NARRATOR: 

If you look closely, you’ll see nothing is holding this sculpture together. The hunks of wood are just standing shoulder to shoulder, filling the corner. Sculptor Carl Andre first began making arrangements like this in the late 1950’s. 

CARL ANDRE:  

I found I was doing things which I called Useless Objects. And I couldn’t figure out why I was making these elaborate useless objects and it wasn’t until much much much later I realized I was making sculptures and didn’t know it. 

NARRATOR: 

Andre works with materials like copper, lead, zinc, and wood. He sorts and places them in very deliberate ways — to make us notice the objects themselves, and the way they occupy space.  

ANDRE:  

My work has been about revealing or making plain the properties of material. As we say of a painter who has a gift with color that such a painter is a colorist, I pride myself, or believe myself to be a matterist the way a painter is a colorist. 

NARRATOR:  

If you’re wondering — but what does it mean? Andre says let that question go. 

ANDRE:  

I think children before they learn to read are actually artists, they’re always working with crayons or modeling clay, they’re always expressing themselves. Then children learn to read. And then if they start to make art, then their parents say what does it mean? That drives them away from making art. Because art doesn’t mean anything. It’s like a love affair, what does a love affair mean? I mean, it’s … it’s for its own sake.