# Episode 1: The Haunting

An episode of [Death of an Artist](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1628639926), 23 Sep 2022, 45 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdst.fm/e/pdrl.fm/d00ca1/tracking.swap.fm/track/SxlTEPDY7xDg35RXkASs/prefix.up.audio/s/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/824a6bd6-185a-4697-bb57-aea9011fee2f/d61312df-e24e-4880-abf5-af150175587c/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=b90f60e3-e46c-42a4-8675-aea9012011fe

In 1980s Manhattan, a young Cuban artist named Ana Mendieta made a name for herself as a rising star in the art world. Her turbulent marriage to the older and well-established sculptor Carl Andre raised eyebrows. One September night, Carl called 911 in a panic. His wife, he said, “went out the window.” To hear the rest of Season 1 ad-free, sign up for Pushkin+ on the Death of an Artist show page in Apple Podcasts, or at pushkin.fm/plus. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:07] Speaker 1: Pushkin. This show contains adult language and occasional descriptions of violence.
[0:22] Speaker 1: Please keep that in mind when choosing when and where
[0:25] Speaker 1: to listen. It's May nineteen seventy three, Iowa City. There's
[0:33] Speaker 1: a damp chill in the air. We are on a
[0:36] Speaker 1: sort of shabby block in front of a brick apartment
[0:39] Speaker 1: building with a white door in need of a paint job,
[0:42] Speaker 1: and a storefront window with its blinds drawn shut. The
[0:47] Speaker 1: sidewalk just in front of the door is covered in blood,
[0:52] Speaker 1: and it looks like the blood might be seeping out
[0:55] Speaker 1: from under the door jam. It's a busy week day,
[1:00] Speaker 1: and as pedestrians pass the puddle of blood, they notice
[1:03] Speaker 1: it and casually step around it. Eventually, a man in
[1:07] Speaker 1: a green and black plaid jacket pauses and looks around
[1:11] Speaker 1: as if looking for an explanation. When none comes, he
[1:16] Speaker 1: walks away. Then a well dressed white woman uses her
[1:19] Speaker 1: umbrella to poke at the bloody puddle, but after a
[1:23] Speaker 1: moment or two of inspection, she also walks away. Finally,
[1:28] Speaker 1: an older gentleman emerges from a nearby store front and
[1:32] Speaker 1: silently cleans up the mess, and the evidence of whatever
[1:35] Speaker 1: happened is suddenly gone. And with it disappears any account
[1:40] Speaker 1: of whose blood was spilled and how. The whole scene
[1:48] Speaker 1: is being captured by two young women in their twenties, sisters,
[1:52] Speaker 1: who sit in an old car parked near by. One
[1:56] Speaker 1: of them holds a super eight camera, the kind you'd
[1:59] Speaker 1: make home movies with back them. The other snaps photos
[2:03] Speaker 1: with a thirty five millimeter camera. They are Anna and
[2:07] Speaker 1: Reclean Mendieta, Cuban refugees who landed in this unlikely place
[2:12] Speaker 1: as children in nineteen seventy three. Anna was a first
[2:20] Speaker 1: year MFA student at the University of Iowa. She was funny, loud, outrageous,
[2:26] Speaker 1: and had to take no prisoners vibe, and in the
[2:29] Speaker 1: way of sisters, she had roped Reclean into helping her
[2:33] Speaker 1: make a new piece, and like many works Anna made,
[2:36] Speaker 1: it would come to seem tragically prophetic in the wake
[2:39] Speaker 1: of her death. She basically staged what looked like the
[2:46] Speaker 1: remnants of, you know, physical violence with what looked like
[2:51] Speaker 1: blood in the doorway of a building, and I thought
[2:53] Speaker 1: it was extremely powerful for a very young artist to
[2:57] Speaker 1: be doing that, and to be doing it in a small,
[3:01] Speaker 1: largely white town of Iowa City was fascinating to me.
[3:05] Speaker 1: That's Connie Butler, one of the many curators who would
[3:08] Speaker 1: come to admire and study Ana Mendietta's work in the
[3:11] Speaker 1: decades that followed. The photos in film the Mendietta Sisters
[3:15] Speaker 1: took that day would ultimately become a work of art
[3:19] Speaker 1: called Moffett Building Piece. The fact that it still exists
[3:23] Speaker 1: only in these little thirty five millimeter slides, which you know,
[3:26] Speaker 1: you have to get very close to with a loop,
[3:29] Speaker 1: and it's a very intimate way of viewing these things.
[3:34] Speaker 1: You know, that implicates you as a viewer too, almost
[3:36] Speaker 1: as if you are yourself looking at a crime scene.
[3:40] Speaker 1: Anna's interest in blood wasn't only meant to shock. She
[3:43] Speaker 1: was keenly aware of violence and injustice. When she made
[3:47] Speaker 1: the Moffitt Building Piece, she was investigating her own community's
[3:51] Speaker 1: reaction to a brutal crime, a rape and murder that
[3:55] Speaker 1: had happened on campus a few months before. Here's how
[3:58] Speaker 1: she explained her inspiration. A young woman was killed, raped
[4:03] Speaker 1: and killed at Iowa in one of the dorms, and
[4:06] Speaker 1: it just really freaked me out. So I did sort
[4:09] Speaker 1: of rape performances type things at that time, using my
[4:13] Speaker 1: own body. I did something I believe in and that
[4:17] Speaker 1: I felt I had to do. That's not actually Anna
[4:20] Speaker 1: Mendietta's voice you're hearing. That was Tanya Brigera, another artist
[4:25] Speaker 1: from Cuba who you'll hear from more later. Anna Mendietta's
[4:33] Speaker 1: question was could you make art about something so awful?
[4:38] Speaker 1: And she used blood, not paint. Blood is the most
[4:41] Speaker 1: essential substance of life. Could it jolt people out of
[4:45] Speaker 1: their daily routines? Could blood make people pay attention? She
[4:50] Speaker 1: didn't know it yet, but the Moffett Building piece was
[4:53] Speaker 1: about to be her first major artwork, and in a
[4:56] Speaker 1: circular way, that's kind of terrifying. The question she asked
[5:01] Speaker 1: about how we react when we encounter the residue of violence.
