El-P and Killer Mike of Run The Jewels. (Photo: Erika Goldring/FilmMagic)
You may know Noah Horowitz as Art Basel’s new director of the Americas, but he also happens to a musical connoisseur who’s always up for sharing his latest discoveries with the Observer—especially during art fair time. And this week is the big one: Art Basel Miami Beach.
It’s Mr. Horowitz’s first year helming the fair, and for the occasion—as if he didn’t already have enough work this week—we presented him with a new challenge: put together a soundtrack for the entire fair week.
Voila! Suggestions for “Song of the Week” officially start now.
“Here’s six albums from the past year that I’ll be listening to on the move in Miami,” Mr. Horowitz wrote to us via email, followed by the list below for which we’ve added some notes on each pick.
Alabama Shakes, Sound & Color
Hailing from Athens, Alabama, the “roots rock” group had a huge hit with the song Hold On from their first album, which earned them three Grammy nods. They followed with the album Sound & Color, and its titular track finds the band moving into new territory.
Beirut, No No No
“Indie” meets “World Music” isn’t the most accurate description for American Zach Condon’s band, though commonly used, since Beirut borrows from a wide variety of European musical influencers. This tune is pretty fresh, it dropped in September, and its pop finish will undoubtedly make it hard to not to get stuck in your head.
Foxygen, …And Starpower
The dream child of high school pals Sam France and Jonathan Rado, the group is contemporary throw-back of sorts; they’re psychedelic hard rock with some soft Bowie-esque vocals from Mr. France that will make good beach listening in the hazy Miami sun.
Future Islands, Singles
Here’s something to get your dance on to: Maryland band Future Islands’ newest album, Singles. So much synth! Good for the dance floor or to help you power through the Miami traffic apocalypse.
Neon Indian, VEGA INTL. Night School
Even more dance. Why? According to a 24-hour delivery caviar service that’ll be available this week, “You Don’t Need a Reason. You Are at Art Basel.” There are going to be so many parties this week—many of which you probably won’t be able to get into—so why not just have a party of your own to the electronic jams of this group’s third album.
Run the Jewels, Run the Jewels 2
We’re pretty into this one, in fact we’ve already been listening to this critically acclaimed hip hop album to get ourselves ready for the week. El-P is from New York, Killer Mike from Atlanta, and when the two got together they put out a hit self-titled album in 2013, followed by this one not long after in 2014. We recommend you listen to it straight through.
And finally, Mr. Horowitz ends with this one, and says, “When it’s all said and done, it’ll be West Palm Beach (from Greatest Palace Music) by Bonnie “Prince” Billy as I make my way out of town….” West Palm Beach is slow and nostalgic modern classic—it’s got us already missing Miami.
Jorge M. Perez partying with Wyclef Jean. (Photo: Franklin Sirmans, @mfsirmans, via Instagram)
The Perez Art Museum Miami unfolds splendidly out over Biscayne Bay—the Herzog and de Meuron-designed space seamlessly integrates nature and art. The grand outdoor pavilion where last night’s dinner to honor the patron—and namesake—of the at times controversial museum was plush with donors, collectors and art world and fashion figures. But the walk to the controversial museum is inauspicious.
Its sister museum, the Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science, is still under construction, and approaching on foot doesn’t seem to be something the designers anticipated. Nonetheless, this reporter walked in, ignoring signs that read “Trespassing on a construction site is a felony.”
A placecard at the dinner for Mr. Jean. (Photo: Guelda Voien)
Our bravery was rewarded. Over cocktails and hors d’oeuvres, Franklin Sirmans, the superstar curator recently imported from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for the Perez told the Observer about the reason for the party: “It’s the beginning [of Miami Art Week] and why not?” he said, gesturing about the open-air plaza. Of course, the man of the hour, Jorge Perez, the real estate developer and collector who reportedly insisted his name be affixed to the museum, doesn’t really need further honors.
