'There is a line among the fragments of the Greek poet Archilochus which says: "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing."
Scholars have differed about the correct interpretation of these dark words, which may mean no more than that the fox, for all his cunning, is defeated by the hedgehog's one defence.
But, taken figuratively, the words can be made to yield a sense in which they mark one of the deepest differences which divide writers and thinkers, and, it may be, human beings in general.
For there exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single central vision, one system, less or more coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel - a single, universal, organising principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance - and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way, for some psychological or physiological cause, related by no moral or aesthetic principle.
...The first kind of intellectual and artistic personality belongs to the hedgehogs, the second to the foxes...'
Isaiah Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy's View of History (1953/78)
Carl Andre, Herm, 1960 (realised 1978)
'I find that the more I feel that I'm capable of doing the things I want to do, the narrower my scope is. I feel far more concentrated. I'm definitely a hedgehog, as in the metaphor of Archilochus, the way someone like Bob Morris is definitely a fox. The fox knows many things and the hedgehog knows one thing very well. This is not a value distinction at all. Rather, it's a difference in temperament between different kinds of people.'
Carl Andre, interview with Patricia Norvell, 1969
Andy Warhol, Superman, 1961
By contrast to Andre, Warhol most certainly was a fox.
'If an artist can't do any more, then he should just quit; and an artist ought to be able to change his style without feeling bad. I heard that Lichtenstein said that he might not be painting comic strips a year or two from now - I think that would be so great, to be able to change styles. And I think that's what's going to happen, that's going to be the whole new scene.'
Andy Warhol, interview with Gene Swenson, 1963