[5:06] Speaker 1: This question would haunt all of us after she died.
[5:13] Speaker 1: I'm your host, Helen Molesworth and from Pushkin Industries, Something
[5:17] Speaker 1: Else and Sony Music Entertainment. This is Death of an Artist,
[5:24] Speaker 1: Episode one. The Haunting Boom. For my entire professional life,
[5:39] Speaker 1: I've been a member of something called the art world,
[5:42] Speaker 1: an exclusive network of artists, gallery dealers, curators, collectors, and
[5:48] Speaker 1: philanthropists for two decades. I was lucky enough to be
[5:51] Speaker 1: a museum curator, making me one of a small group
[5:55] Speaker 1: of cultural insiders who determine what art we see and
[5:59] Speaker 1: how we talk about it. In the museum world and
[6:02] Speaker 1: in art history, there are a lot of unspoken rules
[6:05] Speaker 1: about what you can say publicly and what is supposed
[6:08] Speaker 1: to stay private. It turns out I wasn't that good
[6:12] Speaker 1: at sticking to the script, and I guess I'm still
[6:16] Speaker 1: not good at it, because I'm going to tell you
[6:18] Speaker 1: Anna Mendietta's whole story, all the way to its shocking
[6:23] Speaker 1: and troubling end, and much to my surprise, I discovered
[6:30] Speaker 1: it's a story many of my colleagues in the art
[6:32] Speaker 1: world would prefer I didn't tell at first, blush. It
[6:40] Speaker 1: seemed like people didn't want me to talk about it
[6:42] Speaker 1: because of who else is part of that story. On
[6:45] Speaker 1: his husband, the famous sculptor Carl Andre. He is one
[6:50] Speaker 1: of the so called fathers of minimalism, a cultural hero
[6:54] Speaker 1: to many a revered artists with lots of connections, and
[6:59] Speaker 1: he was a suspect in Anna's death. Even though Carl
[7:05] Speaker 1: Andrea and Anna Mendietta were a highly visible art world couple,
[7:10] Speaker 1: even though something terrible happened between them the night she died.
[7:14] Speaker 1: You will not read about it on a museum wall label,
[7:17] Speaker 1: or in most art history textbooks reviews of their exhibitions
[7:21] Speaker 1: tend to take care of it. In a sentence or two,
[7:24] Speaker 1: you would not know that Mendietta's death divided the art
[7:27] Speaker 1: world in nineteen eighty five, and in many ways still does.
[7:37] Speaker 1: I'm not the first person to try and tell this story.
[7:40] Speaker 1: In fact, many of the voices you'll hear in this
[7:43] Speaker 1: show are from interviews conducted by investigative journalist Robert Katz.
[7:49] Speaker 1: He published a book in nineteen ninety that remains the
[7:51] Speaker 1: most comprehensive look into this art world tragedy. He spoke
[7:56] Speaker 1: with dozens of Anna and Carl's friends in noisy restaurants,
[8:00] Speaker 1: in parks, in busy offices, and you'll hear the voices
[8:03] Speaker 1: of some art world insiders on these tapes who have
[8:07] Speaker 1: since decided not to talk. Most folks don't want to
[8:10] Speaker 1: discuss what happened that night. They don't want to talk
[8:13] Speaker 1: about what the ramifications of that night were on the
[8:16] Speaker 1: art world. They don't want to contemplate what it means
[8:20] Speaker 1: when a community is torn apart by violence, and they
[8:24] Speaker 1: don't want to discuss whether or not justice has been served.
[8:28] Speaker 1: All these different folks not talking for all of their
[8:31] Speaker 1: different reasons means that a veil of silence started to
[8:35] Speaker 1: fall over this project. And I can't lie. The more
[8:40] Speaker 1: silence we encountered, the more sad and frustrated I became,
[8:45] Speaker 1: And the more silence we encountered, the more I wanted
[8:48] Speaker 1: to talk. Both Anna Mendietta and Carl Andre were incredible artists.
[9:07] Speaker 1: This could have been a story about a romance between
[9:10] Speaker 1: two fascinating people, but their story ends in a nine
[9:14] Speaker 1: one one call. Those who loved Anna Mendietta loved her fiercely.
[9:21] Speaker 1: Anna was extremely good company, super interesting, super funny, super lively.
[9:29] Speaker 1: She was always making plans, making schemes, getting you involved
[9:33] Speaker 1: in something. She decided that the only way to get
[9:36] Speaker 1: by in realme was to learn how to curse when
[9:39] Speaker 1: you drove, and she would like keep her window. She
[9:41] Speaker 1: told me, the left window down all the time so
[9:44] Speaker 1: she could put her arm out and flare the finger
[9:47] Speaker 1: and curse the people and they could hear her. Anna
[9:50] Speaker 1: was a contradictory. You know, she was a vegetarian, but
[9:52] Speaker 1: she loved to order stake tartar. She was funny, she
[9:57] Speaker 1: was engaging, She was very vital. She was a kind
[10:00] Speaker 1: of person you don't forget, like a lot of people
[10:03] Speaker 1: who are unforgettable. Even though everybody remembered her, not everyone
[10:08] Speaker 1: liked her. Her pensiant for pushing boundaries and not giving
[10:12] Speaker 1: the fuck what anyone else thought, both compelled and sometimes
[10:16] Speaker 1: irritated people. She was very magnetic. That's be Ruby Rich,
[10:21] Speaker 1: a prominent film scholar and a good friend of Anna's.
