, | 0:24:32 | 0:24:35 | |
just like a pile at a building site, | 0:24:35 | 0:24:37 | |
not even ordered or arranged or anything. | 0:24:37 | 0:24:39 | |
And I remember seeing a cartoon of a pile of bricks. | 0:24:39 | 0:24:44 | |
People 40 years ago were very suspicious of conceptual | 0:24:50 | 0:24:54 | |
and modern art. They were distrustful of it. | 0:24:54 | 0:24:56 | |
When they think about art in the '60s and '70s, | 0:24:56 | 0:24:59 | |
they think about the kind of art they've grown up with | 0:24:59 | 0:25:02 | |
and they've seen and taken for granted. | 0:25:02 | 0:25:04 | |
You know, blockbuster exhibitions like the Constable exhibition | 0:25:04 | 0:25:07 | |
which was running at the same time as the bricks controversy. | 0:25:07 | 0:25:10 | |
Constable never had the least doubt that nature meant | 0:25:10 | 0:25:13 | |
the visible world of tree, flower, river, field and sky | 0:25:13 | 0:25:17 | |
exactly as they presented themselves to the senses. | 0:25:17 | 0:25:20 | |
-ALL: -Hemisphere. | 0:25:21 | 0:25:23 | |
Sunny interval over Cromarty. | 0:25:23 | 0:25:28 | |
Northern... | 0:25:28 | 0:25:30 | |
I think people are shocked and bewildered by what they see as | 0:25:30 | 0:25:33 | |
the sort of artistic challenges of conceptual art, and minimalism, | 0:25:33 | 0:25:38 | |
and brutalism, and performance art, and all these kinds of things. | 0:25:38 | 0:25:42 | |
Norman Reid is the director of the Tate. | 0:25:42 | 0:25:44 | |
I asked him what he though the gallery's purpose would be | 0:25:44 | 0:25:47 | |
in the future. | 0:25:47 | 0:25:48 | |
Well, to give pleasure, I think, | 0:25:48 | 0:25:50 | |
which is basic to the whole idea. | 0:25:50 | 0:25:52 | |
Norman Reid was the Tate director who, when he took over in the | 0:25:54 | 0:25:57 | |
mid-1960s, dragged the Tate into the 20th century. | 0:25:57 | 0:26:02 | |
I think we are constantly in this situation where we have to try | 0:26:02 | 0:26:06 | |
to judge how much should we spend, how much do we need this, | 0:26:06 | 0:26:10 | |
how much is it going to be significant in the future. | 0:26:10 | 0:26:12 | |
He was the man who bought in the Rothko gift. | 0:26:12 | 0:26:16 | |
You know, those great, huge abstract paintings by Mark Rothko - | 0:26:16 | 0:26:19 | |
the American. | 0:26:19 | 0:26:20 | |
And that was Norman's generation. He totally got all that. | 0:26:20 | 0:26:24 | |
But I don't think he quite believed in the bricks, you know. | 0:26:26 | 0:26:31 | |
You could tell, | 0:26:31 | 0:26:33 | |
and I think I knew enough about him to know, | 0:26:33 | 0:26:35 | |
that it wasn't really his sort of thing - | 0:26:35 | 0:26:38 | |
the pile of bricks. | 0:26:38 | 0:26:39 | |
As soon as the scale of the controversy became apparent, | 0:26:40 | 0:26:45 | |
which was almost immediately, he issued an instruction that | 0:26:45 | 0:26:49 | |
he should be the only person | 0:26:49 | 0:26:51 | |
who should deal with the press about this. | 0:26:51 | 0:26:54 | |
My colleagues and I were muzzled. | 0:26:57 | 0:27:00 | |
Half of the Tate's job is to form a national collection of modern art. | 0:27:06 | 0:27:10 | |
This is part of a more adventurous policy. | 0:27:10 | 0:27:12 | |
He perhaps was not prepared for the public communications onslaught | 0:27:12 | 0:27:18 | |
that came with the row about the bricks. | 0:27:18 | 0:27:21 | |
It's certain that some of the exhibits will appear | 0:27:21 | 0:27:24 | |
incomprehensible and even offensive to some visitors, | 0:27:24 | 0:27:28 | |
in the same way as Constable's work was widely attacked in his own day. | 0:27:28 | 0:27:32 | |
How much did you pay for the bricks? | 0:27:32 | 0:27:34 | |
I can't say how much we paid for it | 0:27:34 | 0:27:36 | |
because it is not our policy to disclose prices. | 0:27:36 | 0:27:40 | |
# What about Daddy Cool? | 0:27:40 | 0:27:43 | |
# I'm crazy like a fool | 0:27:43 | 0:27:47 | |
# What about Daddy Cool... # | 0:27:47 | 0:27:51 | |
It's very unfortunate that, at the time, | 0:27:51 | 0:27:54 | |
the Tate refused point blank to reveal what it had paid. | 0:27:54 | 0:27:59 | |
And I think they should have fessed up. | 0:27:59 | 0:28:02 | |
# Daddy, Daddy Cool... # | 0:28:02 | 0:28:06 | |
I was one of three of us whose job it was to go onto | 0:28:14 | 0:28:16 | |
the floor of the gallery, stand in front of the works of art themselves | 0:28:16 | 0:28:20 | |
and explain them to the public. | 0:28:20 | 0:28:21 | |
School parties used to book in. | 0:28:21 | 0:28:24 | |
Here we have 120 firebricks by the American artist Carl Andre. | 0:28:27 | 0:28:31 | |
Six rows long, two rows high. | 0:28:31 | 0:28:34 | |
