Quotes by Carl Andre

“I mean, art for arts sake is ridiculous. Art is for the sake of ones needs.”

“I find that my greatest difficulty and the really most painful and difficult part of my work is draining and ridding my mind of that burden of meanings which Ive absorbed through the culture-things that seem to have something to do with art but dont have anything to do with art at all.”

“A place is an area within an environment that has been altered in such a way to make the general environment more conspicuous.”

“My art springs from my desire to have things in the world which would otherwise never be there.”

“Every time you work, you have to do it all over again, to rid yourself of this dross. I suppose for a person who is not an artist or not attempting art, it is not dross, because it is the common exchange of everyday life.”

“It is futile for an artist to try to create an environment because you have an environment around you all the time. Any living organism has an environment.”

“Matter as matter rather than matter as symbol is a conscious political position, essentially Marxist.”

“The Aesthetics of Repetition II”

“I have been subject to politics as long as Ive been alive, thirty-five years, starting with the New Deal, going into the Second World War, the Cold War, Korea, the whole thing. So, Ive been affected by it and hence since Ive made my art, my art must reflect my political experience.”

“Thats another way, perhaps, of an art poverty; one has to impoverish ones mind.”

I mean, art for arts sake is ridiculous. Art is for the sake of ones needs.

Every time you work, you have to do it all over again, to rid yourself of this dross. I suppose for a person who is not an artist or not attempting art, it is not dross, because it is the common exchange of everyday life.

My art springs from my desire to have things in the world which would otherwise never be there.