[10:25] Speaker 1: But she was also, as you may have heard, very
[10:29] Speaker 1: very argumentative, and so often people would end up in
[10:33] Speaker 1: a fight with her. But I found her very entertaining
[10:36] Speaker 1: even then. Anna's art school classmates remembered her early days
[10:40] Speaker 1: of art making is very experimental, sometimes a little gross,
[10:45] Speaker 1: sometimes kind of fun. Anna would sneak into the copy
[10:49] Speaker 1: center and xerox her breasts and her labia. She'd get
[10:53] Speaker 1: buckets of blood from the butcher and carry them into
[10:56] Speaker 1: the woods, where she'd strip down, hide parts of her
[10:59] Speaker 1: body under leaves, and then she'd have her friends blatter
[11:03] Speaker 1: blood around her and take photos. She got one of
[11:07] Speaker 1: her friends to trim his beard, and then she glued
[11:10] Speaker 1: the hair to her own face. In the nineteen seventies,
[11:20] Speaker 1: art was starting to get radical, and Anna was at
[11:24] Speaker 1: the forefront. The world was changing. The women's movement the
[11:31] Speaker 1: anti war movement were in full effect, and those movements
[11:35] Speaker 1: inspired artists to engage more directly with current events and
[11:39] Speaker 1: the public. Many artists wanted their art to be outside
[11:43] Speaker 1: the confines of a museum or a gallery, so they
[11:46] Speaker 1: staged performances in public spaces and started using non art
[11:51] Speaker 1: materials borrowed from everyday life. Back then, Manhattan was the
[11:56] Speaker 1: undisputed center of the art world. It was where the
[11:59] Speaker 1: action was. Like most young, ambitious artists of the time,
[12:04] Speaker 1: after finishing her degree in Iowa, Anna made her way
[12:07] Speaker 1: to New York. There she found a vibrant downtown scene
[12:11] Speaker 1: dominated by radical artists challenging the status quo of art.
[12:17] Speaker 1: One of the most important players at the time was
[12:20] Speaker 1: the already famous sculptor Carl Andre. This question is that art?
[12:27] Speaker 1: That's always the American and felistine question. How can you
[12:31] Speaker 1: call that art? And it's easy to call things arts,
[12:35] Speaker 1: very easy, But the question is is it good or
[12:38] Speaker 1: bad or useless? And that question is not generally As
[12:44] Speaker 1: notorious for his genre busting work, Andre looked exactly how
[12:48] Speaker 1: an artist was supposed to look. He was a stocky
[12:51] Speaker 1: white man who sported a bohemian beard and more uniform
[12:55] Speaker 1: of workers overalls. He was a fixture in the boozy
[12:59] Speaker 1: Soho arts scene. He had a reputation for his intellect,
[13:03] Speaker 1: his drinking, and his sharply worded opinions, and he helped
[13:07] Speaker 1: to invent a movement, so much so that he is
[13:10] Speaker 1: typically referred to as a founding father of minimalism. Andre
[13:14] Speaker 1: played a central role in defining the visual vocabulary of
[13:18] Speaker 1: minimalism and essentially redefine the very nature of sculpture itself.
[13:25] Speaker 1: Minimalism completely dominated the art scene of the late nineteen
[13:29] Speaker 1: sixties and seventies. Loosely speaking, it's a type of sculpture
[13:33] Speaker 1: known for its rigorous abstraction and simplicity. Think cubes, rectangles,
[13:39] Speaker 1: basic geometric forms, all of which were made using industrial
[13:43] Speaker 1: materials like steel, plywood, and fluorescent tubes. The vibe was cool, intellectual,
[13:50] Speaker 1: and severe. These minimalist guys, and they were predominantly guys,
[13:55] Speaker 1: didn't think art was about emotions or pretty pictures. For them,
[14:00] Speaker 1: art was a philosophical arena, a place to challenge outmoded
[14:05] Speaker 1: ideas and develop new ones. Today we might call this disruption.
[14:10] Speaker 1: Back then, it was called the avant garde. Andrea's major
[14:16] Speaker 1: contribution was to remove sculpture from its pedicial and to
[14:20] Speaker 1: examine its relation to the floor. There would be no
[14:23] Speaker 1: more monuments, no heroic reaching for the sky, no guys
[14:27] Speaker 1: on horseback. Instead, Andrea would make sculpture as close to
[14:32] Speaker 1: the floor as he could, get, so close that you
[14:35] Speaker 1: could even walk on them. Similar to Mendietta's use of blood,
[14:40] Speaker 1: Andrea was playing with a huge taboo in the art world.
[14:44] Speaker 1: He broke the fundamental rule of don't touch, and in
[14:48] Speaker 1: doing so, paved the way for a new kind of art,
[14:52] Speaker 1: and like Mendietta, he inspired strong reactions. Not everyone was
[14:57] Speaker 1: a fan of either him or his work. I'm not
[15:01] Speaker 1: sure where they are is in it? They just look
[15:03] Speaker 1: like tiles. I found him insufferable. He always dressed up
[15:08] Speaker 1: in his little worker's costume to show a badge of
[15:11] Speaker 1: being a working class artist, his overalls, which was faintly
[15:15] Speaker 1: ridiculous by then, as he lived in this luxury building
[15:19] Speaker 1: with a doorman. I had had little dealings with Andre,
[15:22] Speaker 1: except to be insulted by imperiodically. Yeah, the nicest personality
[15:26] Speaker 1: in the world. House. He's always extremely competitive with that
[15:32] Speaker 1: last voice is Carl LeWitt, wife of the equally famous
[15:36] Speaker 1: conceptual artist Saul LeWitt, who Carl was friends with for decades.
[15:40] Speaker 1: If you can't quite hear what she was saying, she
[15:43] Speaker 1: noted how competitive Carl could be with Saul. Controversy came
[15:48] Speaker 1: early to Carl Andre. He used everyday building materials such
[15:53] Speaker 1: as bricks and metal plates, which he typically just placed
[15:56] Speaker 1: on the floor. Because Andrea's work was not carved, bolted,
[16:01] Speaker 1: or welded, and was always just simply arranged or placed,
[16:06] Speaker 1: it inspired as much derision in the popular press as
[16:10] Speaker 1: it did admiration in the art world when London's most
[16:17] Speaker 1: important contemporary art museum bought a piece All Held Broke Loose.
[16:22] Speaker 1: In the nineteen seventies, the Tate acquired a piece by
[16:26] Speaker 1: Carl Andrea called Equivalent eight low lying piece on the
[16:30] Speaker 1: ground of fire bricks that are arranged in a grid.