# What about Daddy Cool? | 0:28:34 | 0:28:38 | |
# I'm crazy like a fool... # | 0:28:39 | 0:28:41 | |
So...what does it mean? | 0:28:41 | 0:28:44 | |
# Daddy, Daddy Cool | 0:28:46 | 0:28:50 | |
# Daddy, Daddy Cool... # | 0:28:50 | 0:28:53 | |
There were a lot of comments, "But I don't get it. | 0:28:53 | 0:28:55 | |
"It's just a pile of bricks." | 0:28:55 | 0:28:57 | |
# Daddy, Daddy Cool... # | 0:28:57 | 0:29:01 | |
It's the old thing, they want to know what it means. | 0:29:01 | 0:29:04 | |
Everybody wants to know what works of art mean. | 0:29:04 | 0:29:06 | |
The objections to the bricks were very, very simple. | 0:29:06 | 0:29:09 | |
It was that people simply didn't understand them. | 0:29:09 | 0:29:12 | |
I think there was still very much | 0:29:12 | 0:29:14 | |
the attitude that, you know, | 0:29:14 | 0:29:15 | |
somehow the public had to get it, you know. | 0:29:15 | 0:29:18 | |
And if they didn't, it was tough. | 0:29:18 | 0:29:21 | |
I think the Tate at the time failed to explain itself. | 0:29:21 | 0:29:26 | |
It was a failure of communication, it was a failure to | 0:29:26 | 0:29:31 | |
set that work in context, | 0:29:31 | 0:29:33 | |
to explain where it came from art historically, | 0:29:33 | 0:29:36 | |
why it was art historically significant. | 0:29:36 | 0:29:38 | |
What the Tate should immediately have done was to explain what | 0:29:40 | 0:29:44 | |
the eight Equivalents are. | 0:29:44 | 0:29:45 | |
And it didn't, as far as I know, do anything of the kind. | 0:29:47 | 0:29:50 | |
It certainly didn't do it in my presence. | 0:29:50 | 0:29:52 | |
I was totally unaware of any explanation. | 0:29:52 | 0:29:54 | |
Where the whole thing | 0:29:56 | 0:29:57 | |
went wrong, I think, is going right back to | 0:29:57 | 0:30:00 | |
the beginning when the Tate bought that piece. | 0:30:00 | 0:30:03 | |
They bought only one of the eight Equivalents, | 0:30:03 | 0:30:06 | |
they should have bought all eight. | 0:30:06 | 0:30:08 | |
If they had bought all eight then the presentation of Equivalent VIII, | 0:30:10 | 0:30:14 | |
which is the one they've got, would be | 0:30:14 | 0:30:17 | |
perfectly logical even to people | 0:30:17 | 0:30:19 | |
who hated it and wanted to write things in | 0:30:19 | 0:30:22 | |
newspapers about "what a load of bricks". | 0:30:22 | 0:30:24 | |
And if you've got eight variations | 0:30:26 | 0:30:28 | |
on a theme in a room, | 0:30:28 | 0:30:29 | |
even the stupidest people would begin to see something is going on. | 0:30:29 | 0:30:36 | |
Don't understand it, but something is clearly going on | 0:30:36 | 0:30:39 | |
between these eight various different-looking objects. | 0:30:39 | 0:30:42 | |
You know, why should anybody be able to get art, you know, immediately? | 0:30:50 | 0:30:57 | |
Why should art be accessible to everybody immediately? | 0:30:57 | 0:31:00 | |
Even Renaissance art isn't really accessible to everybody immediately. | 0:31:00 | 0:31:04 | |
It's a pretty difficult thing | 0:31:04 | 0:31:07 | |
to know what all those symbols are. | 0:31:07 | 0:31:09 | |
Somehow people think that art | 0:31:14 | 0:31:17 | |
is different from other complex areas of our culture. | 0:31:17 | 0:31:21 | |
I mean, art is like football. | 0:31:21 | 0:31:23 | |
If you go to a football match and don't know the rules, | 0:31:25 | 0:31:28 | |
and you are stuck up on the stands, | 0:31:28 | 0:31:30 | |
and there are just a lot of men running around the pitch, | 0:31:30 | 0:31:33 | |
I mean, it's meaningless. | 0:31:33 | 0:31:35 | |
Art is like that, you need to know the rules. | 0:31:35 | 0:31:39 | |
You need to understand the context, you need to know a bit about art. | 0:31:39 | 0:31:43 | |
And you can't get away from that. | 0:31:43 | 0:31:44 | |
The bricks themselves refer very, very much to the history of art. | 0:31:48 | 0:31:54 | |
And by presenting a sculpture that is only bricks | 0:31:54 | 0:32:00 | |
and where the material is the most | 0:32:00 | 0:32:02 | |
overwhelmingly noticeable thing about it, | 0:32:02 | 0:32:05 | |
he's highlighting and forcing you to think about | 0:32:05 | 0:32:08 | |
the role of materials in art. | 0:32:08 | 0:32:10 | |
If you are into art and sensitive to things that it has done, | 0:32:11 | 0:32:17 | |
and interested in having your mind expanded by it, then | 0:32:17 | 0:32:22 | |
it is possible to follow up some of the provocations of that work. | 0:32:22 | 0:32:27 | |
But if you are not - and why should many people be - after all, | 0:32:27 | 0:32:32 | |
it's rather a narrow interest. | 0:32:32 | 0:32:34 | |
If you are not, then it feels much better | 0:32:34 | 0:32:37 | |
to want to punch it. | 0:32:37 | 0:32:38 | |
One piece of string, 100 paperclips. | 0:32:46 | 0:32:51 | |
