0:07

Pushkin. This

0:18

show contains adult language and occasional

0:20

descriptions of violence. Please keep

0:22

that in mind when choosing when and where

0:25

to listen. It's

0:28

May nineteen seventy three,

0:31

Iowa City. There's

0:33

a damp chill in the air. We

0:35

are on a sort of shabby block in

0:38

front of a brick apartment building with a white

0:40

door in need of a paint job, and a

0:42

storefront window with its blinds

0:45

drawn shut. The

0:47

sidewalk just in front of the door is

0:50

covered in blood, and

0:52

it looks like the blood might be seeping

0:55

out from under the door jam.

0:58

It's a busy week day, and as pedestrians

1:01

pass the puddle of blood, they notice

1:03

it and casually step around it. Eventually,

1:06

a man in a green and black plaid jacket

1:09

pauses and looks around as

1:11

if looking for an explanation. When

1:14

none comes, he walks away.

1:17

Then a well dressed white woman uses

1:19

her umbrella to poke at the bloody puddle,

1:22

but after a moment or two of inspection,

1:24

she also walks away. Finally,

1:28

an older gentleman emerges from

1:30

a nearby store front and silently

1:32

cleans up the mess, and the evidence

1:35

of whatever happened is suddenly gone.

1:38

And with it disappears any account

1:40

of whose blood was spilled and how.

1:46

The whole scene is being captured

1:49

by two young women in their twenties, sisters,

1:52

who sit in an old car parked near

1:54

by. One of them holds

1:56

a super eight camera, the kind you'd

1:59

make home movies with back them. The

2:01

other snaps photos with a

2:03

thirty five millimeter camera. They

2:06

are Anna and Reclean Mendieta,

2:09

Cuban refugees who landed in

2:11

this unlikely place as children

2:18

in nineteen seventy three. Anna was a first

2:20

year MFA student at the University

2:22

of Iowa. She was funny,

2:25

loud, outrageous, and had to take

2:27

no prisoners vibe, and in

2:29

the way of sisters, she had roped Reclean

2:32

into helping her make a new piece, and

2:34

like many works Anna made, it would

2:37

come to seem tragically prophetic in

2:39

the wake of her death. She

2:43

basically staged what looked

2:45

like the remnants of,

2:48

you know, physical violence with what looked

2:50

like blood in the doorway of a building,

2:53

and I thought it was extremely powerful

2:55

for a very young artist to be doing that, and

2:58

to be doing it in a small, largely

3:01

white town of Iowa City was

3:03

fascinating to me. That's

3:06

Connie Butler, one of the many curators

3:08

who would come to admire and study Ana

3:10

Mendietta's work in the decades that followed.

3:13

The photos in film the Mendietta Sisters

3:15

took that day would ultimately become

3:18

a work of art called Moffett

3:20

Building Piece. The fact

3:22

that it still exists only in these little thirty

3:24

five millimeter slides, which you

3:26

know, you have to get very close to with a loop,

3:29

and it's a very intimate

3:32

way of viewing these things. You know, that

3:35

implicates you as a viewer too, almost as

3:37

if you are yourself looking at a crime scene.

3:40

Anna's interest in blood wasn't only meant

3:42

to shock. She was keenly aware

3:44

of violence and injustice. When

3:47

she made the Moffitt Building Piece, she was

3:49

investigating her own community's reaction

3:51

to a brutal crime, a rape

3:54

and murder that had happened on campus a

3:56

few months before. Here's how

3:58

she explained her inspiration. A

4:01

young woman was killed, raped and

4:03

killed at Iowa in one of the dorms,

4:06

and it just really freaked me out. So

4:08

I did sort of rape performances type things

4:11

at that time, using my own body.

4:14

I did something I believe in and

4:17

that I felt I had to do. That's

4:19

not actually Anna Mendietta's voice

4:21

you're hearing. That was Tanya Brigera,

4:24

another artist from Cuba who you'll

4:26

hear from more later. Anna

4:33

Mendietta's question was could

4:35

you make art about something so awful?

4:38

And she used blood, not paint. Blood

4:41

is the most essential substance of life.

4:43

Could it jolt people out of their daily routines?

4:46

Could blood make people pay attention?