“Surface [magazine] really had the event,” said PAMM board president Jeff Krinsky. “I was here to honor Jorge Perez,” but the museum wasn’t too involved in the evening, he said. Collector Liz Swig—daughter of real estate developer and art collector Harry Macklowe and in the midst of a erm, split from developer Kent Swig—was seated near Mr. Krinsky, and dealer Jeanne Greenberg-Rohaytn and photographer Mario Testino also popped by.
But that doesn’t take away from the setting or the magnificent shows currently on view at the Perez, as Mr. Sirmans pointed out. Firelei Baez, who was also at the party, recently opened her show “Bloodlines,” that looks at geography and identity and “No Boundaries,” up since September at PAMM, is a survey of Aboriginal abstract painting. And parts of the permanent collection, which Mr. Sirmans said they are “always filling out,” are also on display during Art Week.
The Perez Art Museum Miami.
“It sort of culminates Thursday with PAMM Presents,” he said. The Ryan McNamara collaboration with musician Devonté Hynes, set for Thursday evening, will take place in the same pavilion at PAMM. “They are probably rehearsing as soon as we leave.” Indeed, they were—a makeshift purple stage for that performance was being fashioned as the Observer left and performers were nervously waiting for guests to clear the area.
That wasn’t before a very intimate show from sometimes-Miami resident Wyclef Jean, who brought a surprise guest, and spirited performer, to the stage: his sister. But by then (around 11 p.m.) most of the guests had already departed.
Even Mr. Sirmans left before dinner. “I’ve got another thing I need to get to,” he admitted.
A lot of money and art will change hands this week in Miami. Literally dozens of art fairs, as well as a ton of satellite events and gallery exhibitions, are sure to provide many lovestruck moments for art collectors who have been deeply moved by an artwork—or four. Maybe even eight.But is this wanton and immediate desire for art fabricated? Has the art market, like any other savvy luxury goods industry, figured out the right buttons to push with their clients?
“Businesses often use words like ‘limited’, ‘rare’, and ‘only one left’ in order to create panic in the brain,” says NYU Stern Business School professor of consumer behavior Dr. Jacob Jacoby, who spoke to the Observer by phone. “They trigger a reaction called ‘Loss Aversion’; when you’re more concerned with losing something than gaining something.”
In other words, FOMO—a.k.a. “fear of missing out”—is a very real thing that our brains are wired for. And that fear is especially involved in fueling impulse art purchases, since no one really “needs” a giant bronze foot.
Art fairs are loaded with buying-behavior triggers. In fact, constructed “rarity” can often force a buyer to make decisions long before the end of a fair. From the moment doors open, often only to VIPs for a sneak peak, there is pressure to move fast. Buying in public, amongst an onslaught of friends, or more importantly, rivals in the insular world of Contemporary Art collecting, spurs a sense of competition. Online access—including pre-fair offers—has sped up the purchase cycle, forcing collectors to decide on purchases faster than ever, and the limited fair dates only leaves so much time to decide on a purchase (perhaps solely as a souvenir) in an exotic and far away locale.
The 2011 LISTE Art Fair. (Photo: Wikipedia)
To make matters worse, “holds”—those little reserves that give collectors a day to a week to decide on in-gallery purchases—don’t really fly at art fairs. “It is difficult if not impossible for a gallerist to put work on hold during a fair,” said Susan Inglett, owner of the Susan Inglett Gallery in New York’s Chelsea gallery district. “They have a responsibility, not only to the next collector who comes along but to their artists and to the success of their program.”
And yes, some dealers might try to take advantage of the swirling chaos. “I passed the booth of a dealer I’m close friends with at a fair a few years ago,” said one collector who preferred to remain anonymous. “She was so eager to sell me a piece that, before we even spoke, she started writing up a sale for an expensive artwork I didn’t know and definitely didn’t like. I was seeing the work for the first time, and hers was the first booth I entered! I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, so I told her I’d have circle back to her—and never did.”