One photograph of a filing cabinet with row of paper cups on top. | 0:32:51 | 0:32:58 | |
Meanwhile, the public was sending in their ideas of | 0:32:58 | 0:33:02 | |
what they thought was a contemporary work in sort of joke form. | 0:33:02 | 0:33:06 | |
Each had to be dealt with separately. | 0:33:06 | 0:33:08 | |
A feather, a pebble, a piece of coal. | 0:33:08 | 0:33:13 | |
One vacuum cleaner. | 0:33:13 | 0:33:16 | |
VACUUM CLEANER HUMS | 0:33:16 | 0:33:19 | |
We were inundated with parcels sent by members of the public. | 0:33:23 | 0:33:29 | |
It became a pile in its own right. | 0:33:29 | 0:33:32 | |
One of my roles at the Tate as research assistant | 0:33:39 | 0:33:42 | |
was to write letters that would say, "Dear madam, | 0:33:42 | 0:33:45 | |
"thank you so much for sending to the Tate your work of art entitled | 0:33:45 | 0:33:48 | |
"A Varnished Kipper. | 0:33:48 | 0:33:50 | |
"This has been thought of very carefully by the curators | 0:33:50 | 0:33:52 | |
"and on this occasion the trustees do not feel they will be wishing | 0:33:52 | 0:33:56 | |
"to acquire this work. | 0:33:56 | 0:33:57 | |
"I will be sending it back to you by separate package." | 0:33:57 | 0:33:59 | |
But that's what's so great, the running joke. | 0:34:02 | 0:34:05 | |
You know, any old thing can be art. | 0:34:05 | 0:34:07 | |
And I'm sure it happened in Duchamp's day too, | 0:34:07 | 0:34:09 | |
you know, people rolling out any old thing and saying, | 0:34:09 | 0:34:12 | |
"Hey, look at my artwork." | 0:34:12 | 0:34:14 | |
And I think it became a wonderful performance piece. | 0:34:14 | 0:34:17 | |
So it's hilarious that minimalism | 0:34:17 | 0:34:19 | |
somehow gets the maximalist response. | 0:34:19 | 0:34:21 | |
Many people in other countries, | 0:34:21 | 0:34:24 | |
I think thought this was a very strange phenomenon - | 0:34:24 | 0:34:28 | |
the bricks affair. | 0:34:28 | 0:34:29 | |
They couldn't understand why all this fuss was being made about | 0:34:29 | 0:34:33 | |
a very fine work which, in their own countries, | 0:34:33 | 0:34:37 | |
would not have aroused all this fury. | 0:34:37 | 0:34:40 | |
Well, I think what we have in Britain, and what we've always had | 0:34:40 | 0:34:43 | |
is this self image of being pragmatic, no bullshit. | 0:34:43 | 0:34:48 | |
And the bricks story absolutely brings that out. | 0:34:48 | 0:34:51 | |
You see something that's a bit nonsensical | 0:34:51 | 0:34:53 | |
and rather than bowing down in fealty to the artist | 0:34:53 | 0:34:57 | |
who has created something incredibly highbrow, you say, | 0:34:57 | 0:35:01 | |
"Nah, looks like a load of rubbish to me." | 0:35:01 | 0:35:03 | |
And I think British people love to do that. | 0:35:03 | 0:35:06 | |
We are naturally a very cynical, suspicious, | 0:35:06 | 0:35:11 | |
intolerant of pretention, pragmatic, empirical kind of people. | 0:35:11 | 0:35:17 | |
And actually, of course, we're right. | 0:35:17 | 0:35:19 | |
I was head chef at TIME and LIFE Magazine, | 0:35:30 | 0:35:33 | |
which I am quite proud of. | 0:35:33 | 0:35:35 | |
# Can you hear the drums, Fernando? # | 0:35:35 | 0:35:38 | |
And I went along with a friend of mine who lived in | 0:35:38 | 0:35:41 | |
the top flat of the house I lived in, | 0:35:41 | 0:35:44 | |
to see the Constable exhibition that was on at the Tate. | 0:35:44 | 0:35:48 | |
And as we made the journey there, | 0:35:48 | 0:35:50 | |
we decided we would go and see these controversial bricks. | 0:35:50 | 0:35:54 | |
# Softly strumming your guitar | 0:35:54 | 0:35:56 | |
# I could hear the distant drums | 0:35:56 | 0:35:58 | |
# And sounds of bugle calls were coming from afar... # | 0:35:58 | 0:36:02 | |
And so, we came away, sat on the Tube going back to Clapham North, | 0:36:02 | 0:36:09 | |
where we both lived, and I said, "Jillkins..." | 0:36:09 | 0:36:12 | |
I think I might do some sort of protest. | 0:36:12 | 0:36:15 | |
And she said... | 0:36:15 | 0:36:17 | |
Well, there's a suggestion box. | 0:36:17 | 0:36:19 | |
You could write something harsh and put it in. | 0:36:19 | 0:36:21 | |
And I said, "Well, no. | 0:36:21 | 0:36:23 | |
"I feel something more radical is called for." | 0:36:23 | 0:36:26 | |
# We were young and full of life and none of us prepared to die | 0:36:26 | 0:36:31 | |
# And I'm not ashamed to say... # | 0:36:31 | 0:36:33 | |
Yep, I decided I would go into the Tate Gallery | 0:36:33 | 0:36:36 | |
and colour the bricks blue. | 0:36:36 | 0:36:38 | |
# There was something in the air that night | 0:36:38 | 0:36:42 | |
# The stars were bright, Fernando... # | 0:36:42 | 0:36:47 | |
So I went and saw Jillkins about it and she said... | 0:36:47 | 0:36:51 | |
You wouldn't. | 0:36:51 | 0:36:52 | |