4:50

She didn't know it yet, but the Moffett

4:52

Building piece was about to be her first major

4:55

artwork, and in a circular

4:57

way, that's kind of terrifying. The

5:00

question she asked about how

5:02

we react when we encounter the

5:04

residue of violence. This

5:06

question would haunt all of us after

5:09

she died. I'm

5:13

your host, Helen Molesworth and

5:15

from Pushkin Industries, Something Else

5:18

and Sony Music Entertainment. This

5:20

is Death of an Artist,

5:24

Episode one. The Haunting

5:34

Boom. For

5:38

my entire professional life, I've been

5:40

a member of something called the art world,

5:42

an exclusive network of artists,

5:45

gallery dealers, curators, collectors,

5:47

and philanthropists for

5:50

two decades. I was lucky enough to be a

5:52

museum curator, making me one

5:54

of a small group of cultural insiders

5:56

who determine what art we see and

5:59

how we talk about it. In

6:01

the museum world and in art history,

6:03

there are a lot of unspoken rules

6:05

about what you can say publicly and what

6:08

is supposed to stay private. It

6:10

turns out I wasn't that good

6:12

at sticking to the script, and

6:15

I guess I'm still not good at it, because

6:17

I'm going to tell you Anna Mendietta's whole

6:19

story, all the way to

6:22

its shocking and troubling

6:24

end, and

6:27

much to my surprise, I discovered

6:30

it's a story many of my colleagues

6:32

in the art world would prefer I didn't

6:34

tell at

6:39

first, blush. It seemed like

6:41

people didn't want me to talk about it because of

6:43

who else is part of that story. On

6:45

his husband, the famous sculptor

6:48

Carl Andre. He is

6:50

one of the so called fathers of minimalism,

6:53

a cultural hero to many a

6:55

revered artists with lots

6:57

of connections, and he was a

6:59

suspect in Anna's death. Even

7:05

though Carl Andrea and Anna Mendietta

7:07

were a highly visible art world couple,

7:10

even though something terrible happened between

7:12

them the night she died. You will not

7:14

read about it on a museum wall label,

7:17

or in most art history textbooks reviews

7:20

of their exhibitions tend to take care of

7:22

it. In a sentence or two, you

7:24

would not know that Mendietta's

7:26

death divided the art world in nineteen

7:28

eighty five, and in many

7:30

ways still does. I'm

7:37

not the first person to try and tell this story.

7:40

In fact, many of the voices you'll hear

7:43

in this show are from interviews conducted

7:45

by investigative journalist Robert

7:47

Katz. He published a

7:49

book in nineteen ninety that remains the most

7:52

comprehensive look into this art

7:54

world tragedy. He spoke

7:56

with dozens of Anna and Carl's friends

7:58

in noisy restaurants, in parks, in

8:00

busy offices, and you'll

8:02

hear the voices of some art world insiders

8:05

on these tapes who have since decided

8:08

not to talk. Most

8:10

folks don't want to discuss what happened that night.

8:12

They don't want to talk about what the ramifications

8:15

of that night were on the art world. They

8:18

don't want to contemplate what it means

8:20

when a community is torn apart by

8:22

violence, and they don't want to discuss

8:25

whether or not justice has been served.

8:28

All these different folks not talking

8:30

for all of their different reasons means

8:33

that a veil of silence started to fall

8:35

over this project. And

8:38

I can't lie. The more silence

8:40

we encountered, the more sad

8:42

and frustrated I became, And

8:45

the more silence we encountered, the

8:47

more I wanted to talk. Both

9:03

Anna Mendietta and Carl Andre were

9:05

incredible artists. This could

9:08

have been a story about a romance between

9:10

two fascinating people, but

9:12

their story ends in a nine one one call.

9:17

Those who loved Anna Mendietta loved

9:19

her fiercely. Anna

9:21

was extremely good company,

9:24

super interesting, super funny,

9:27

super lively. She was

9:29

always making plans, making schemes,

9:32

getting you involved in something. She

9:34

decided that the only way

9:36

to get by in realme was to learn how to curse

9:39

when you drove, and she would like keep

9:41

her window. She told me, the left window

9:43

down all the time so she could put her

9:45

arm out and flare the finger and curse

9:47

the people and they could hear her. Anna

9:50

was a contradictory. You know, she was a vegetarian,

9:52

but she loved to order stake

9:54

tartar. She was funny,

9:56

she was engaging, She was very vital.

9:59

She was a kind of person you don't forget,

10:02

like a lot of people who are unforgettable. Even

10:05

though everybody remembered her, not everyone

10:08

liked her. Her pensiant

10:10

for pushing boundaries and not giving the

10:12

fuck what anyone else thought, both

10:14

compelled and sometimes irritated

10:17

people. She was very magnetic.

10:20

That's be Ruby Rich, a prominent

10:22

film scholar and a good friend of Anna's.

10:25

But she was also, as you

10:27

may have heard, very

10:29

very argumentative, and so

10:32

often people would end up in a fight with

10:34

her. But I found her very entertaining

10:36

even then. Anna's art

10:38

school classmates remembered her early

10:40

days of art making is very experimental,

10:43

sometimes a little gross, sometimes

10:46

kind of fun. Anna would

10:48

sneak into the copy center and xerox

10:50

her breasts and her labia. She'd

10:53

get buckets of blood from the butcher

10:55

and carry them into the woods, where

10:57

she'd strip down, hide parts

10:59

of her body under leaves, and

11:01

then she'd have her friends blatter blood around

11:04

her and take photos.

11:07

She got one of her friends to trim his beard,

11:09

and then she glued the hair to her own face.

