introduction 2

If I remember correctly, this project had its beginnings in a conversation with Tom and Laurie in the summer of 2009. At the time I was revising the introduction of my book on Carl Andre, and I was warming up to the idea of adding in a paragraph on how you might describe his 'development' as an artist. My editor had said I needed to bring up the subject, but I was putting it off. But in my mind 'development' has to go in inverted commas, because there is a strong argument to be made that once Andre figured out the type of work which he wanted to make, and set up the parameters, he stuck to it. Clearly there have been variations in material and appearance, but these don't really mark sequential change. So, the 'Equivalents', installed first at Tibor de Nagy, NYC, in 1966:

could easily be described in the same terms as this series of sculptures from Sadie Coles HQ in London from 2004:

The big issue for me was what you make of this seeming absence of development. There is a temptation to say - 'actually there's a lot of variation if you start looking properly'. And of course there is. But in my mind this was skirting round the bigger issue, and that's the profound prejudice among art critics and art historians against the idea that there is any virtue in an artist not showing evident signs of progression. We are obsessed by seeing artists in terms of life stages, and words like 'juvenilia', 'maturity', 'experience', 'late period', etc. get used all the time. That's meant to be good. If an artist does the same sort of thing throughout their life, their work is seen as 'stuck in a rut', 'repetitive', or, worst of all, 'solipsistic'. 

The literature on the issue isn't that substantial, although Rosalind Krauss does raise the question in her essay on 'grids', and Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe does discuss briefly these questions in relation to Andre in an Artforum review from about 1974.

Tom helpfully reminded me that it might be useful to think more historically, and consider all the artists of that generation who didn't invest in the idea that an art practice had to develop. We spent the next half hour putting together a list - Daniel Buren, Alan Charlton, On Kawara, and so on. There seemed to be quite a few. And all of them are of the same generation (more or less). So was there a precedent? Mondrian? Albers' long, extended series of Homages to the Square? Or Reinhardt's Black Paintings, which he began in 1960? Seen in this company, Andre - plus the other Minimalists - don't look quite so strange. 

On the basis of this chat, I went away and typed out a paragraph or two for the book. 

It was several months later when Tom proposed that perhaps we should make more of this group of artists. Why not think about all of them collectively? Such a position might have been popular at one moment, but what had happened to that ideal? And were there still artists out there who were committing themselves to one single project they aimed to continue all their life? 

These seemed like worthwhile questions, and so this is why we want to set out to chart 'the single road'.

Alistair