And I said, "No, I think I would." | 0:36:52 | 0:36:54 | |
I put on a brand-new three-piece pinstripe blue suit. | 0:36:56 | 0:37:01 | |
And I got to the Tate Gallery with my bottle. | 0:37:01 | 0:37:05 | |
They were frisking everyone on the way in because of IRA bombs. | 0:37:05 | 0:37:09 | |
So there was only one obvious place to put the bottle. | 0:37:09 | 0:37:13 | |
So I went in. | 0:37:15 | 0:37:16 | |
Went to the place where the bricks were. | 0:37:22 | 0:37:24 | |
A lot of people milling around. Two security ladies. | 0:37:24 | 0:37:27 | |
And I put my head chef's voice on and I said, | 0:37:29 | 0:37:31 | |
"Could you all stand well back, please?" | 0:37:31 | 0:37:34 | |
And they all stood well back. | 0:37:34 | 0:37:35 | |
And I undid my bottle, | 0:37:37 | 0:37:39 | |
and I made pretty designs and swirl patterns all over the bricks. | 0:37:39 | 0:37:43 | |
And when the bottle was empty, | 0:37:47 | 0:37:49 | |
I sort of, rather sarcastically, tapped the end of it | 0:37:49 | 0:37:52 | |
like you would with a ketchup bottle. | 0:37:52 | 0:37:55 | |
And everyone started clapping. | 0:37:58 | 0:38:00 | |
And the security lady looked at me, | 0:38:06 | 0:38:09 | |
you know, particularly with all this clapping going on, and she said... | 0:38:09 | 0:38:12 | |
Are you the artist? | 0:38:12 | 0:38:14 | |
And I said... | 0:38:14 | 0:38:16 | |
No, love, I'm a protestor. | 0:38:16 | 0:38:19 | |
And she said to her fellow colleague... | 0:38:19 | 0:38:22 | |
Fuck me, Lil, we're in trouble, girl. | 0:38:22 | 0:38:24 | |
And Lil looked at me and said... | 0:38:24 | 0:38:27 | |
Are you dangerous? | 0:38:27 | 0:38:29 | |
And I said no, I wasn't dangerous. And she said... | 0:38:29 | 0:38:32 | |
Will you wait here while I go and get a security man? | 0:38:32 | 0:38:35 | |
And I said, "Yeah, I'll wait here." And off they went. | 0:38:35 | 0:38:38 | |
And it was at least seven minutes before they came back. | 0:38:38 | 0:38:42 | |
Then along came the security man. | 0:38:43 | 0:38:46 | |
He was a little snow-haired white commissionaire | 0:38:46 | 0:38:50 | |
who probably fought in the last war. | 0:38:50 | 0:38:52 | |
You're coming with me, son. | 0:38:52 | 0:38:54 | |
I said, "Oh, come on. Don't do any strong-arm tactics. | 0:38:54 | 0:38:57 | |
"I've been waiting here for ages for you to arrive." | 0:38:57 | 0:38:59 | |
I said, "Just lead on." | 0:38:59 | 0:39:01 | |
I was taken down to the basement, | 0:39:04 | 0:39:06 | |
where the security was, to be grilled. | 0:39:06 | 0:39:09 | |
Do you regret doing it? | 0:39:12 | 0:39:14 | |
No, I most definitely do not regret doing it. | 0:39:14 | 0:39:17 | |
No, not at all. | 0:39:17 | 0:39:18 | |
# Though we never thought that we could lose | 0:39:20 | 0:39:23 | |
# There's no regret | 0:39:23 | 0:39:25 | |
# If I had to do the same again | 0:39:27 | 0:39:30 | |
# I would, my friend, Fernando | 0:39:30 | 0:39:35 | |
# If I had to do the same again | 0:39:36 | 0:39:39 | |
# I would, my friend, Fernando... # | 0:39:39 | 0:39:43 | |
Page three of the Sun. | 0:39:49 | 0:39:51 | |
With me on page three, underneath the tits. | 0:39:51 | 0:39:54 | |
And I'll tell you what it says. | 0:39:55 | 0:39:57 | |
"Toff tips blue dye on Tate's bricks." | 0:39:57 | 0:40:01 | |
And I suppose I did look like a city gent in a blue pin-stripe suit. | 0:40:01 | 0:40:05 | |
We've got the Daily Telegraph here. | 0:40:06 | 0:40:09 | |
And I'm slap bang in the middle. | 0:40:09 | 0:40:10 | |
"Blue dye blacks out the Tate bricks." | 0:40:10 | 0:40:15 | |
And as you can see, the paper does look like the Dead Sea Scrolls. | 0:40:15 | 0:40:19 | |
After they photographed me full-on and sideways | 0:40:22 | 0:40:24 | |
and done my fingerprints, they said, | 0:40:24 | 0:40:27 | |
"You are banned for life now from the Tate." | 0:40:27 | 0:40:30 | |
Have you ever been back to the Tate? | 0:40:30 | 0:40:32 | |
Once or twice, I've nearly been back, | 0:40:32 | 0:40:35 | |
but then I chickened out. | 0:40:35 | 0:40:37 | |
But, I mean, they are hardly going to recognise some fat old man | 0:40:37 | 0:40:42 | |
from this dashing 27-year-old, are they? | 0:40:42 | 0:40:44 | |
"Here, we recognise you." HE LAUGHS | 0:40:44 | 0:40:48 | |
As the saying goes - | 0:40:48 | 0:40:49 | |
a lot of people may not know anything about art | 0:40:49 | 0:40:52 | |
but they know what they like. | 0:40:52 | 0:40:53 | |
Also what they dislike. Among the latter are many Englishmen. | 0:40:53 | 0:40:56 | |
One Englishman disliked a current piece of art so much | 0:40:56 | 0:40:59 | |
that he poured blue dye all over it. It has been taken away for cleaning | 0:40:59 | 0:41:03 | |
but we are told that it will be back. | 0:41:03 | 0:41:05 | |