While it may seem clear that these fairs are a dastardly scheme by art insiders to part collectors from their money via inscrutable techniques, Arthur B. Markman, Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas and author of the book Slow Change, says don’t blame the fair, blame your brain.
Your brain on art. (Photo: Courtesy of Hey Paul Studios)
“Your brain has a deep structure for your motivational system,” said Mr. Markman, “so if you see a work of art that excites you, your motivational system is designed to act upon that and acquire it.”
But why do you want this object so badly? Apparently it’s because, as with sports stars or Hollywood actors, you start to identify with it.
According to Ian Zimmerman, an expert in consumer psychology at the University of Missouri, Columbia, whenever we’re connected to a product—physically (it’s in front of us), temporally (we can buy it now), or socially (we see someone else interacting with it and compare ourselves to that person), it literally changes the way our minds perceive it.
Writing in Psychology Today, he noted: “Our minds essentially start acting like we already own the product, which makes it harder to go without buying it.”
Wait, so you can’t blame the art dealer’s voodoo mind tricks, the fair’s congested aisles or the fact that you got three hours sleep the night before as the reason why you own a gigantic gold macrame spider web?
Nope. “The pressure to buy really comes from within the collectors themselves,” said Mr. Markman.
Indeed, buying decisions are generally more self-directed—more planned out even—than they might seem. “An ‘impulse buy’ is not really an impulse,” Dr. Jacoby of NYU Stern said. “At some point in time, you make a mental note that you need this, so when you are confronted with it later on, you are ready to make a critical decision.”
Crucial information travels fast these days, and you have to be ready to make quick decisions. This is often the case when “influencers” create a ripple effect on “copy cat” collectors, creating a run on certain artists. These scrums for young art may seem totally random to an outsider, but are often based on intel.
And with the rapid rise in prices for some emerging art, pressure to get the “right” artist at the “right” price at the “right” time has begun to creep into the backs of even the wealthiest collectors’ minds.
Two 2015 paintings by Ayan Farah. (Photo: Courtesy of Instagram)
This was evident at the 2013 UNTITLED. art fair, when mega-collectors Susan and Michael Hort purchased multiple works by then-unknown British artist Ayan Farah from the booth of Vigo Gallery, based in London. By the end of the day, virtually all of the gallery’s Farah inventory—at the fair and back in London—had sold. (Ms. Farah’s investment market has since cooled somewhat, but she continues to have a strong following for her ethereal stretched-fabric works weathered by the elements.)
But when it comes to true impulse buys, some think there’s nothing wrong with them. “Impulse buys are usually based on an emotional response to an artwork, and that’s exactly what most artists are hoping their works will provoke,” said art dealer and artist Ryan Wallace, who co-owns Halsey McKay Gallery in East Hampton and will have his own work at a booth at the UNTITLED. Art Fair this month.
“When I see collectors disappointed in something that they bought, it’s usually something that was on a “shopping list” of hot artists they didn’t have any emotional connection to. An impulse is the opposite of this.”
Pity the poor art dealer.
Not a phrase you hear a lot in an industry where the stereotype is of jet setting and high living.
But veteran art dealers report that some big things have changed to make it more difficult, and less profitable, to run an art gallery—even in what’s been, at least for the past few years, a booming market for Contemporary art. Basic expenses are way up, from the proliferation of far-flung art fairs (a slew begin this week in Miami) and rising rent, to climbing insurance and storage costs. A lot else is different, too: Of-the-moment installation and performance pieces are pricier to mount and to move than paintings. Global price databases for art let buyers comparison shop, and bargain. Partnerships with international galleries are increasingly common, and give dealers much less control over an artist’s pricing than they used to have.
Add to all this the challenge that you have to make it all look beautiful and easy—nobody wants to buy a luxury good in an atmosphere that doesn’t scream, or, better yet, whisper, “luxury”—and the squeeze is on.