[16:34] Speaker 1: That's art historian Julie Bryan Wilson, a professor who teaches
[16:38] Speaker 1: her UC Berkeley students about both Carl Andrea and an Amendetta.
[16:43] Speaker 1: It became a kind of press scandal how much the
[16:47] Speaker 1: sculpture was purchased for and how you know it was
[16:50] Speaker 1: one of these like my kid could do it kind
[16:52] Speaker 1: of arguments. When an interviewer asked Carl Andrea about it later,
[16:57] Speaker 1: he seemed amused by the controversy. Publicity is as good
[17:01] Speaker 1: as good publicity. It's not whether it's nice. I mean,
[17:04] Speaker 1: if they say it's nice and that's all, that's no good.
[17:07] Speaker 1: If they go on for hours and hours saying how
[17:09] Speaker 1: terrible it is, that's good. It's one thing to have
[17:12] Speaker 1: bravado about the bad press for your artwork. But this
[17:16] Speaker 1: wouldn't be Andrea's worst brush with the tabloids. But we'll
[17:20] Speaker 1: get to that later. For the moment, we're still squarely
[17:25] Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies, a high flying time for avant
[17:29] Speaker 1: garde artists who made up a tight knit community that
[17:32] Speaker 1: revolved around a handful of bars, restaurants, and galleries. Most
[17:37] Speaker 1: artists were still relatively poor, taking day jobs to make
[17:41] Speaker 1: ends meet, making art in the after hours, and when
[17:44] Speaker 1: she first arrived in New York, Anna was one of
[17:47] Speaker 1: those artists. But a handful of artists became wildly successful
[17:52] Speaker 1: from the sale of their work, and Carl was one
[17:55] Speaker 1: of those artists. It was in this heady mixture of
[17:59] Speaker 1: ideas and art and Booze that Carl and Anna would
[18:02] Speaker 1: meet in a packed gallery in November nineteen seventy nine.
[18:09] Speaker 1: But this is no romcom. It's a tragedy, and it
[18:13] Speaker 1: involves two impressive, complex, flawed humans, two artistic powerhouses who
[18:20] Speaker 1: changed how we think about art. Anna and Carl's fateful
[18:24] Speaker 1: meeting would entangle their lives and reputations forever. They would
[18:29] Speaker 1: become symbolic of so much more that was larger than
[18:32] Speaker 1: just them as people. They came to represent insider versus outsider,
[18:37] Speaker 1: male versus female, white versus Latin X, cool and intellectual
[18:42] Speaker 1: versus bodily and emotional In a way, it's almost too overdetermined.
[18:48] Speaker 1: But none of this symbolism changes the fact that Anna
[18:52] Speaker 1: was trying to elbow her way to a seat at
[18:54] Speaker 1: the table that had already been set for Carl. When
[18:58] Speaker 1: Anna arrived in New York, she quickly fell in with
[19:01] Speaker 1: a small coterie of other women artists trying to make
[19:04] Speaker 1: their way in an incredibly white and male dominated art world.
[19:09] Speaker 1: She joined a feminist gallery called Ai R, and after
[19:12] Speaker 1: about a year and a half in Manhattan, Anna was
[19:15] Speaker 1: ready for her first solo exhibition. She came out of
[19:20] Speaker 1: the gate strong with a compelling body of work she
[19:22] Speaker 1: called Silhouetta, the Spanish word for silhouette. The show was
[19:27] Speaker 1: made up of a suite of photographs hung plainly on
[19:29] Speaker 1: the wall, no fancy frames, nothing to distract from the image.
[19:34] Speaker 1: The Silhouetta series had occupied Anna for years. Some of
[19:38] Speaker 1: the photographs show her lying naked on the earth, covered
[19:41] Speaker 1: with leaves, flowers, or grass. Others depict the outline of
[19:46] Speaker 1: a human body pressed into the ground. Still others show
[19:49] Speaker 1: a mild indentation, a shallow space where a body once lay.
[19:54] Speaker 1: The press release for the show described her project as
[19:57] Speaker 1: quote an ongoing dialog between the artist in nature. The
[20:01] Speaker 1: works were part performance art, part earth art. In order
[20:10] Speaker 1: to drama attendance on his friend and colleague, the artist
[20:14] Speaker 1: Nancy Spiro, organized a panel discussion and invited the famous
[20:18] Speaker 1: Carl Andre to speak. The title of the panel discussion
[20:21] Speaker 1: was I Kid You Not? How has the women's art
[20:25] Speaker 1: movement affected male art attitudes? Such was the state of
[20:29] Speaker 1: feminism in the New York art world circa nineteen seventy nine.
[20:34] Speaker 1: But the idea worked and the panel drew the crowd
[20:37] Speaker 1: they were seeking. And then during the talk, something strange
[20:41] Speaker 1: started to happen to honest photographs. Nancy Spiro told the
[20:45] Speaker 1: journalist Robert Katz about it, for pictures started popping off
[20:50] Speaker 1: the wall. What happened was I think that maybe the
[20:55] Speaker 1: heat of all people in there must have been some
[20:59] Speaker 1: warping or expand was very bizarre and sold during receiving rate,
[21:04] Speaker 1: they popped off the love. That was terrible. She was
[21:09] Speaker 1: very upset about them. This old tape from the nineteen
[21:13] Speaker 1: eighties is hard to hear, but Nancy is saying that
[21:16] Speaker 1: honest photographs fell off the wall in the middle of
[21:19] Speaker 1: the event. After the panel discussion wrapped up, the almost
[21:23] Speaker 1: always generous Carl took several people out to a Japanese
[21:26] Speaker 1: restaurant next door, and I think Carl then invited Anna.
[21:33] Speaker 1: He didn't even know who she was. This is very gracious.