11:19

In the nineteen seventies, art was starting

11:21

to get radical, and Anna was

11:23

at the forefront. The

11:28

world was changing. The women's movement

11:30

the anti war movement were in full

11:33

effect, and those movements

11:35

inspired artists to engage more directly

11:38

with current events and the public. Many

11:41

artists wanted their art to be outside the confines

11:44

of a museum or a gallery, so

11:46

they staged performances in public

11:48

spaces and started using non

11:50

art materials borrowed from everyday

11:53

life. Back

11:55

then, Manhattan was the undisputed

11:57

center of the art world. It was where

11:59

the action was. Like most

12:01

young, ambitious artists of the time, after

12:04

finishing her degree in Iowa, Anna

12:06

made her way to New York. There

12:09

she found a vibrant downtown scene

12:11

dominated by radical artists

12:14

challenging the status quo of art. One

12:17

of the most important players at the time

12:20

was the already famous sculptor Carl

12:22

Andre. This

12:26

question is that art? That's always

12:28

the American and felistine question. How

12:30

can you call that art? And

12:33

it's easy to call things arts, very easy,

12:36

But the question is is it good or bad

12:39

or useless? And that question

12:41

is not generally As notorious

12:45

for his genre busting work, Andre

12:47

looked exactly how an artist was supposed

12:49

to look. He was a stocky white

12:51

man who sported a bohemian beard

12:54

and more uniform of workers overalls.

12:57

He was a fixture in the boozy Soho

12:59

arts scene. He had a reputation

13:01

for his intellect, his drinking, and

13:04

his sharply worded opinions, and

13:06

he helped to invent a movement, so

13:09

much so that he is typically referred to

13:11

as a founding father of minimalism.

13:14

Andre played a central role in defining

13:16

the visual vocabulary of minimalism

13:19

and essentially redefine the very nature

13:21

of sculpture itself. Minimalism

13:26

completely dominated the art scene

13:28

of the late nineteen sixties and seventies.

13:31

Loosely speaking, it's a type of sculpture

13:33

known for its rigorous abstraction and

13:35

simplicity. Think cubes,

13:38

rectangles, basic geometric forms,

13:41

all of which were made using industrial

13:43

materials like steel, plywood, and

13:46

fluorescent tubes. The vibe

13:48

was cool, intellectual, and severe.

13:51

These minimalist guys, and they

13:53

were predominantly guys, didn't

13:55

think art was about emotions

13:58

or pretty pictures. For

14:00

them, art was a philosophical arena,

14:03

a place to challenge outmoded ideas

14:05

and develop new ones. Today

14:08

we might call this disruption. Back

14:10

then, it was called the avant garde.

14:15

Andrea's major contribution was to

14:17

remove sculpture from its pedicial and

14:19

to examine its relation to the floor.

14:22

There would be no more monuments, no heroic

14:25

reaching for the sky, no guys

14:27

on horseback. Instead,

14:30

Andrea would make sculpture as close

14:32

to the floor as he could, get, so

14:34

close that you could even walk on them.

14:37

Similar to Mendietta's use of blood,

14:40

Andrea was playing with a huge taboo

14:42

in the art world. He broke

14:44

the fundamental rule of don't

14:47

touch, and in doing so,

14:49

paved the way for a new kind of art,

14:52

and like Mendietta, he inspired

14:55

strong reactions. Not everyone

14:57

was a fan of either him or his

15:00

work. I'm not sure where they are

15:02

is in it? They just look like tiles.

15:04

I found him insufferable. He

15:07

always dressed up in his little worker's

15:09

costume to show a badge of being

15:11

a working class artist, his overalls,

15:14

which was faintly ridiculous by

15:16

then, as he lived in this luxury

15:18

building with a doorman. I

15:20

had had little dealings with Andre, except

15:22

to be insulted by imperiodically. Yeah,

15:25

the nicest personality in the world. House. He's always

15:28

extremely competitive with that

15:32

last voice is Carl LeWitt, wife

15:34

of the equally famous conceptual artist

15:37

Saul LeWitt, who Carl was friends with for

15:39

decades. If you can't quite hear

15:41

what she was saying, she noted how

15:43

competitive Carl could be with Saul.

15:47

Controversy came early to Carl Andre.

15:50

He used everyday building materials

15:52

such as bricks and metal plates, which

15:55

he typically just placed on the floor.

15:58

Because Andrea's work was not carved,

16:00

bolted, or welded, and

16:03

was always just simply arranged

16:05

or placed, it inspired

16:07

as much derision in the popular

16:10

press as it did admiration in

16:12

the art world when

16:16

London's most important contemporary art

16:19

museum bought a piece All

16:21

Held Broke Loose. In the nineteen

16:23

seventies, the Tate acquired

16:25

a piece by Carl Andrea called Equivalent

16:27

eight low lying piece

16:30

on the ground of fire bricks that are

16:33

arranged in a grid. That's

16:35

art historian Julie Bryan Wilson, a

16:37

professor who teaches her UC Berkeley

16:39

students about both Carl Andrea and

16:42

an Amendetta. It became a

16:44

kind of press scandal how

16:46

much the sculpture was purchased for and

16:49

how you know it was one of these like my kid

16:51

could do it kind of arguments. When

16:54

an interviewer asked Carl Andrea about

16:56

it later, he seemed amused by the controversy.