This raises a question: What does it really cost to operate an art gallery? A survey of New York galleries offers a sense of the rising price of being in the art business.
The 2016 home of Derek Eller Gallery on the Lower East Side. (Photo: Courtesy of Instagram)
All art dealers asked about money first talked about rent. Take, for instance, the Lennon, Weinberg Gallery, which relocated to West 25th Street Chelsea from Soho a decade ago because it meant a 25 percent reduction in rent for the gallery, according to co-owner Jill Weinberg Adams. Not anymore. The math has, if anything, reversed. “Rent is my highest single expense, 33 percent of my budget.” Total monthly costs for the gallery generally range from $80,000 to $100,000, she said, and the higher expenses have changed the nature of the gallery.
“When we came to Chelsea, you could run a gallery on what you sold from your exhibitions of living emerging artists, but now you can’t. We’ve learned that in order to support those exhibitions, it’s increasingly important to represent a prestigious estate or two and to have sales on the secondary market, because those are more reliable income streams.” She added, “My back room is very important to me.”
Of course, the expense of high rent in Chelsea can be offset by moving, so relocation is an increasingly common solution. McKenzie Fine Art, Andrew Edlin, Zach Feuer, Foxy Production and CRG Gallery are among those who have moved in the past year or two to the Lower East Side, while Casey Kaplan and Edward Winkleman relocated to the Flower District, and they are hardly alone. The rent differential is significant, with average Lower East Side costs of $80-$100 per square foot, as opposed to $100-$150 in Chelsea, according to Simone Lillian, a commercial real estate agent at Sinvin Realty.
When dealer Betty Cuningham moved from West 25th Street to Rivington Street on the Lower East Side last year, her rent went from $25,000 per month to $14,000, she said, and by moving to a location not in the Chelsea flood zone the gallery also received a rebate of 25 percent from the company in charge of its fine art storage.
Betty Cunningham moved her gallery from Chelsea to the Lower East Side citing high “rent and taxes”. (Photo: Courtesy of the ADAA)
But galleries have few other options for reducing their costs. Payroll, after rent, tends to be the next highest budget item, and the usually small staffs can’t be outsourced to Asia. There are many other permanent gallery expenditures, such as the cost of attending fairs, storage, insurance (health, premises and fine art), crating and shipping, legal, entertainment, advertising and promotion, and none of these costs are lessened by relocation.
The noted Maxwell Davidson Gallery on West 26th Street, a family partnership with two full-time and one part-time employee(s), costs between $50,000 and $80,000 per month to operate. “Our rent is somewhere between 15 and 20 percent of our budget,” said Maxwell Davidson IV. “It’s hard to say what percentage is payroll, because we are a family business, and money gets pumped back into the business. We take out what we need.” They now do between four and six art fairs a year.
At CRG Gallery, sales at the half-dozen art fairs in which it participates now provide half of its annual earnings, said co-owner Richard Desroche. The payroll consists of the gallery’s three owners and four staff members, all of whom take a salary. Reducing the number of art fairs that it attends, which each cost between $50,000 and $100,000 (for booth rentals, shipping, lighting, accommodations, dining, travel, entertainment and sundries), would do more harm than good, said Mr. Desroche. Among the other gallery expenses that can’t really be cut, Mr. Desroche said, are storage (5 percent of the monthly budget) and insurance (7.5 percent).
Moreover, some unanticipated expenses just pop up for gallery owners.
“Artists expect all sorts of financial assistance,” said Helene Winer, co-owner of Chelsea’s powerhouse Metro Pictures gallery. “When artists want to finance a project, the first place they turn to is their gallery.” She added that “contributing to costs of museum and biennale-type events for artists, which is a relatively new expectation that affects galleries’ ability to keep their artists” are additional expenditures that cannot always be budgeted in advance. “It’s our job to help,” she said.
