Lynda Morris I was very struck by your response to a question one of the Slade students asked you about the development of the work.
Andre Cadere There is no development in the work. It is a method I made six years ago. It is a very precise method and it is always the same method. Each piece is different. It is not good to use the word "stick". Each "round bar of wood" is different. Each bar I make is included in a system that was there from the beginning, with permutations in the order of the colours, and one deliberate mistake (laughing). So in fact what I am doing is like a world constellation of round bars of wood. I do this and I do that in the making but in fact they are included in a platonic sense.
Lynda Morris So the development in the work is not in the craft of making the bar of wood or the permutation of the colours, but in the situation where you present it ?
Andre Cadere Exactly. My art is the situation of my work in the art world. I am only interested in the art world because the work in the street is always the same. In the street there is no development because people in the street react in the same way today as they did six years ago and as they would react 20 years into the future. Maybe it will change as I grow older and older, maybe when I have white hair (laughter) but it is not certain.
In the art world my work has changed in a very interesting way in the last five or six years. Even in 1972 at Documenta people asked me "What is this ?" I replied "This is my work and I exhibit it in this way. I bring it with me." People made fun of this and they said: "In six months you will become serious again." Six months later it was the same, I just continued for one year, two years and three years, and so the art world started to have different feelings about my work. And people started to ask: "What does he want, why is he always at openings and art fairs ? Does he want to show his work in galleries and in museums ?" And now in fact I have had a lot of shows in galleries and with museums and I continue to work with the round bar of wood. But I think the art world still does not really understand my work.
from Documenting Cadere 1972-1978, Modern Art Oxford/ Koenig Books 2013