17:00

Publicity is as good as good publicity. It's

17:02

not whether it's nice. I

17:04

mean, if they say it's nice and that's all, that's

17:06

no good. If they go on for hours

17:08

and hours saying how terrible it is, that's

17:10

good. It's one thing to have bravado

17:13

about the bad press for your artwork. But

17:16

this wouldn't be Andrea's worst brush

17:18

with the tabloids. But we'll

17:20

get to that later. For

17:24

the moment, we're still squarely in the nineteen

17:26

seventies, a high flying time

17:28

for avant garde artists who made

17:30

up a tight knit community that revolved around

17:33

a handful of bars, restaurants,

17:35

and galleries. Most artists

17:37

were still relatively poor, taking

17:40

day jobs to make ends meet, making

17:42

art in the after hours, and when she

17:44

first arrived in New York, Anna was

17:47

one of those artists. But

17:49

a handful of artists became wildly

17:52

successful from the sale of their work, and

17:54

Carl was one of those artists.

17:57

It was in this heady mixture of ideas

17:59

and art and Booze that Carl

18:01

and Anna would meet in a packed gallery

18:04

in November nineteen seventy nine.

18:09

But this is no romcom. It's a tragedy,

18:12

and it involves two impressive,

18:15

complex, flawed humans, two

18:18

artistic powerhouses who changed

18:20

how we think about art. Anna

18:23

and Carl's fateful meeting would entangle

18:25

their lives and reputations forever.

18:29

They would become symbolic of so much

18:31

more that was larger than just them

18:33

as people. They came to represent

18:35

insider versus outsider, male

18:37

versus female, white versus Latin

18:40

X, cool and intellectual

18:42

versus bodily and emotional In

18:45

a way, it's almost too overdetermined.

18:48

But none of this symbolism changes

18:51

the fact that Anna was trying to elbow

18:53

her way to a seat at the table that

18:55

had already been set for Carl. When

18:58

Anna arrived in New York, she quickly

19:00

fell in with a small coterie of other

19:03

women artists trying to make their way in

19:05

an incredibly white and male dominated

19:07

art world. She joined a feminist

19:10

gallery called Ai R, and after

19:12

about a year and a half in Manhattan, Anna

19:14

was ready for her first solo exhibition.

19:19

She came out of the gate strong with a compelling

19:21

body of work she called Silhouetta, the

19:24

Spanish word for silhouette. The

19:26

show was made up of a suite of photographs

19:29

hung plainly on the wall, no fancy

19:31

frames, nothing to distract from the image.

19:34

The Silhouetta series had occupied Anna

19:36

for years. Some of the photographs

19:39

show her lying naked on the earth, covered

19:41

with leaves, flowers, or grass.

19:44

Others depict the outline of a human body

19:46

pressed into the ground. Still

19:49

others show a mild indentation, a

19:51

shallow space where a body once lay.

19:54

The press release for the show described her project

19:57

as quote an ongoing dialog

19:59

between the artist in nature. The

20:01

works were part performance art, part

20:04

earth art. In

20:10

order to drama attendance on his friend

20:12

and colleague, the artist Nancy Spiro,

20:15

organized a panel discussion and invited

20:17

the famous Carl Andre to speak. The

20:20

title of the panel discussion was I

20:22

Kid You Not? How has the women's

20:25

art movement affected male art

20:27

attitudes? Such was the

20:29

state of feminism in the New York art

20:31

world circa nineteen seventy nine. But

20:34

the idea worked and the panel drew

20:36

the crowd they were seeking. And

20:38

then during the talk, something

20:41

strange started to happen to honest photographs.

20:44

Nancy Spiro told the journalist Robert

20:46

Katz about it, for pictures

20:49

started popping off the wall. What

20:52

happened was I think that

20:55

maybe the heat of all people in there

20:58

must have been some warping or expand was

21:01

very bizarre and sold during

21:03

receiving rate, they popped off

21:05

the love. That

21:07

was terrible. She was very

21:09

upset about them. This

21:12

old tape from the nineteen eighties is hard

21:14

to hear, but Nancy is saying

21:16

that honest photographs fell off the wall

21:18

in the middle of the event. After

21:21

the panel discussion wrapped up, the almost

21:23

always generous Carl took several people

21:25

out to a Japanese restaurant next door,

21:28

and I think Carl then invited

21:32

Anna. He didn't even know who

21:35

she was. This is very gracious. Nancy

21:38

and Anna stayed behind to make sure

21:40

Anna's photos were back on the wall, and

21:42

when they finally joined the dinner, Carl

21:45

paid Anna a lot of attention. Perhaps

21:48

his left wing politics led him to be

21:50

interested in an exile from Cuba.

21:53

Perhaps he could sense an affinity between

21:55

their art. Both were exploring

21:57

the horizontal quality of the floor, the

22:00

ground, and the earth as a space for sculpture.

22:03

Perhaps it was just your typical heterosexual

22:06

shenanigans, as Anna was

22:08

undeniably charismatic and attractive,

22:11

and Carl had the shine of art world,

22:13

fame and stardom. Anna's

22:16

friend Natalia Delgado thought

22:18

it was a case of opposites attracting.