I was in my office that afternoon and suddenly I got this | 0:41:06 | 0:41:09 | |
message saying that somebody has thrown some paint over the bricks. | 0:41:09 | 0:41:13 | |
This crazed guy threw what proved to be food dye over it | 0:41:13 | 0:41:18 | |
and that gave the story new legs. | 0:41:18 | 0:41:21 | |
I rushed down. | 0:41:23 | 0:41:24 | |
Conservation department colleagues were there already. | 0:41:24 | 0:41:28 | |
So, of course, the work had to be taken off view | 0:41:29 | 0:41:32 | |
and the bricks had to be cleaned and restored, you know, | 0:41:32 | 0:41:36 | |
which took some time. | 0:41:36 | 0:41:37 | |
The trustees I think had become extremely defensive | 0:41:37 | 0:41:40 | |
and very concerned about these attacks on the institution. | 0:41:40 | 0:41:44 | |
There were a lot of different opinions inside the Tate | 0:41:44 | 0:41:46 | |
about what might happen next. | 0:41:46 | 0:41:48 | |
It was a time of extreme paranoia | 0:41:48 | 0:41:50 | |
among the upper echelons of the Tate. | 0:41:50 | 0:41:53 | |
Perhaps not surprisingly, there was a view from curators and | 0:41:54 | 0:41:58 | |
conservators that if the bricks go back out, | 0:41:58 | 0:42:00 | |
they couldn't go under a Perspex box. | 0:42:00 | 0:42:02 | |
That would ruin the whole look of them. | 0:42:02 | 0:42:05 | |
So the question arose about whether it was possible to get a full | 0:42:05 | 0:42:09 | |
set of replacements - if needed - in the future. | 0:42:09 | 0:42:12 | |
I was, as a junior, set the task of researching and finding | 0:42:12 | 0:42:16 | |
the brickyard in New Jersey | 0:42:16 | 0:42:18 | |
to see whether it was possible to replace the bricks, which, | 0:42:18 | 0:42:21 | |
of course, were already a replacement by Carl Andre himself | 0:42:21 | 0:42:24 | |
of the very first bricks he'd used. | 0:42:24 | 0:42:26 | |
"Dear Sir, | 0:42:30 | 0:42:32 | |
"I am writing to make enquires about acquiring some firebricks | 0:42:32 | 0:42:35 | |
"manufactured by your company and shipping them to London. | 0:42:35 | 0:42:39 | |
"We have in collection a sculpture by the American artist Carl Andre - | 0:42:39 | 0:42:44 | |
"Equivalent VIII. | 0:42:44 | 0:42:45 | |
"In order to be able to replace bricks which might get broken | 0:42:45 | 0:42:48 | |
"or damaged in the future, we would like to purchase | 0:42:48 | 0:42:51 | |
"a complete spare set of the bricks. | 0:42:51 | 0:42:53 | |
"Could you give me an estimate for the cost of 120 firebricks | 0:42:53 | 0:42:56 | |
"and, if possible, an estimate for packing and shipping the bricks | 0:42:56 | 0:42:59 | |
"to London. Thank you for your help. | 0:42:59 | 0:43:01 | |
"Yours faithfully, Sandy Nairne - research assistant." | 0:43:01 | 0:43:04 | |
What emerged was that the same brickyard | 0:43:06 | 0:43:09 | |
wasn't basically making the same bricks. | 0:43:09 | 0:43:12 | |
And, of course, those bricks are wonderfully particular, | 0:43:12 | 0:43:15 | |
they are firebricks, they don't have any indent. | 0:43:15 | 0:43:17 | |
So you simply couldn't get a match | 0:43:17 | 0:43:20 | |
in terms of the colour and specification, | 0:43:20 | 0:43:22 | |
and having some other bricks that might have looked vaguely similar | 0:43:22 | 0:43:25 | |
was not the point. | 0:43:25 | 0:43:27 | |
They really did have to be the same and that wasn't going to exist. | 0:43:27 | 0:43:30 | |
But I do feel - which I said at the time - | 0:43:30 | 0:43:34 | |
it's like the emperor's new clothes. | 0:43:34 | 0:43:37 | |
There are a lot of people in the art world who are scared | 0:43:37 | 0:43:41 | |
to be seen as not being "with it". | 0:43:41 | 0:43:46 | |
So instead of saying, "Well, that's a pile of old..." | 0:43:46 | 0:43:49 | |
They say, "Oh, isn't it wonderful? How marvellous. | 0:43:49 | 0:43:52 | |
"What a wonderful pile of bricks." | 0:43:52 | 0:43:54 | |
But let's be honest, we know that when they go home | 0:43:54 | 0:43:57 | |
they are not thinking that. | 0:43:57 | 0:43:58 | |
It's crap. | 0:44:00 | 0:44:01 | |
What is it then? | 0:44:01 | 0:44:02 | |
Well, it's a pile of bricks. | 0:44:02 | 0:44:04 | |
That's a pile of bricks, this is a pile of bricks. | 0:44:04 | 0:44:06 | |
Until you do something with it, it will always be a pile of bricks. | 0:44:06 | 0:44:11 | |
The building behind me - that's art. | 0:44:11 | 0:44:14 | |
That's proper art, that. | 0:44:14 | 0:44:15 | |
Cos they've made something of it. | 0:44:16 | 0:44:18 | |
But a pile of bricks, it's just a pile of bricks. | 0:44:18 | 0:44:21 | |
As it happens, the thing that people didn't like | 0:44:27 | 0:44:30 | |
or said they didn't like about the Carl Andre work | 0:44:30 | 0:44:33 | |