[21:38] Speaker 1: Nancy and Anna stayed behind to make sure Anna's photos
[21:41] Speaker 1: were back on the wall, and when they finally joined
[21:43] Speaker 1: the dinner, Carl paid Anna a lot of attention. Perhaps
[21:48] Speaker 1: his left wing politics led him to be interested in
[21:51] Speaker 1: an exile from Cuba. Perhaps he could sense an affinity
[21:55] Speaker 1: between their art. Both were exploring the horizontal quality of
[21:59] Speaker 1: the floor, the ground, and the earth as a space
[22:02] Speaker 1: for sculpture. Perhaps it was just your typical heterosexual shenanigans,
[22:07] Speaker 1: as Anna was undeniably charismatic and attractive, and Carl had
[22:12] Speaker 1: the shine of art world, fame and stardom. Anna's friend
[22:17] Speaker 1: Natalia Delgado thought it was a case of opposites attracting.
[22:21] Speaker 1: He had a call Mark's type of look, this long
[22:24] Speaker 1: hair and then a big, full beard wearing overalls, and
[22:28] Speaker 1: he was so tall and kind of heavy, and Anna,
[22:32] Speaker 1: she looked very slight compared to him, to look like
[22:35] Speaker 1: a bear. Here's how Anna's friend, Ella Troiano, a Cuban
[22:38] Speaker 1: American filmmaker, described her. Anna was small, thin, very pretty,
[22:46] Speaker 1: very vivacious. She was dark, what somebody would have called
[22:50] Speaker 1: exotic looking, and she had that kind of look that
[22:54] Speaker 1: wasn't easily classifiable. And thus began a tangled, on again,
[23:00] Speaker 1: off again relationship between an older, already legendary and twice
[23:05] Speaker 1: divorced man and the young, up and coming artist. But
[23:09] Speaker 1: Natalia felt they made sense together. There was an intellectual
[23:12] Speaker 1: attraction because of the interest in art, and that was
[23:16] Speaker 1: a big part of their relationship. I think that she
[23:19] Speaker 1: admired him because of his accomplishments as an artist, so
[23:23] Speaker 1: I think that was part of the attraction for her,
[23:26] Speaker 1: and he also gave her advice, and I think he
[23:30] Speaker 1: did exposure to artists that were you know, they would
[23:34] Speaker 1: go to Tuscany and go to have lunch with a
[23:36] Speaker 1: soula wit and they would get together at a party
[23:39] Speaker 1: with Frank Stella. Frank Stella was another hugely successful contemporary
[23:44] Speaker 1: of Carl's. You know, it gave her an exposure to
[23:48] Speaker 1: people that were really Carl's friends and really stayed as
[23:51] Speaker 1: Carl's friends, but that she probably would not admit initially
[23:55] Speaker 1: on her own. As is so often the case for women,
[24:00] Speaker 1: Anna was frequently described as being ambitious in a way
[24:04] Speaker 1: that was more accusation than accolade. Even some of her friends,
[24:08] Speaker 1: like the conceptual artist Louise Camnetzer, made the subtle assumption
[24:12] Speaker 1: that she got together with Carl for his connections and
[24:15] Speaker 1: didn't forgive her for entering a marriage situation with somebody
[24:22] Speaker 1: that was, according to her, very problematic. And I saw
[24:27] Speaker 1: it as partially a career move, but she definitely was ambitious.
[24:32] Speaker 1: It wanted to make it that Carl might have been
[24:39] Speaker 1: equally attracted to her. Rising star energy did not seem
[24:42] Speaker 1: to enter the equation for anyone, whatever the nuance of
[24:46] Speaker 1: the attraction. They became an art world couple, taking their
[24:49] Speaker 1: place in a social circle filled with the big names
[24:52] Speaker 1: of the Soho art scene at the time. They socialized
[24:56] Speaker 1: with other couples whose names you might know from the
[24:58] Speaker 1: walls of Art Museum Saul and Carol LeWitt, Lawrence and
[25:03] Speaker 1: Alice Weener, Nancy Spiro and Leon golub By all accounts,
[25:08] Speaker 1: they were feisty, and as was the habit of the time,
[25:11] Speaker 1: the booze flowed freely at art world openings and dinners,
[25:15] Speaker 1: fueling the whole scene. Anna was known for mixing her
[25:18] Speaker 1: wine with water, while Carl like champagne and good wine,
[25:23] Speaker 1: and after copious amounts of drinking, things could get uncomfortable.
[25:30] Speaker 1: So on one level we had good discussions, but then
[25:33] Speaker 1: as they proceeded to get um drunker or things, it
[25:38] Speaker 1: was just a kind of strange neuonic between them that
[25:44] Speaker 1: you would witness. They were very loud, yeah yeah, yeah,
[25:50] Speaker 1: Carl would be very cutting, and then she would be
[25:58] Speaker 1: more or less no retaliating the girl's way out to
[26:04] Speaker 1: the point where I didn't like to be with dam
[26:08] Speaker 1: you know, which is something that I don't didn't feel
[26:10] Speaker 1: about either of them. Girl can be really quite quite
[26:15] Speaker 1: nice and wonderful, except when he drinks too much, he
[26:19] Speaker 1: becomes doctor Jacklin. He would be a difficult to be
[26:25] Speaker 1: a ring. Like I said, this isn't a rom com.
[26:33] Speaker 1: Darkness is creeping in. One of Anna's friends could feel
[26:37] Speaker 1: it coming. I didn't know what to do. How can
[26:41] Speaker 1: you tell someone someone's going to kill you? That story?
[26:46] Speaker 1: After the break, Anna would always take me out to
[27:03] Speaker 1: dinner for my birthday. That's Howard Dina Pindell an artist,
[27:07] Speaker 1: a co founder of ai R, and a former curator
[27:11] Speaker 1: at the Museum of Modern Art. In nineteen seventy nine,
[27:15] Speaker 1: she was in a terrible car accident that left her
[27:17] Speaker 1: with a head injury and memory issues, and it also
[27:21] Speaker 1: left her with a high degree of emotional sensitivity. What
[27:26] Speaker 1: I found was I was somewhat sensitive. I don't want
[27:30] Speaker 1: to say psychic, but I was sensitive from the injury.