22:21

He had a call Mark's type of look,

22:23

this long hair and then a big,

22:26

full beard wearing overalls,

22:28

and he was so tall and kind of heavy,

22:31

and Anna, she looked very slight

22:33

compared to him, to look like a bear. Here's

22:36

how Anna's friend, Ella Troiano, a

22:38

Cuban American filmmaker, described

22:40

her. Anna was small,

22:44

thin, very pretty,

22:46

very vivacious. She was

22:48

dark, what somebody would have called

22:50

exotic looking, and she had

22:53

that kind of look that wasn't easily

22:55

classifiable. And thus

22:57

began a tangled, on again,

23:00

off again relationship between an

23:02

older, already legendary and

23:04

twice divorced man and the young,

23:07

up and coming artist. But Natalia

23:09

felt they made sense together. There

23:12

was an intellectual attraction because

23:14

of the interest in art, and that

23:16

was a big part of their relationship. I think

23:18

that she admired him because

23:20

of his accomplishments as an artist,

23:23

so I think that was part of the attraction

23:25

for her, and he also gave

23:27

her advice, and I think

23:30

he did exposure to artists

23:32

that were you know, they would go to Tuscany

23:35

and go to have lunch with a soula wit and

23:37

they would get together at a party

23:39

with Frank Stella. Frank Stella

23:41

was another hugely successful contemporary

23:44

of Carl's. You know, it gave

23:46

her an exposure to people that were

23:49

really Carl's friends and really stayed

23:51

as Carl's friends, but that she probably

23:53

would not admit initially on

23:56

her own. As is

23:58

so often the case for women, Anna

24:00

was frequently described as being

24:02

ambitious in a way that was more accusation

24:05

than accolade. Even some

24:07

of her friends, like the conceptual artist

24:09

Louise Camnetzer, made the subtle

24:12

assumption that she got together with Carl

24:14

for his connections and didn't forgive

24:16

her for entering a

24:18

marriage situation with

24:21

somebody that was, according

24:24

to her, very problematic. And

24:27

I saw it as partially

24:29

a career move, but she definitely

24:32

was ambitious. It wanted to make

24:34

it that

24:38

Carl might have been equally attracted to

24:40

her. Rising star energy did not seem

24:42

to enter the equation for anyone, whatever

24:45

the nuance of the attraction. They became

24:47

an art world couple, taking their

24:49

place in a social circle filled with the big

24:52

names of the Soho art scene at the time.

24:55

They socialized with other couples whose

24:57

names you might know from the walls of Art

24:59

Museum Saul and Carol

25:01

LeWitt, Lawrence and Alice Weener,

25:04

Nancy Spiro and Leon golub By

25:07

all accounts, they were feisty, and

25:09

as was the habit of the time, the booze

25:12

flowed freely at art world openings

25:14

and dinners, fueling the whole scene.

25:17

Anna was known for mixing her wine with

25:19

water, while Carl like champagne

25:21

and good wine, and after

25:24

copious amounts of drinking, things

25:26

could get uncomfortable.

25:30

So on one level we had good discussions,

25:33

but then as they proceeded to get um

25:36

drunker or things, it was

25:38

just a kind of strange neuonic

25:43

between them that you would witness.

25:46

They were very loud, yeah

25:50

yeah, yeah, Carl would be very cutting,

25:52

and then she

25:55

would be more

25:58

or less no

26:00

retaliating the girl's way out

26:03

to the point where I didn't like to

26:06

be with dam you

26:08

know, which is something that I don't didn't

26:10

feel about either of them. Girl

26:13

can be really quite quite nice

26:16

and wonderful, except when he drinks too much,

26:19

he becomes doctor Jacklin.

26:22

He would be a difficult

26:25

to be a ring. Like

26:29

I said, this isn't a rom com.

26:33

Darkness is creeping in. One

26:35

of Anna's friends could feel it coming. I

26:38

didn't know what to do. How

26:41

can you tell someone someone's going to kill you?

26:45

That story? After the break,

27:01

Anna would always take me out to dinner

27:03

for my birthday. That's

27:05

Howard Dina Pindell an artist,

27:07

a co founder of ai R, and

27:10

a former curator at the Museum of Modern

27:12

Art. In nineteen seventy

27:14

nine, she was in a terrible car accident

27:17

that left her with a head injury and

27:19

memory issues, and it also

27:21

left her with a high degree of emotional

27:24

sensitivity. What I found

27:27

was I was somewhat

27:29

sensitive. I don't want to say psychic,

27:31

but I was sensitive from

27:33

the injury. We were at a restaurant

27:35

which no longer exists, just the three of us,

27:37

no one else was there. They both

27:40

drank a lot near the end of the

27:42

meal, and it literally

27:44

just flashed across my mind. Literally,

27:46

he's going to kill her with his hands,

27:49

and I was stunned. And I heard

27:51

that or felt that thought or whatever. I

27:54

didn't know what to do. How

27:57

can you tell someone someone's going to kill you?

