NARRATOR: 

In Compound, Minimalist sculptor Carl Andre has deliberately chosen to position these lightweight logs of styrofoam directly on the floor. Although we know that they could literally float, this configuration suggests that they have the immovable solidity of concrete or stone.  

GARRELS:  

It’s that tension between levitation and weight that Andre was interested in. 

NARRATOR:  

Gary Garrels, Curator at the Museum. 

GARRELS:  

The other interesting thing is the way that biography influences an artist’s work. I mean, Carl Andre grew up in Quincy, Massachusetts, and there’s a very New England quality to the work — a spareness, a directness, not unlike the way a post-and-beam construction would be used in old New England carpentry. I think a lot of people have trouble with minimalism because they expect something to always refer to something else, and minimalism was absolutely in contradiction to that. It was about the self-containment of the experience– that art was something apart from life. You know, we’re much more comfortable with something we’re familiar with: doing the laundry, shopping, going to a movie, and that when you encounter something that’s very alien, that doesn’t fit within your normal boundaries of experience, we don’t have language for it, we don’t understand it. Some people find that threatening. Some people find it exhilarating because it’s exciting. So I think it’s a matter of not expecting art to always be duplicating the same things that you’re finding outside of art.