Can the First Pile of Bricks Be a Work of Art While the Second Pile Is Not

Tate Gallery Buys Pile of Bricks—Or Is It Art?

• February. 20, 1976

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Feb 20, 1976

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LONDON, Feb. 18—It is a pity, in a way, that a piece of brick sculpture put together by the New York minimalist Carl Andre has achieved its greatest public notoriety on the eve of the bicentennial exhibition of the paintings of John Constable, as maximum a effigy equally there is in the rich history of English landscapes.

But that is what has happened, and the juxtaposition of the two has washed nothing to dampen the tempest here over the Tate Gallery's purchase (for $12,000, according to The Daily Mirror) of Mr. Andre'south "insouciant masterpiece" (as The Sunday Times called it)—a controversy that has amused the public, put the Tate on the defensive and given the newspapers here their best fourth dimension in weeks.

In fact, Mr. Andre'south "pile of bricks" (as The Evening Standard put it) has been lying around the Tate since 1972 and had existed as a piece of work of art for some years before that. It was not until The Dominicus Times began combing the gallery's latest 275‐folio catalogue last week that anybody actually noticed them.

Back to the Brickyard

Equally the story goes hither, Mr. Andre decided in the mid1960'southward that the time had come to create low sculpture. He bought 120 bricks, arranged them in a rectangular pile, two bricks high, 6 across and 10 lengthwise, and waited in vain for customers. He and so sent the bricks back to the brickyard.

In 1972, Tate officials saw a photograph of the bricks and offered to buy them. Mr. Andre plant some new bricks (the old brickyard having gone out of business), and sent them off to London in a crate, complete with directions for assembly.

Once assembled, they were displayed. They were noncontroversial bricks—tranquil, solid, innocent. Simply no more than.

The major complaint of The Sunday Times was that the Tate, which receives an annual grant of more than than $i million from the Authorities, was putting the taxpayers' money in the incorrect places, instead of the right ones, such as hanging John Constable's works on its walls.

Some defenders of the museum said the cost paid for the Andre work was probably one-half what The Daily 'Mirror reported and they pointed out that the Tate's charter obligates it to buy new fine art.

The Sunday Times pointed out that in addition to Mr. Andre, the Tate had sent other mod artists "laughing their manner to the hank"—including Barry Flanagan, whose work includes five dyed Hessian blankets folded, and Claes Oldenburg, from whom the gallery bought a four‐by‐5‐inch postcard chosen "Lipsticks in Piccadilly Circus, London 1966."

A Herringbone Pattern

From the popular press came enterprising ridicule. The Daily Mirror sent a squadron of reporters around town and appear: "The corking new art movement known as low sculpture spread to Britain's more discerning building sites yesterday."

At one site; a stonemason named Tony Heffer did a quick herringbone pattern with about 30 bricks and said he could probably peddle it to the Tate for the equivalent of what he earned in a year.

The Tate'southward managing director, Sir Norman Reid, struck back in a statement, bringing Mr. Andre into the same tent with the legendary and beloved Lawman.

Since the stop of World State of war II, he said, "The Tate'due south trustees have followed a more adventurous policy trying to belch their responsibilities of making available to the British public examples of work which is being made now. It is certain that some of their purchases volition appear in comprehensible or possibly offensive to some visitors in the same manner that Lawman'south piece of work was widely attacked in his ain 24-hour interval."

Critics have argued that the minimalist movement, of which Mr. Andre is a leader, is serious concern and produces serious fine art whose aim is to simplify and reduce, to eliminate easy appeals to the eye and thus to focus the viewers' attending and consciousness on the uncomplicated, even primitive dimension that art possesses when stripped of its visual rhetoric.

Disdains Ridicule

But so far none of the critics in London'south "serious" papers have rushed to the barricades. The Tate, for example, might accept reasonably expected some sympathy from Bernard Levin, a Times columnist who oftentimes writes on the arts. But while disdaining the tactics of ridicule adopted past the popular press, Mr. Levin was determined in his insistence that fine art is something that is fashioned from "the mind and heart and experience and soul, and if necessary body, of the creative person" determined also in his conclusion that Mr. Andre's piece of work was no more than, equally The Evening Standard said, than "a pile of bricks."

Yet, Mr. Andre—who says he is saddened by the uproar, in part because "my own needs in art are towards quiet and peace"— may take won some friends, and he has certainly won an audience. As hundreds of visitors filed by gallery 19 in the Tate, where the bricks were back on display, one was heard to remark:

"I like them. They relax me."

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