Dave Walton (aka David Wise) on conceptual artist Carl Andre and the Tate Modern Gallery.
In the early 70s, 120 BRICKS, by Carl Andre was purchased for a substantial sum by the Tate Gallery.
An edge to the critique of art took shape as bricklayers declared they’d "have to put their rates up". It made you laugh.
Although the workers once possessed a banal though often enjoyable piss-take on modern art this has now been left behind as more and more are sucked into Tate Modern. Perhaps necessary, as the bulk of people prepare to grasp theoretically and historically the real mass supercession of modern art, which would still involve knocking Carl Andre’s sleight of hand into brick dust as well as putting Tate Modern to imaginative fire.
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