Discussions of art so often focus on how much it costs, but those costs are tied to the expense of running a gallery and running around the world to show art. “There is a lot of overhead in operating a gallery that you don’t see,” said Valerie McKenzie, who moved to an Orchard Street location that included 900 square feet in the building’s finished basement, where gallery inventory may be stored at low cost.
Reducing overhead helps, but pressure is still on to sell, sell, sell. “I have to sell 50-70 percent of the works in the shows in order to break even,” she said. “If you have one poor-selling show, you feel it for months.”
Art prices may seem high to visitors to exhibitions, but discounts of 5 or 10 percent are more often the rule than not and half the sale price goes to the artist in most contracts (the gallery commission varies widely in sales of secondary-market art). Richard Desroche said that if an art fair costs the gallery $100,000, he needs to sell $250,000 in art just to break even.
Chinatown, with its lower rents, has become a new locale for contemporary art galleries. (Photo: Courtesy of Wikimedia)
In other industries, when there are increases in the cost of doing business, you just raise prices. But work by emerging artists cannot be priced like a successful mid-career artist because a dealer’s costs have risen. “You don’t price things related to our costs but relative to where the artist is in his or her career,” said John Thomson, founder and director of Foxy Production. So, in practical terms, increased costs tend to be swallowed by the gallery.
Gallery owner Andrew Edlin also stated, “You can’t artificially price an artist’s work because you have a high rent. You have to find artwork that fits your cost structure.” The pressure to sell moves down the food chain to the artist, whose tenure at a gallery becomes increasingly reliant on steady sales.
It is easy, and perhaps traditional, for artists to blame dealers for their woes, but some players argue that, increasingly, the high cost of operating a gallery in New York is beyond a dealer’s control.
Ana Mendieta. (Photo: The Estate of Ana Mendiera Collection LLC Courtesy Gallery Lelong New York)
The first week of December, a mesmerizing body of artwork rarely seen and almost forgotten will go on display in Miami, at the public collection of Rosa de la Cruz, one of the country’s leading Contemporary art collectors. The pieces include images of the mud-smeared body of the artist and of her sweating blood from her pores.The dark imagery foretold her demise, some fans of the artist maintain.
On the 30-year anniversary of her death, a powerful cult is growing around photographer and filmmaker Ana Mendieta. Famous for some years mostly for the way she died, and forgotten for many more, her works are being rediscovered, exhibited around the U.S. and are climbing at auction. In the 1980s, if you could find a Mendieta, it was maybe $2,000, said Phillips auction house Worldwide Co-Head of Contemporary Art August Uribe. Now the median price for a Mendieta is $40,000 to $50,000, he said, and one hit a record of $200,000 at Phillips.
So, what’s fueling the rediscovery? In part, “I think that there is a renewed or new interest in the work of women artists [overall],” he said, and some of the new collectors of this work are women, he noted. It’s also because of the “globalization and internationalization” of the art world, he added. But with Mendieta specifically, it’s “the quality of the work,” Mr. Uribe said. “And her story.”
What is that story? In brief, the young and promising Cuban-American artist fell to her death in September 1985 from the 34th-floor window of her Greenwich Village apartment; her newlywed husband, legendary sculptor Carl Andre, was indicted, tried and eventually acquitted of her murder. His defense attorney argued, among other points, that Mendieta had committed “sub-intentional suicide.”
A sordid art world mystery at the time that polarized well-regarded art world principals on both sides, Ana Mendieta’s backstory is, finally, being overshadowed by her growing artistic legacy. It may have taken the art establishment years to find her work, but once it did, the response was what Mendieta seems to inspire, generally: devotion, even obsession.