was that it didn't seem to have any skill. | 0:44:33 | 0:44:36 | |
And in a way, that was the profoundest and most real thing | 0:44:36 | 0:44:39 | |
that they were getting. | 0:44:39 | 0:44:40 | |
That's true, it didn't have any skill. | 0:44:40 | 0:44:42 | |
It had lots of other things which | 0:44:42 | 0:44:44 | |
the people who didn't like it and thought he hadn't done anything | 0:44:44 | 0:44:47 | |
were wrong about. But the one thing they were right about | 0:44:47 | 0:44:50 | |
was that there was no actual technical or craft skill involved. | 0:44:50 | 0:44:54 | |
There wasn't even any making, really. | 0:44:54 | 0:44:56 | |
Right. Yes, well, you've now raised another major, major issue | 0:44:56 | 0:45:01 | |
about the incomprehension | 0:45:01 | 0:45:03 | |
of modern and contemporary art | 0:45:03 | 0:45:06 | |
by the wider public. | 0:45:06 | 0:45:08 | |
And that is the confusion between art and craft. | 0:45:08 | 0:45:12 | |
Art is about ideas...in the end. | 0:45:14 | 0:45:17 | |
The great artists develop the craft they need to carry out their ideas. | 0:45:19 | 0:45:24 | |
-CARL ANDRE: -There was a confusion whether art is a craft and skill. | 0:45:26 | 0:45:30 | |
And I cannot claim really craft and skill | 0:45:30 | 0:45:33 | |
in the sense that I did not forge my metals, | 0:45:33 | 0:45:36 | |
I did not mine the ore, I did not burn the brick. | 0:45:36 | 0:45:38 | |
I did not do any of those things which are associated | 0:45:38 | 0:45:41 | |
with the craft aspect of art. | 0:45:41 | 0:45:43 | |
Now, I'm not saying you should not have craft and skill in art at all. | 0:45:43 | 0:45:48 | |
I've never rejected craft. | 0:45:48 | 0:45:50 | |
I've never undertaken it, which is a different question. | 0:45:50 | 0:45:53 | |
I think there was a confusion in the general public's mind | 0:45:53 | 0:45:56 | |
about skill in art. And there still is, I think. | 0:45:56 | 0:45:59 | |
You still can't get away from the idea that the artist | 0:45:59 | 0:46:02 | |
has to make things themselves | 0:46:02 | 0:46:04 | |
and it has to have the hand of the artist and | 0:46:04 | 0:46:07 | |
the mark of the artist. | 0:46:07 | 0:46:08 | |
Marcel Duchamp submitted to a New York art show | 0:46:08 | 0:46:11 | |
a public convenience entitled Fountain. | 0:46:11 | 0:46:14 | |
In 1917, Duchamp had kind of created the idea of the ready-made - | 0:46:14 | 0:46:18 | |
he bought a urinal from a plumber's merchant and signed it R Mutt. | 0:46:18 | 0:46:22 | |
And it became an artwork. And that revolutionised 20th-century art. | 0:46:22 | 0:46:26 | |
Duchamp wrote in the press, | 0:46:26 | 0:46:28 | |
"Whether Mr Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not | 0:46:28 | 0:46:31 | |
"has no importance. He chose it. | 0:46:31 | 0:46:34 | |
"He took an ordinary article of life, | 0:46:34 | 0:46:36 | |
"placed it so that its useful significance disappeared | 0:46:36 | 0:46:38 | |
"under the new point of view. | 0:46:38 | 0:46:40 | |
"Created a new thought for that object." | 0:46:40 | 0:46:42 | |
In 1972, the Tate Gallery purchased a work by Carl Andre | 0:46:56 | 0:47:01 | |
dating from 1966. | 0:47:01 | 0:47:03 | |
It is an example of minimal sculpture. | 0:47:03 | 0:47:07 | |
The case of Carl Andre's sculpture will surely be of interest | 0:47:08 | 0:47:12 | |
to future historians of taste. | 0:47:12 | 0:47:16 | |
One of the journals that responded to the Carl Andre bricks controversy | 0:47:17 | 0:47:23 | |
was the Burlington Magazine, which still today is regarded as | 0:47:23 | 0:47:27 | |
one of the leading art magazines in the world. | 0:47:27 | 0:47:30 | |
Right now, it raises a number of important issues. | 0:47:30 | 0:47:34 | |
Just how far should a public gallery, | 0:47:35 | 0:47:38 | |
which must impose its own kind of order on what it acquires, | 0:47:38 | 0:47:42 | |
go on to accommodate changing attitudes towards art? | 0:47:42 | 0:47:47 | |
At what point, if any, does it have to draw the line? | 0:47:47 | 0:47:51 | |
We had initially criticised the Tate's acquisition of the bricks | 0:47:52 | 0:47:57 | |
and raised questions about its validity as an object. | 0:47:57 | 0:48:00 | |
Clearly the line of the editorial is that, by no means, | 0:48:02 | 0:48:05 | |
is Andre's sculpture necessarily | 0:48:05 | 0:48:09 | |
going to be vindicated by history. | 0:48:09 | 0:48:12 | |
There are plenty of places where the latest thing can be seen. | 0:48:14 | 0:48:19 | |
There is no longer any need to risk freezing | 0:48:20 | 0:48:24 | |
in a permanent public record | 0:48:24 | 0:48:27 | |
a mass of effective and showy work that may well, | 0:48:27 | 0:48:32 | |
in a few decades, be regarded as trash. | 0:48:32 | 0:48:35 | |