[27:34] Speaker 1: We were at a restaurant which no longer exists, just
[27:36] Speaker 1: the three of us, no one else was there. They
[27:39] Speaker 1: both drank a lot near the end of the meal,
[27:43] Speaker 1: and it literally just flashed across my mind. Literally, he's
[27:46] Speaker 1: going to kill her with his hands, and I was stunned.
[27:51] Speaker 1: And I heard that or felt that thought or whatever.
[27:54] Speaker 1: I didn't know what to do. How can you tell
[27:58] Speaker 1: someone someone's going to kill you? And why trust a voice,
[28:03] Speaker 1: you know, or a thought? So I'm assuming that you
[28:08] Speaker 1: didn't tell Anna that. There's no way I would have
[28:11] Speaker 1: told her. I mean, you know you don't you know
[28:15] Speaker 1: you discount I mean, how can I prove it? Yeah?
[28:22] Speaker 1: So no, I just felt I couldn't say anything. I
[28:25] Speaker 1: kind of pushed it into the back of my mind.
[28:29] Speaker 1: Things have started to get a little woo woo. First
[28:32] Speaker 1: the photos fall off the wall, and then there's Anna's
[28:35] Speaker 1: friend Howardina carrying around this awful, terrible vision that Anna's
[28:40] Speaker 1: life will end in violence. Perhaps Howardina was picking up
[28:44] Speaker 1: on the energy between Anna and Carl. After all, the
[28:48] Speaker 1: record shows they had plenty of tension, and one of
[28:51] Speaker 1: their perennial problems was how they compared professionally. One of
[28:55] Speaker 1: Anna's closest friends, Natalia Delgado, remembers going to an exhibit
[29:00] Speaker 1: of one of the most famous art couples of all time,
[29:03] Speaker 1: Diego Rivera and Frieda Callo. I went to the show
[29:08] Speaker 1: with Anna and she showed me this painting. There's a
[29:12] Speaker 1: painting by Frieda Callo of Diego and herself, and Diego's big,
[29:17] Speaker 1: and Frieda's next to him, and she's quite small by comparison.
[29:22] Speaker 1: And he said to Anna, this is us, this is us.
[29:28] Speaker 1: We are Diegoon Frieda. The Calo painting from nineteen thirty
[29:33] Speaker 1: one is a classic. In it, Frieda paints Diego standing
[29:38] Speaker 1: ramrod straight, enormous as a redwood, his feet the scale
[29:42] Speaker 1: of hamhocks, planted solidly on the ground. His gaze, smug
[29:47] Speaker 1: and confident, engages the viewer directly, and in one hand
[29:51] Speaker 1: he holds a painter's palette and several brushes. It's a
[29:55] Speaker 1: consummate image of the great artist, the grand old mass Her. Frieda,
[30:01] Speaker 1: on the other hand, is birdlike. Her feet are so
[30:05] Speaker 1: tiny that she almost looks like a doll. Her right
[30:07] Speaker 1: hand gently touches Diego, while her left hand gathers her
[30:11] Speaker 1: shawl around her Torso, even though she is the artist
[30:15] Speaker 1: who painted this picture, she offers herself as wife, companion,
[30:20] Speaker 1: and accessory to his main event. What did Anna think
[30:24] Speaker 1: of that comparison? She thought he had a big ego,
[30:27] Speaker 1: that he was comparing himself to Dior, Riera. That's what
[30:31] Speaker 1: she said, what an ego? Do you think she felt
[30:34] Speaker 1: he was rivalrous or threatened? Yes, by her rise? Oh yes.
[30:39] Speaker 1: And I think that the whole description of he was
[30:42] Speaker 1: Diego and she was freed to Callo. In a way,
[30:45] Speaker 1: they looked very much, you know, he looked like Diego
[30:47] Speaker 1: is big and hefty and she was small and petite.
[30:52] Speaker 1: Was a way of kind of saying, look, I'm more
[30:54] Speaker 1: important than you. Diego was still more the more prominent artist.
[30:58] Speaker 1: And I do think that's how he how he Carl
[31:02] Speaker 1: wanted it to be. And I do think that was
[31:06] Speaker 1: an issue for them. And she would say and she'd say, well, Carl,
[31:10] Speaker 1: you know, my career is on the rise right now.
[31:12] Speaker 1: And I think that really really rubbed him the wrong way.
[31:17] Speaker 1: He found that very threatening. It was a prescient comparison.
[31:22] Speaker 1: In the nineteen eighties, Diego was the hero and Frieda
[31:25] Speaker 1: was still just a footnote in art history. Diego, like Carl,
[31:30] Speaker 1: was known for his Marxist politics and his history of
[31:33] Speaker 1: thumbing his nose at capitalism. Carl had been active in
[31:37] Speaker 1: the anti war movement and adopted the posture that the
[31:41] Speaker 1: artist was similar to a day laborer. Diego was the
[31:45] Speaker 1: muralist who painted the workers rather than the factory owners.
[31:50] Speaker 1: Both Frieda and Anna in their lifetimes were the lesser
[31:54] Speaker 1: than partners to their male genius companions. What neither Frieda
[31:59] Speaker 1: nor Anna could have known was how the tides would
[32:03] Speaker 1: change and how they would each become the bigger star
[32:07] Speaker 1: in their own right. But again that's more rushing ahead.
[32:13] Speaker 1: It's late summer nineteen eighty five. Carl and Anna had
[32:17] Speaker 1: gotten married in January. They'd been spending most of their
[32:21] Speaker 1: time in Europe. Then we're just now back in New
[32:23] Speaker 1: York getting ready to set a house together. Anna was
[32:27] Speaker 1: going to give up her small apartment in Little Italy
[32:30] Speaker 1: and move into Carl's place. She asked her friend Marcia
[32:34] Speaker 1: Pelle's to help her with the move. She told me,
[32:38] Speaker 1: and we were going to move her stuff. We're gonna
[32:40] Speaker 1: go out and have a drink and dinner. So you
[32:43] Speaker 1: were going to move her books on Sunday to Car's aparbum.
[32:47] Speaker 1: But then she called the album Thursday night. She was
[32:51] Speaker 1: very upset and she said, I can't talk to you now.