Tree of Life (1976) by Ana Mendieta. (Photo: The Estate of Ana Mendiera Collection LLC Courtesy Gallery Lelong New York)
Ms. de la Cruz estimates that, at 24 artworks, she is probably the largest single owner of Mendieta works outside the artist’s family. Ms. de la Cruz has created with her husband a personal museum, the Cruz Collection, and will show her Mendieta works at in an exhibit called “You’ve Got to Know the Rules to Break Them,” opening December 1 in Miami, in conjunction with the Art Basel Miami Beach fair. And that’s at least the third show to feature significant portions of Mendieta’s work in just the last two years.
This one will look at Mendieta as a symbol of American art—and its rule-breaking—during her peak. “When we found out about her work, she didn’t have an estate,” recalled Ms. de la Cruz, a fellow Cuban. “We were really wanting her work, because…it’s all about the healing nature of Mother Earth, the healing power of the female body.” But she not only liked Mendieta’s art and thought it was important, she was sure that interest in it would soon grow.
“I knew her work was going to be important historically,” Ms. de la Cruz said. “I think Mendieta has influenced a lot of artists,” the hugely influential collector noted, pointing to Tracey Emin and Rachel Harrison. Yet “very seldom do you see her work.”
Mendieta, an émigré from Cuba who had endured a difficult childhood—her father was reportedly jailed by Fidel Castro for treason—used her own body as a major component of her artwork. Her films and photos often used her sometimes naked form as subject and many had deep, earthy, bold colors and natural but stark shapes and elements. She used sticks and blood and dirt and plants—her work has the feeling of a pagan ritual. It is somehow both haunting and life-affirming. And it appears to resonate with more and more collectors, as hard to collect as it is. In many ways, the work was ahead of its time.
‘My art is grounded in the belief of one universal energy which runs through everything.’—Ana Mendieta
“There are very few women,” at a certain level in the art world, said Richard Move, a curator who made the 2009 film BloodWork: The Ana Mendieta Story. “There’s no [female] Damien Hirst. It’s even worse for ethnic women. And it hasn’t really changed at all.”
“My art is grounded in the belief of one universal energy which runs through everything: from insect to man, from man to spectre, from spectre to plant from plant to galaxy,” Mendieta wrote, according to the Feminist Art Archive at the University of Washington.
To many in the couple’s social circle, her death was not just a terrible mishap, but a symbol of the fate of so much feminist work and feminist women: marginalized and misplaced. “Mendieta became emblematic of the male-dominated art world,” Mr. Move told the Observer.
On September 9, in a tony gallery off Madison Avenue, the floor sculptures of Carl Andre were arranged around work of many of his legendary contemporaries, such as John Chamberlain, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Brice Marden, Robert Ryman and Frank Stella for a posh opening showcasing his work alongside other legendary American artists.
Although he was out of the spotlight for a spell following his trial, Mr. Andre, who turned 80 earlier this fall, has held, even cemented, his space as one of the most important American sculptors ever in the intervening years. Known for his elegant geometric tile works and for pioneering the Minimalism movement in sculpture, his work is in the permanent collections many of the world’s major museums, sells for millions at auction, appears unfailingly in all major art history texts, and his face is well-known.
Untitled (Body Tracks) (1974) by Ana Mendieta. (Photo: Courtesy De La Cruz)
More surprising has been Mendieta’s ascent. As identity politics and feminism have become more prevalent themes in art, and as word of her powerful story has spread, her renown has grown, albeit in fits and starts.
Of a 2004 exhibition, The New York Times’ critic Holland Cotter wrote: she “comes through as the alert, ambitious artist she was, one who absorbed and acted on a wide range of ideas: aesthetic, ethnic, sexual, religious, political. Her best images, like one in which her nude body seems to be growing flowers, are of death and transfiguration, and they have the heartbreaking writ-on-water sting of fine poems.”
In 2013, the Hayward Gallery in London gave Mendieta her first career retrospective. This September, eerily the same week as Mr. Andre’s show opened in New York, her gallery, Galerie Lelong, held a remembrance ceremony on the 30th anniversary of Mendieta’s death. There, Mary Sabbatino, a curator who helped put together the event with Mendieta’s niece Raquel Cecilia, talked about the wave of interest.