Well, I just thought it was outrageous that the subject wasn't | 0:48:36 | 0:48:40 | |
being taken seriously enough. | 0:48:40 | 0:48:42 | |
And we were very shocked that a magazine of that nature should have | 0:48:42 | 0:48:47 | |
come out so hostile to the acquisition of this work. | 0:48:47 | 0:48:51 | |
The director of the Tate, Norman Reid, | 0:48:52 | 0:48:55 | |
insisted that the Tate should have the right of reply. | 0:48:55 | 0:48:58 | |
For the Burlington to come out and criticise an acquisition like this | 0:48:58 | 0:49:01 | |
was something that he needed to rebut. | 0:49:01 | 0:49:03 | |
# This town ain't big enough for the both of us | 0:49:03 | 0:49:07 | |
# And it ain't me who's gonna leave... # | 0:49:07 | 0:49:10 | |
So Norman then asked me if I would write an article explaining | 0:49:11 | 0:49:17 | |
why the Tate bought this work. | 0:49:17 | 0:49:19 | |
# Flying | 0:49:19 | 0:49:21 | |
# Domestic flying... # | 0:49:21 | 0:49:22 | |
"The editorial in the April issue of the Burlington Magazine, | 0:49:22 | 0:49:25 | |
"which criticised the Tate Gallery for purchasing one of | 0:49:25 | 0:49:28 | |
"Carl Andre's firebrick sculptures was an astonishing item to find | 0:49:28 | 0:49:31 | |
"in this particular magazine." | 0:49:31 | 0:49:33 | |
# This town ain't big enough for the both of us | 0:49:33 | 0:49:36 | |
# And it ain't me who's gonna leave... # | 0:49:36 | 0:49:38 | |
He wrote this furious protest. | 0:49:40 | 0:49:42 | |
"No attempt is made to answer the question whether minimal art | 0:49:45 | 0:49:48 | |
"constitutes an important phase in the development of art. | 0:49:48 | 0:49:51 | |
"And, if so, whether Carl Andre's work | 0:49:51 | 0:49:54 | |
"is among the most important produced within that phase." | 0:49:54 | 0:49:58 | |
# This town ain't big enough for the both of us... # | 0:49:58 | 0:50:00 | |
It's a very interesting flash point, I think. | 0:50:00 | 0:50:05 | |
He was talking to the artistic community | 0:50:07 | 0:50:10 | |
and arguing for a new form of art. | 0:50:10 | 0:50:13 | |
"In the Tate's view, the Andre will in time be accepted | 0:50:13 | 0:50:16 | |
"as among the important art of its period." | 0:50:16 | 0:50:19 | |
# I ain't gonna leave. # | 0:50:19 | 0:50:24 | |
Yeah, we were on the wrong side of history with this editorial. | 0:50:26 | 0:50:29 | |
It's not a line that we would hold to any more. | 0:50:29 | 0:50:32 | |
Do you think the Tate were right to acquire it? | 0:50:32 | 0:50:36 | |
Yes. History has vindicated the Tate for acquiring it. | 0:50:36 | 0:50:39 | |
It stands now as a cornerstone | 0:50:39 | 0:50:44 | |
of what minimalism has meant for art history. | 0:50:44 | 0:50:49 | |
As Richard Morphet says in his article, | 0:50:49 | 0:50:52 | |
time needs to pass before art takes its place in history | 0:50:52 | 0:50:58 | |
and reveals its hand. | 0:50:58 | 0:50:59 | |
The whole movement that Carl Andre was part of - | 0:51:12 | 0:51:15 | |
minimalism and then conceptual art - | 0:51:15 | 0:51:17 | |
that whole moment has, of course, being massively influential | 0:51:17 | 0:51:22 | |
because you can't have Damien Hirst, | 0:51:22 | 0:51:25 | |
Sarah Lucas, | 0:51:25 | 0:51:27 | |
Tracey Emin... | 0:51:27 | 0:51:28 | |
You can't have them without minimal and conceptual art | 0:51:28 | 0:51:35 | |
having stirred things up to the extent that it did. | 0:51:35 | 0:51:39 | |
I love minimal logic. | 0:51:39 | 0:51:40 | |
I love all that logic of all those minimal artists. | 0:51:40 | 0:51:43 | |
And they are actually beautiful objects, | 0:51:43 | 0:51:45 | |
the arrangements are beautiful. | 0:51:45 | 0:51:47 | |
And it's like, you know, | 0:51:47 | 0:51:48 | |
they are easy to enjoy. | 0:51:48 | 0:51:50 | |
Do you think there is a minimal influence in your work? | 0:51:50 | 0:51:54 | |
Yeah, absolutely. My tanks are totally Sol LeWitt. | 0:51:54 | 0:51:56 | |
You know, the reason why they look like they do is | 0:51:56 | 0:51:59 | |
cos I thought, "I want a Sol LeWitt with a dead animal inside it." | 0:51:59 | 0:52:01 | |
I wanted to put the emotion | 0:52:03 | 0:52:05 | |
back into minimalism, in some way. | 0:52:05 | 0:52:07 | |
And I think that's why they look like minimal sculpture. | 0:52:08 | 0:52:12 | |
You know, I love minimalism now. | 0:52:12 | 0:52:14 | |
I use the way it looks a lot in my own work. | 0:52:14 | 0:52:18 | |
And I, as an artist, and a lot of other artists | 0:52:18 | 0:52:21 | |
borrow from all these periods. | 0:52:21 | 0:52:24 | |
We cherry-pick certain aspects and | 0:52:24 | 0:52:26 | |
we are kind of liberated, really. | 0:52:26 | 0:52:29 | |
It can be as wild and woolly | 0:52:29 | 0:52:31 | |