28:00

And why trust

28:02

a voice, you know, or a

28:04

thought? So I'm

28:07

assuming that you didn't tell

28:09

Anna that. There's no way I would have told her.

28:12

I mean, you know you don't you

28:15

know you discount I

28:17

mean, how can

28:20

I prove it? Yeah?

28:22

So no, I just felt I couldn't say

28:24

anything. I kind of pushed it into

28:26

the back of my mind. Things

28:30

have started to get a little woo woo. First

28:32

the photos fall off the wall, and then there's

28:35

Anna's friend Howardina carrying around

28:37

this awful, terrible vision that

28:39

Anna's life will end in violence.

28:42

Perhaps Howardina was picking up on the energy

28:45

between Anna and Carl. After

28:47

all, the record shows they had plenty of tension,

28:50

and one of their perennial problems was

28:52

how they compared professionally. One

28:55

of Anna's closest friends, Natalia

28:58

Delgado, remembers going to an

29:00

exhibit of one of the most famous art

29:02

couples of all time, Diego

29:04

Rivera and Frieda Callo. I

29:07

went to the show with Anna and

29:10

she showed me this painting. There's a painting

29:13

by Frieda Callo of Diego and

29:15

herself, and Diego's big,

29:17

and Frieda's next to him, and

29:20

she's quite small by comparison. And

29:23

he said to Anna, this is

29:25

us, this is us. We

29:28

are Diegoon Frieda.

29:30

The Calo painting from nineteen thirty

29:33

one is a classic. In

29:35

it, Frieda paints Diego standing

29:38

ramrod straight, enormous as

29:40

a redwood, his feet the

29:42

scale of hamhocks, planted solidly

29:44

on the ground. His gaze,

29:47

smug and confident, engages

29:49

the viewer directly, and in one

29:51

hand he holds a painter's palette and several

29:54

brushes. It's a consummate

29:56

image of the great artist, the

29:58

grand old mass Her. Frieda,

30:01

on the other hand, is birdlike. Her

30:04

feet are so tiny that she almost looks like a

30:06

doll. Her right hand gently

30:08

touches Diego, while her left hand

30:10

gathers her shawl around her Torso, even

30:13

though she is the artist who painted

30:15

this picture, she offers herself

30:18

as wife, companion, and

30:20

accessory to his main event. What

30:23

did Anna think of that comparison?

30:26

She thought he had a big ego, that he was comparing

30:28

himself to Dior, Riera. That's

30:30

what she said, what an ego? Do

30:33

you think she felt he was rivalrous

30:35

or threatened? Yes, by her rise?

30:38

Oh yes. And I think that

30:40

the whole description of he was

30:42

Diego and she was freed to Callo. In

30:45

a way, they looked very much, you know, he looked like

30:47

Diego is big and hefty and

30:49

she was small and petite. Was

30:52

a way of kind of saying, look, I'm

30:54

more important than you. Diego was

30:56

still more the more prominent artist.

30:58

And I do think that's how he how

31:01

he Carl wanted it to be.

31:05

And I do think that was an issue for

31:07

them. And she would say and she'd say, well, Carl,

31:10

you know, my career is on the rise right

31:12

now. And I think that really really

31:15

rubbed him the wrong way. He found

31:17

that very threatening. It

31:19

was a prescient comparison. In

31:22

the nineteen eighties, Diego was the

31:24

hero and Frieda was still just a footnote

31:27

in art history. Diego,

31:29

like Carl, was known for his Marxist

31:31

politics and his history of thumbing

31:34

his nose at capitalism.

31:36

Carl had been active in the anti

31:38

war movement and adopted the posture

31:40

that the artist was similar to a day

31:42

laborer. Diego

31:45

was the muralist who painted the workers rather

31:47

than the factory owners. Both

31:51

Frieda and Anna in their lifetimes

31:53

were the lesser than partners to their

31:55

male genius companions. What

31:58

neither Frieda nor Anna could have

32:01

known was how the tides would

32:03

change and how they would each become

32:06

the bigger star in their own right.

32:09

But again that's more rushing

32:11

ahead. It's

32:13

late summer nineteen eighty

32:15

five. Carl and Anna had

32:17

gotten married in January. They'd

32:20

been spending most of their time in Europe. Then

32:22

we're just now back in New York getting ready

32:24

to set a house together. Anna

32:27

was going to give up her small apartment in

32:29

Little Italy and move into Carl's

32:31

place. She asked her

32:33

friend Marcia Pelle's to help her with

32:35

the move. She told me,

32:38

and we were going to move her stuff. We're gonna

32:40

go out and have a drink and dinner. So

32:43

you were going to move her books on Sunday

32:45

to Car's aparbum. But then

32:47

she called the album Thursday night.