It is “remarkable…no one could have known” how interest in her would continue to spike for the next 30 years, Ms. Sabbatino said. But Mendieta’s sister, Raquelin Mendieta, always prepared as though it would. She kept everything that belonged to her sister from the couple’s apartment at the time of her death, Ms. Sabbatino said. This impulse proved useful, as her fame grew.
“She took every stitch” from Mendieta’s apartment, Ms. Sabbatino told the Observer, even old American Express bills. “She always knew Ana would be famous. She carried [her things] for so many years before anyone was interested.”
‘I knew her work was going to be important historically,’ said leading collector Rosa de la Cruz, who, with 24 Mendietas, has the largest trove.
In fact, many films Mendieta made had never been seen, because separate films were stored on the same reels and they had been in storage. Now they are being shown, and Mendieta’s filmmaking has been revealed as an under-explored facet of the artist’s oeuvre. Ms. Cecilia, the artist’s niece, herself a filmmaker who was close to her aunt, recently had all 104 Mendieta films transferred to digital, which allowed her to help develop the exhibition “Covered in Time and History: The Films of Ana Mendieta.” The show opened this year at the Katherine E. Nash Gallery in Minneapolis and runs through December.
“We didn’t know she had created this huge body of work,” Ms. Cecilia said. “It’s a gift,” she said, of working on the project. “I get to be with her.”
The film trove is set to travel to Fort Lauderdale and Berkeley, Calif., and Galerie Lelong plans another show of Mendieta’s most experimental films opening Feb. 6, 2016. Those can now be contextualized alongside avant-garde filmmakers like Stan Brakhage who used similar methods, such as scarring and treating the physical film.
But even as her stock as an artist crescendos, many are still asking questions about Mendieta’s death.
The tragedy was as divisive as it was shocking.
In the days following his third wife’s death, Mr. Andre had the art world establishment rally for him. Supporters included the de Menils, the oil industrialist family behind the Minimalist-friendly Dia Foundation, and fellow artist Frank Stella, who offered to make hundreds of thousands of dollars available for Mr. Andre’s bail. The artist’s supporters resembled his work: staunch, composed and flawless. Ms. Mendieta’s supporters, on the other hand—whose ranks have grown over the last 30 years—were messier, much like her work. They included prominent performer like Carolee Schneemann (the standard-bearer for feminist artists, essentially).
Sure that her sister would eventually become famous, Raquelin Mendieta saved everything,
from clothing to credit card bills.
The specifics of the case have been reiterated many times over the years, though with no eye-witnesses save perhaps Mr. Andre, many details remain unclear. He said his wife—who stood about five feet tall and was petrified of heights, according to Ms. Schneemann, a close friend—had “gone out the window.”Mr. Andrehad scratch marks on his body and his story as told to the police and to emergency dispatch reportedly conflicted (although this is not uncommon in the case of violent deaths). According to a tape of his September 1985 call to 911, as reported by The New York Times. “We had a quarrel about the fact that I was more, eh, exposed to the public than she was. And she went to the bedroom, and I went after her, and she went out the window.”
The sculptor’s defense attorney, Jack Hoffinger, reached at his home, said, “The case against Carl Andre was more than weak; it just didn’t exist. It was a case that was played up in the press and became somewhat of a feminist issue.” (The prosecutor was Elizabeth Lederer, now a lecturer at Columbia University, who did not return emails seeking comment and could not be reached through the University or the District Attorney’s office.)
The unusual trial was adjudicated only by a judge, not a jury, at the request of Mr. Andre’s lawyer, which is his client’s right. “I wanted to avoid dealing with a jury of women that might possibly be swayed by the so-called feminist issue,” Mr. Hoffinger said.