[32:55] Speaker 1: The plans had changed, but I'm going to be moving
[32:59] Speaker 1: things from Karl's to my Carl. Anna had changed her plans.
[33:06] Speaker 1: Instead of moving more of her stuff into Karl's apartment,
[33:10] Speaker 1: she wanted to move everything out of Carl's apartment. They
[33:14] Speaker 1: had some kind of fight who are the last by her?
[33:18] Speaker 1: And she decided that she was been not moving and
[33:22] Speaker 1: move with samside. We've arrived at the threshold of our
[33:28] Speaker 1: terrible story. Sunday, September eighth, nineteen eighty five, a mere
[33:36] Speaker 1: nine months after their wedding. There's a lot we don't
[33:39] Speaker 1: know about that evening. Here are a few things we
[33:43] Speaker 1: know for certain. We know that Anna never moved her
[33:47] Speaker 1: things as she had planned to. We know that the
[33:51] Speaker 1: unhappy couple spent the evening at Carl's place, an apartment
[33:56] Speaker 1: on the thirty fourth floor of a relatively new lug
[34:00] Speaker 1: Jury high rise in Greenwich Village. That night, like New
[34:05] Speaker 1: Yorkers everywhere, they ordered Chinese food and watched TV. Then,
[34:12] Speaker 1: sometime after five am, a passer by on the street
[34:16] Speaker 1: below heard a woman's scream, no, no, no. A moment later,
[34:22] Speaker 1: there was a sound like an explosion on the roof
[34:25] Speaker 1: of the deli below Carl's apartment. Anna had fallen from above.
[34:35] Speaker 1: Carl called nine five twenty nine am. We don't have
[34:40] Speaker 1: the tape of that call. After the verdict, the whole
[34:43] Speaker 1: trial record, including the call, was sealed, but a reporter
[34:48] Speaker 1: who heard it played at trial said Carl Andre's voice
[34:52] Speaker 1: was distressed that he wailed, and thus his explanation was
[34:56] Speaker 1: interrupted with cries and moans. You've asked voice actors to
[35:01] Speaker 1: read parts of the transcript of the nine one one call. Again,
[35:12] Speaker 1: my wife has committed suicide. Carl gives the address his
[35:17] Speaker 1: phone number and says they're on the thirty fourth floor.
[35:20] Speaker 1: The operator asks what happened exactly? Yeah, what happened was
[35:26] Speaker 1: we had a My wife is an artist and I'm
[35:30] Speaker 1: an artist, and we had a quarrel about the fact
[35:33] Speaker 1: that I was more exposed to the public than she
[35:36] Speaker 1: wasn't She went to the bedroom and I went after her,
[35:39] Speaker 1: and she went out of the window. So she jumped
[35:43] Speaker 1: out of the window. How long ago did this happen? Well,
[35:45] Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know. I don't know, I
[35:47] Speaker 1: don't know it was I don't I don't know. They
[35:50] Speaker 1: talked for several more seconds. Did it happen recently? Did
[35:53] Speaker 1: it happen just now? Oh, it happened just now. I mean,
[35:56] Speaker 1: I can't I can't tell you about way the building
[36:01] Speaker 1: and yeah, I don't know it's it. I can, I can,
[36:04] Speaker 1: I can help. In September of nineteen eighty five, I
[36:22] Speaker 1: was a sophomore in college in Albany, New York. I
[36:26] Speaker 1: had already walked on top of one of carl Andre's sculptures.
[36:30] Speaker 1: They were installed in nearly every museum in the country.
[36:33] Speaker 1: I'd be lying if I didn't tell you how much
[36:35] Speaker 1: I love them. I was completely turned on by their
[36:39] Speaker 1: taboo breaking fuck you energy. The severity of his metal
[36:43] Speaker 1: plates lying on the floor in a simple checkerboard pattern
[36:47] Speaker 1: almost struck me as punk in my younger Brasher years.
[36:52] Speaker 1: I didn't learn about Anna Mendietta until years after her death,
[36:56] Speaker 1: when I was well into graduate school, and even then
[37:00] Speaker 1: I learned about her from a fellow student, not through
[37:03] Speaker 1: any of my professors. I was trained by art historians
[37:07] Speaker 1: who believe the prime directive was to separate the life
[37:10] Speaker 1: of the artist from their work. This meant no one
[37:13] Speaker 1: ever said that Carl Andre was married to Anna Mendietta,
[37:17] Speaker 1: much less that he was accused of murdering her. Top
[37:21] Speaker 1: that off with the fact that Anna Mendietta was a
[37:24] Speaker 1: Cuban immigrant showing at a feminist gallery, working with blood,
[37:29] Speaker 1: making work that summoned the idea of the Earth goddess.
[37:32] Speaker 1: Nothing could have been less cool in my philosophically inclined
[37:35] Speaker 1: education that privileged theory over feeling. But during the first
[37:42] Speaker 1: two decades of the twenty first century, the world changed
[37:45] Speaker 1: a lot and fast, and I think I did too.
[37:49] Speaker 1: You know, if I had a Sonny looked like Trebon
[37:52] Speaker 1: at this moment, and where we are right now is
[37:56] Speaker 1: a resurgence from where the civil rights movement left off.
[37:59] Speaker 1: President Trump is defending a temporary travel band for seven
[38:02] Speaker 1: Muslim majority countries as a monument of Thousands of women
[38:06] Speaker 1: are using two words on social media to identify themselves
[38:10] Speaker 1: as survivors of sexual harassment and assault. Today it's hashtag
[38:15] Speaker 1: me too. I found myself thinking about Anna because she
[38:23] Speaker 1: did go on to become a free to call a
[38:25] Speaker 1: like figure, more powerful after her death than before, larger
[38:29] Speaker 1: than life. Revered. Scores of artists, mostly women, studied her,
[38:35] Speaker 1: reenacted her performances, paid homage to her with their own work.