32:51

She was very upset and she said,

32:53

I can't talk to you now. The

32:55

plans had changed, but I'm

32:58

going to be moving things from Karl's

33:01

to my Carl. Anna

33:04

had changed her plans. Instead

33:07

of moving more of her stuff into Karl's

33:09

apartment, she wanted to move everything

33:12

out of Carl's apartment. They

33:14

had some kind of fight who are the

33:17

last by her? And she

33:19

decided that she was been not

33:21

moving and move with samside. We've

33:26

arrived at the threshold of our terrible

33:28

story. Sunday,

33:32

September eighth, nineteen eighty

33:34

five, a mere nine months

33:36

after their wedding. There's

33:39

a lot we don't know about that evening. Here

33:42

are a few things we know for certain. We

33:45

know that Anna never moved her

33:47

things as she had planned to. We

33:50

know that the unhappy couple spent

33:52

the evening at Carl's place, an

33:55

apartment on the thirty fourth

33:57

floor of a relatively new

33:59

lug Jury high rise in Greenwich Village.

34:03

That night, like New Yorkers everywhere,

34:06

they ordered Chinese food and watched

34:08

TV. Then,

34:12

sometime after five am,

34:14

a passer by on the street below

34:16

heard a woman's scream, no,

34:19

no, no. A

34:21

moment later, there was a sound like an explosion

34:24

on the roof of the deli below Carl's apartment.

34:27

Anna had fallen from above. Carl

34:35

called nine five twenty

34:38

nine am. We

34:40

don't have the tape of that call. After

34:42

the verdict, the whole trial record, including

34:45

the call, was sealed, but

34:47

a reporter who heard it played at trial

34:50

said Carl Andre's voice was distressed

34:53

that he wailed, and thus his explanation

34:56

was interrupted with cries and moans.

35:00

You've asked voice actors to read parts

35:02

of the transcript of the nine one one

35:04

call. Again,

35:12

my wife has committed suicide.

35:15

Carl gives the address his phone

35:17

number and says they're on the thirty fourth

35:19

floor. The operator asks

35:22

what happened exactly? Yeah,

35:25

what happened was we

35:27

had a My wife is an artist

35:29

and I'm an artist, and we had a quarrel

35:32

about the fact that I was more exposed

35:34

to the public than she wasn't She

35:37

went to the bedroom and I went after her, and

35:40

she went out of the window. So she

35:42

jumped out of the window. How long ago did this

35:44

happen? Well, I don't know, I don't know. I don't know,

35:46

I don't know it was I don't

35:48

I don't know. They talked for several more

35:51

seconds. Did it happen recently?

35:53

Did it happen just now? Oh, it happened

35:55

just now. I mean, I can't I can't

35:58

tell you about

36:00

way the building and yeah, I don't

36:02

know it's it. I can, I can, I

36:04

can

36:05

help. In

36:19

September of nineteen eighty five, I

36:22

was a sophomore in college in Albany,

36:24

New York. I had

36:26

already walked on top of one of carl Andre's

36:29

sculptures. They were installed in nearly

36:31

every museum in the country. I'd

36:33

be lying if I didn't tell you how much I love

36:36

them. I was completely turned

36:38

on by their taboo breaking fuck

36:40

you energy. The severity

36:43

of his metal plates lying on the floor

36:45

in a simple checkerboard pattern almost

36:48

struck me as punk in my younger

36:50

Brasher years. I

36:52

didn't learn about Anna Mendietta until

36:55

years after her death, when

36:57

I was well into graduate school, and

36:59

even then I learned about her from a fellow

37:02

student, not through any of my professors.

37:06

I was trained by art historians who

37:08

believe the prime directive was to separate

37:10

the life of the artist from their work. This

37:13

meant no one ever said that Carl Andre

37:15

was married to Anna Mendietta, much

37:17

less that he was accused of murdering her.

37:21

Top that off with the fact that Anna Mendietta

37:24

was a Cuban immigrant showing at

37:26

a feminist gallery, working with

37:28

blood, making work that summoned the

37:30

idea of the Earth goddess. Nothing

37:32

could have been less cool in my philosophically

37:35

inclined education that privileged

37:37

theory over feeling. But

37:42

during the first two decades of the twenty first century,

37:44

the world changed a lot and fast,

37:47

and I think I did too. You

37:49

know, if I had a Sonny looked like Trebon at

37:53

this moment, and where we are

37:55

right now is a resurgence from where

37:57

the civil rights movement left off.

37:59

President Trump is defending a temporary

38:01

travel band for seven Muslim majority countries

38:04

as a monument of Thousands

38:06

of women are using two words on social

38:08

media to identify themselves as

38:10

survivors of sexual harassment and

38:12

assault. Today it's hashtag

38:15

me too. I

38:20

found myself thinking about Anna

38:22

because she did go on to become a free

38:24

to call a like figure, more powerful

38:27

after her death than before, larger

38:29

than life. Revered. Scores

38:32

of artists, mostly women, studied

38:34

her, reenacted her performances,

38:37

paid homage to her with their own work.

38:40

They make pilgrimages to the important

38:42

sites of her life Havana,

38:44

Iowa City, Rome, Greenwich

38:46

Village and over the years,

38:49

I came to love Anna Mendieta's art

38:51

because it felt so urgent, so relevant,

38:54

because politics did start to feel

38:56

personal and identity does matter.