Untitled (1985) by Ana Mendieta. (Photo: Courtesy De La Cruz)
Alcohol and the role it may have played became an important question in the trial, according to contemporary reports. Mendieta had always had a temper. Her marriage was thought to be stormy, and both she and Mr. Andre were known to drink heavily and often, said Judd Tully, an editor at Art+Auction magazine and prominent art world chronicler, who covered the Andre trial.
But while Mendieta may have been emotional and impulsive, the idea that she had killed herself was anathema for many of her friends and associates. Indeed, if anything, she had reason to be hopeful at the time of her death. A winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship, her work had also just showed up on the art world radar. “Her star was rising,” when she died, Mr. Tully said.
The matter dragged on and the 1988 acquittal split the art world. Ted Victoria, an artist and close friend of Mendieta, told the Guardian simply, “The notion that she would jump out the window in her underwear—no.”
“She was volatile,” Ms. Schneemann told the Observer. “That would have been extremely disruptive and demanding [to Mr. Andre],” Ms. Schneemann said, who remains suspicious. Mr. Andre’s previous dealer, Angela Westwater, however, later told The New Yorker she was sure the event was simply a tragic accident. (Paula Cooper, Mr. Andre’s dealer now, declined to comment for this story, as did the sculptor.)
The Guerrilla Girls, an anonymous art collective of women who wear gorilla masks when they appear in public, were some of the more vocal critics of Mr. Andre and the peer group that defended him (and, often, bought, sold and supported his work).
“While powerful white people in the art world defended Andre, we bet that, to a one, they considered O.J. [Simpson] guilty,” the Guerilla Girls told the Observer via email. While the group notes it has never accused either man of murder, they believe both to be domestic abusers. “Some of our early members knew Ana. We were all stunned by her violent death. We witnessed how the art world closed around Andre to shield him.”
‘We had a quarrel about the fact that I was more, eh, exposed to the public than she was,’ Carl Andre said immediately after his wife’s fall, according to the 1985 tape of his 911 call. ‘And she went to the bedroom, and I went after her, and she went out the window.’
Mr. Andre kept a low profile in the months, even years, following the trial, reportedly spending time in Europe, where he sold a significant amount of work.
“It was my understanding at the time that Carl Andre put out a command that no one should come out to the trial and see him in that position,” said Mr. Tully. “He sort of made himself scarce after this for many years.”
Butterfly, (1975). (Photo: Estate of Ana Mendiera Collection LLC Courtesy Gallery Lelong New York)
When he did return to the art world, he easily took back his mantle, though his past was never fully behind him. In 1992, his work was featured at the Solomon R. Guggenheim’s museum’s downtown satellite. But protesters carrying signs asking, “Where is Ana Mendieta?” confronted visitors. And last year, the Dia Art Foundation gave him a massive show, entitled “Carl Andre: Sculpture as Place”; protests, including a “cry-in” for Mendieta, were held outside.
Christen Clifford, a feminist artist and the head of the protest performance group We Wish Ana Mendieta Were Still Alive, who helped arrange the cry-in, said: “I love her work so much and it has been so important to me. I’m someone who was raped and I looked to her as a way of understanding my place in the world. When I saw Andre has a piece on the cover of Artforum I was like, ‘what the fuck?’…And I saw that the show was happening at Dia and I was just really, really mad. I got people from my feminist performance group to do a public action.”
Twenty years on, Ms. Cecilia says remembrances for her aunt no longer have a mourning quality, but have transformed into “celebrations.” And she said she doesn’t have an opinion either way when people protest Mr. Andre’s shows. “It’s their choice.”
Said Ms. de la cruz, of one of her favorite artists, on the eve of the exhibition: “Unfortunately, Ana Mendieta died very young. She was only 36. Her sustained influence continues on art students and artists today.”
Meanwhile, the exhibit at Mnuchin Gallery, “Carl Andre in his Time,” premiered to rave reviews. The show is up till December 5.
Pity the poor art dealer.