or as minimal as you want it to be. | 0:52:31 | 0:52:33 | |
MUSIC: Yes, Sir, I Can Boogie by Baccara | 0:52:35 | 0:52:38 | |
After the white heat of the bricks affair cooled down, | 0:52:57 | 0:53:02 | |
the bricks just took their place in the Tate's collection | 0:53:02 | 0:53:06 | |
and were displayed from time to time in different arrangements of works. | 0:53:06 | 0:53:11 | |
# Your eyes are full of hesitation | 0:53:12 | 0:53:15 | |
# Which makes me wonder... # | 0:53:17 | 0:53:19 | |
They are doing a wonderful job and they are a very important part of | 0:53:19 | 0:53:24 | |
the Tate's collection of the art of that, by this time, distant period. | 0:53:24 | 0:53:28 | |
# I wanna keep my reputation | 0:53:28 | 0:53:30 | |
# I'm a sensation | 0:53:33 | 0:53:34 | |
# You try me once you'll beg for more | 0:53:37 | 0:53:41 | |
# Oh! Yes, sir, I can boogie | 0:53:41 | 0:53:45 | |
# But I need a certain song | 0:53:45 | 0:53:48 | |
# I can boogie | 0:53:49 | 0:53:51 | |
# Boogie woogie all night long... # | 0:53:51 | 0:53:54 | |
We are installing Carl Andre's sculpture Equivalent VIII | 0:53:54 | 0:53:58 | |
in a new display of Tate's permanent collection at Tate Modern. | 0:53:58 | 0:54:04 | |
It's a lynchpin of this display because it leads to lots of | 0:54:04 | 0:54:07 | |
other developments in contemporary art that we're looking at. | 0:54:07 | 0:54:10 | |
# No, sir | 0:54:13 | 0:54:14 | |
# I don't feel very much... # | 0:54:14 | 0:54:16 | |
The bricks have been integrated into this display, | 0:54:16 | 0:54:18 | |
which actually reveals the influence of Andre. | 0:54:18 | 0:54:24 | |
You can see the Carl Andre here now... | 0:54:24 | 0:54:28 | |
in a context. | 0:54:28 | 0:54:30 | |
The fascinating thing, of course, | 0:54:30 | 0:54:33 | |
is to know what the public make of it now. | 0:54:33 | 0:54:35 | |
There are those, of course, | 0:54:37 | 0:54:39 | |
who don't really understand what it's all about at all. | 0:54:39 | 0:54:41 | |
But I think there always will be. | 0:54:41 | 0:54:42 | |
You know, it's interesting, isn't it? | 0:54:42 | 0:54:44 | |
-I'm not sure that we understand. -Don't understand, no. | 0:54:44 | 0:54:46 | |
-But we appreciate it. -Yeah. | 0:54:46 | 0:54:48 | |
I thought they were very interesting. | 0:54:50 | 0:54:52 | |
I like the colour, that sandstone yellowy colour. | 0:54:52 | 0:54:55 | |
Almost like you're by the sea, walking on the beach. | 0:54:55 | 0:54:57 | |
Do you think we're all a bit more open-minded about modern art now? | 0:54:57 | 0:55:00 | |
-Yeah, definitely. -Yeah. | 0:55:00 | 0:55:02 | |
We see modern art and we're used to it. | 0:55:02 | 0:55:04 | |
We see, "Oh, that's very cool." | 0:55:04 | 0:55:07 | |
# I can boogie | 0:55:07 | 0:55:09 | |
# Boogie woogie... # | 0:55:09 | 0:55:10 | |
You know, I've got no axe to grind against Carl Andre, | 0:55:10 | 0:55:14 | |
the so-called sculptor. Good luck to him. | 0:55:14 | 0:55:17 | |
I mean, if people are so bloody gullible, then so be it, you know. | 0:55:17 | 0:55:22 | |
I have no shame in admitting to a certain philistinism | 0:55:24 | 0:55:28 | |
when I see these kinds of things. | 0:55:28 | 0:55:31 | |
I can't honestly say that the bricks are a work that | 0:55:31 | 0:55:35 | |
have made me think about anything. | 0:55:35 | 0:55:38 | |
When I look at something like Carl Andre's bricks... | 0:55:38 | 0:55:41 | |
for me, it's a beautiful, quiet moment. | 0:55:41 | 0:55:44 | |
You know, it's like a quietening of the mind. | 0:55:44 | 0:55:46 | |
There's something very meditative about it. | 0:55:46 | 0:55:48 | |
But art is something you have to stand in front of. | 0:55:48 | 0:55:50 | |
And I think, very often, people standing in front of art - anyone - | 0:55:50 | 0:55:53 | |
like Carl Andre's - | 0:55:53 | 0:55:54 | |
people will go, "You know what? It's odd but I really like it." | 0:55:54 | 0:55:57 | |
# Yes, sir | 0:56:01 | 0:56:03 | |
# I can boogie... # | 0:56:03 | 0:56:05 | |
Thinking back, it was described as a pile of bricks. | 0:56:05 | 0:56:08 | |
But it clearly isn't a pile of bricks. | 0:56:08 | 0:56:10 | |
It's some bricks that have carefully been arranged. | 0:56:10 | 0:56:13 | |
# All night long... # | 0:56:13 | 0:56:15 | |
I think I was never quite as negative as many people were. | 0:56:15 | 0:56:21 | |
But as I've grown older and I've grown more familiar with bricks, | 0:56:21 | 0:56:26 | |
I've grown to love it in | 0:56:26 | 0:56:27 | |
quite a serious way now. | 0:56:27 | 0:56:29 | |
I think it is a nice-looking piece of artwork. | 0:56:29 | 0:56:33 | |
I think the shape of it, the layout of it, | 0:56:33 | 0:56:36 | |
actually seems to work very well for me. | 0:56:36 | 0:56:38 |