39:00

But could I love Mendieta's work well

39:03

also still being a fan of Carl

39:05

Andres sculptures? Or

39:07

did I have to choose sides? It

39:10

felt like the only way to answer that

39:12

question was by asking another

39:16

what really happened the night

39:18

Anna died? I

39:20

wondered what we might be able to learn

39:23

if we returned to her story. When

39:26

we first started making this podcast,

39:28

I assumed folks would want to talk

39:31

about what happened between Anna and Carl

39:34

Man. Was I wrong? I

39:37

don't want to like badger you. You know

39:39

what I mean? Right right?

39:44

May I ask you what you think

39:46

the harm would be a

39:48

lot of my calls went like that. I

39:52

obviously wish we saw

39:54

eye to eye on this one. Thank you very much. I

39:56

appreciate the time. Okay, bye.

39:59

Silence was starting to feel like a main

40:01

character in this story.

40:05

Perhaps some art world insiders just want

40:07

to protect their own professional relationships

40:09

with Carl Andre or with the art dealers

40:11

he's tight with. But it's not just

40:13

those who are loyal to Carl who remain

40:16

quiet. Many of Anna's

40:18

friends also no longer want to talk.

40:21

Quite a few folks turned us down, citing

40:23

reasons ranging from busy schedules

40:25

to not wanting to revisit the pain, to

40:28

not wanting to discuss Carl and Anna's relationship.

40:31

We also tried to talk to the estate of Annamandietta,

40:34

even though it's well known that they don't participate

40:36

in conversations that include Carl Andre.

40:40

They prefer the focus to be solely on

40:42

Annamandietta's artwork. The

40:44

more I thought about all the different reasons people

40:46

have for not wanting to talk, the

40:48

more I felt that the silence wasn't only

40:51

protecting Carl Andre. There

40:53

were so many other ideas at stake.

40:58

I was in a community at odds with

41:00

itself, unresolved about

41:02

gendered power dynamics, unsure

41:04

of the boundaries between private and public,

41:07

and ultimately divided on whether

41:09

it wanted institutional stability

41:12

or cultural change. As

41:15

frustrating as it was to get turned away

41:17

over and over, honestly, it

41:20

kind of lit a fire in me. The

41:22

more silence we encountered, the

41:24

more I felt like there was something important to say

41:27

about that silence. I

41:29

keep coming back to Anna Mendieta's work.

41:32

The Moffett Building piece was just one

41:34

in a series of pieces she made with blood

41:37

where she invited people to look at the

41:39

blood, to look at the violence. Some

41:42

people say Anna was morbid, that

41:45

maybe she had a death wish, But that's

41:47

not what I see when I look at her work.

41:50

The Moffatt Building piece, really

41:53

all of her work with blood, It's

41:55

not about her, It's about you.

41:57

It's about us. Her

42:00

work is asking us to stop and pay

42:02

attention. It's asking us to

42:04

bear witness, to look, to

42:07

not walk by, to open the

42:09

door. And

42:11

that's what we're going to do. Coming

42:20

up on death of an artist, the story

42:22

of what happened after Carl's

42:24

nine one one call. How could Carl,

42:26

who represented the purity of the desire, how

42:29

could he have done such an act like that?

42:31

He had two different stories, and we confronted

42:34

him on that. Carl's attorney basically

42:36

based his analysis

42:38

of why she might have committed suicide

42:41

on Santia, on voodoo.

42:43

There was a sense of someone this

42:46

tough, this strong, this

42:48

brilliant as Anna could

42:51

be killed, then any of us could

42:53

be killed. Well, sometimes people would scream

42:55

at you on the street. It was quite

42:57

a confrontational things and why it's

42:59

still anger so many artists today.

43:02

I just started tweeting like there

43:04

will be blood.

43:21

Death of an Artist is a co production

43:23

between Pushkin Industries, Something

43:25

Else and Sony Music Entertainment.

43:28

Written and hosted by me Helen Mouldsworth.

43:31

Executive producers are Lizzie Jacobs,

43:33

Tom kinig Blee, Talmulaud, Jacob

43:35

Weissberg and Lucas Werner. Produced

43:38

by Maria Luisa Tucker, editing

43:40

by Lizzie Jacobs. Our managing

43:43

producer is Jacob Smith. Associate

43:45

producers are Poodrou and Eloise

43:47

Linton. Additional production helped

43:49

by Tally Abacassas, Voice

43:52

acting by Nick Brain and David Glover.

43:54

Anna Mendieta's quotes were read by Tanya

43:57

Burgera, engineered by Sam

43:59

Bear, fact checking by Andrea

44:02

Lopez Crusado. Our

44:04

theme song is by Pooge Rue. If

44:15

you love this show, consider subscribing

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to Pushkin Plus to listen early, add

44:20

free and get exclusive bonus content.

44:22

Look for the Pushkin Plus channel on Apple

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Podcasts or at pushkin dot

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Fm. Find more great podcasts

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from Sony Music Entertainment. At sonymusic

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