[38:40] Speaker 1: They make pilgrimages to the important sites of her life Havana,
[38:44] Speaker 1: Iowa City, Rome, Greenwich Village and over the years, I
[38:49] Speaker 1: came to love Anna Mendieta's art because it felt so urgent,
[38:53] Speaker 1: so relevant, because politics did start to feel personal and
[38:57] Speaker 1: identity does matter. But could I love Mendieta's work well
[39:03] Speaker 1: also still being a fan of Carl Andres sculptures? Or
[39:07] Speaker 1: did I have to choose sides? It felt like the
[39:11] Speaker 1: only way to answer that question was by asking another
[39:16] Speaker 1: what really happened the night Anna died? I wondered what
[39:21] Speaker 1: we might be able to learn if we returned to
[39:24] Speaker 1: her story. When we first started making this podcast, I
[39:29] Speaker 1: assumed folks would want to talk about what happened between
[39:32] Speaker 1: Anna and Carl Man. Was I wrong? I don't want
[39:38] Speaker 1: to like badger you. You know what I mean? Right right?
[39:44] Speaker 1: May I ask you what you think the harm would
[39:47] Speaker 1: be a lot of my calls went like that. I
[39:52] Speaker 1: obviously wish we saw eye to eye on this one.
[39:55] Speaker 1: Thank you very much. I appreciate the time. Okay, bye.
[39:59] Speaker 1: Silence was starting to feel like a main character in
[40:02] Speaker 1: this story. Perhaps some art world insiders just want to
[40:07] Speaker 1: protect their own professional relationships with Carl Andre or with
[40:11] Speaker 1: the art dealers he's tight with. But it's not just
[40:13] Speaker 1: those who are loyal to Carl who remain quiet. Many
[40:17] Speaker 1: of Anna's friends also no longer want to talk. Quite
[40:21] Speaker 1: a few folks turned us down, citing reasons ranging from
[40:24] Speaker 1: busy schedules to not wanting to revisit the pain, to
[40:28] Speaker 1: not wanting to discuss Carl and Anna's relationship. We also
[40:31] Speaker 1: tried to talk to the estate of Annamandietta, even though
[40:34] Speaker 1: it's well known that they don't participate in conversations that
[40:38] Speaker 1: include Carl Andre. They prefer the focus to be solely
[40:42] Speaker 1: on Annamandietta's artwork. The more I thought about all the
[40:45] Speaker 1: different reasons people have for not wanting to talk, the
[40:48] Speaker 1: more I felt that the silence wasn't only protecting Carl Andre.
[40:53] Speaker 1: There were so many other ideas at stake. I was
[40:58] Speaker 1: in a community at odds with itself, unresolved about gendered
[41:02] Speaker 1: power dynamics, unsure of the boundaries between private and public,
[41:07] Speaker 1: and ultimately divided on whether it wanted institutional stability or
[41:12] Speaker 1: cultural change. As frustrating as it was to get turned
[41:17] Speaker 1: away over and over, honestly, it kind of lit a
[41:20] Speaker 1: fire in me. The more silence we encountered, the more
[41:24] Speaker 1: I felt like there was something important to say about
[41:27] Speaker 1: that silence. I keep coming back to Anna Mendieta's work.
[41:32] Speaker 1: The Moffett Building piece was just one in a series
[41:35] Speaker 1: of pieces she made with blood where she invited people
[41:38] Speaker 1: to look at the blood, to look at the violence.
[41:42] Speaker 1: Some people say Anna was morbid, that maybe she had
[41:45] Speaker 1: a death wish, But that's not what I see when
[41:48] Speaker 1: I look at her work. The Moffatt Building piece, really
[41:53] Speaker 1: all of her work with blood, It's not about her,
[41:56] Speaker 1: It's about you. It's about us. Her work is asking
[42:01] Speaker 1: us to stop and pay attention. It's asking us to
[42:04] Speaker 1: bear witness, to look, to not walk by, to open
[42:09] Speaker 1: the door. And that's what we're going to do. Coming
[42:20] Speaker 1: up on death of an artist, the story of what
[42:22] Speaker 1: happened after Carl's nine one one call. How could Carl,
[42:26] Speaker 1: who represented the purity of the desire, how could he
[42:29] Speaker 1: have done such an act like that? He had two
[42:32] Speaker 1: different stories, and we confronted him on that. Carl's attorney
[42:35] Speaker 1: basically based his analysis of why she might have committed
[42:40] Speaker 1: suicide on Santia, on voodoo. There was a sense of
[42:44] Speaker 1: someone this tough, this strong, this brilliant as Anna could
[42:51] Speaker 1: be killed, then any of us could be killed. Well,
[42:54] Speaker 1: sometimes people would scream at you on the street. It
[42:57] Speaker 1: was quite a confrontational things and why it's still anger
[43:00] Speaker 1: so many artists today. I just started tweeting like there
[43:04] Speaker 1: will be blood. Death of an Artist is a co
[43:22] Speaker 1: production between Pushkin Industries, Something Else and Sony Music Entertainment.
[43:28] Speaker 1: Written and hosted by me Helen Mouldsworth. Executive producers are
[43:32] Speaker 1: Lizzie Jacobs, Tom kinig Blee, Talmulaud, Jacob Weissberg and Lucas Werner.
[43:37] Speaker 1: Produced by Maria Luisa Tucker, editing by Lizzie Jacobs. Our
[43:42] Speaker 1: managing producer is Jacob Smith. Associate producers are Poodrou and
[43:47] Speaker 1: Eloise Linton. Additional production helped by Tally Abacassas, Voice acting
[43:52] Speaker 1: by Nick Brain and David Glover. Anna Mendieta's quotes were
[43:56] Speaker 1: read by Tanya Burgera, engineered by Sam Bear, fact checking
[44:01] Speaker 1: by Andrea Lopez Crusado. Our theme song is by Pooge Rue.
[44:15] Speaker 1: If you love this show, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus
[44:19] Speaker 1: to listen early, add free and get exclusive bonus content.
[44:22] Speaker 1: Look for the Pushkin Plus channel on Apple Podcasts or
[44:25] Speaker 1: at pushkin dot Fm. Find more great podcasts from Sony
[44:30] Speaker 1: Music Entertainment. At sonymusic dot com. Backslash podcasts,

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