Voltaglyph+28

Date: 1997
 * [[image:https://s3.amazonaws.com/saam.media/files/styles/x_large/s3/images/2013/2013.88.1A-BB_1a.jpg?itok=E3MNAIwa width="314" height="274" link="@https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/voltaglyph-28-86638"]] || Title: **Voltaglyph 28**

Artist: **Carl Andre** Born: Quincy, Massachusetts 1935

Medium: copper and zinc Dimensions: overall: 3/8 x 69 x 39 3/8 in. (1.0 x 175.3 x 99.9 cm) each: 9 7/8 x 9 7/8 in. (25.1 x 25.1 cm) Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of the James F. Dicke Family

Accession: 2013.88.1A-BB ||

Sculptor and poet Carl Andre is internationally recognized as a seminal figure in the Minimalist movement of the 1960s and 70s whose work radically challenged the criteria that have traditionally defined sculpture.
 * About the Artwork: **

//Voltaglyph 28// is a floor piece whose title references the number of uniformly cut zinc and copper squares that sit in direct contact with each other and alludes to the shared electrical potential of these metals to form a voltaic cell (battery). The series (which includes //Voltaglyph 36//, purchased by the de Young Museum in 2012) was created in 1997 and reflects Andre’s abiding interest in elemental metals and the periodic table, which he once incorporated in a gallery invitation.

Born in Quincy, Massachusetts, a place famed for its granite quarries, Andre attended the Phillips Academy in Andover and served in the US Army from 1955 to 1956. Early on, he assembled sculptures from blocks of wood, drawing inspiration from Brancusi and Russian Constructivists, as well as Stonehenge, which he visited in 1954. At the beginning of his career, Andre supported himself by working as a conductor and brake operator in the New York rail yards, an experience that profoundly affected his creative process. The artist claimed the railroad “tore me away from the pretentions of art,” leading him to create works from industrial materials, including bricks, Styrofoam, zinc, lead, copper, scavenged from sites around lower Manhattan. He never maintained a studio, instead assembling sculptures on the street or in spaces borrowed from friends, including Frank Stella.

In 1965, Andre began installing sculpture directly on the floor, emphasizing its relationship to its site. Conceived of as “places,” rather than objects, viewers are invited to walk on the surface, provoking them to consider how one’s perception of space changes while confronting what the artist calls a basic human need to differentiate one’s self from the surrounding environment. Organized by what Andre terms “axial symmetry,” the floor pieces force our gaze down, rather than meet us vertically. Andre resists the label conceptual artist, arguing that his sculptures are physical constructions that could be composed anywhere, yet cease to exist as art when disassembled.

Andre has been the subject of numerous exhibitions, including an international retrospective that is scheduled to open at Dia:Beacon in May 2014.


 * Resources: **



SAAM Collections Page Artist Biography
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