Details
Carl Andre (b. 1935)
16 Waterbody
sheet steel, in sixteen parts
each: 0.04 x 3/4 x 3¾in. (0.1 x 2 x 9.5cm.)
overall: 3/4 x 60in. (0.1 x 2 x 152.4cm.)
Executed in 1973
Provenance
Paula Cooper Gallery, New York (1985).
Lord Palumbo Collection, United Kingdom.
Private Collection, Italy.
Acquired from the above by the present owner.
Literature
Carl Andre: Sculpture 1958-1974, exh. cat., Bern, Kunsthalle Bern, 1975, no.11 (installation view, illustrated, p. 72).
Carl Andre, exh. cat., Den Haag, Haags Gemeentemuseum, 1987, no. 12 (installation view, illustrated, p. 67).
J. Meyer (ed.), Cuts: Texts 1959-2004, Massachusetts 2005 (installation view, illustrated, p. 111).
Exhibited
New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Carl Andre: Waterbodies, 1973. New York, Paula Cooper Gallery, Carl Andre, 1985.

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Lot Essay

This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by the artist.

'In 1973, Jennifer Licht of The Museum of Modern Art asked me to have a show of small sculptures there. We considered many solutions to the problem of maintaining the integrity of small, vulnerable works in a busy museum. At last it occurred to me to put the pedestals on top of the works! My idea was to install the small sculptures called Waterbodies on the bottom of the reflecting pools in the MOMA Sculpture Garden. It was remarked at the time that the Museum would have no trouble insuring a gigantic work that might topple over and injure someone but had no chance of insuring a work so vulnerable that it might simply disappear in the course of a normal day's operation.'

(C. Andre, quoted in Statement about Small Sculptures, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, 2000.)

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