Speaker 1: Pushkin. This show contains adult language and occasional descriptions of violence.
Speaker 1: Please keep that in mind when choosing when and where
Speaker 1: to listen. Previously on Death of an Artist, she's making
Speaker 1: photocopies and she wanted to use that for her divorce
Speaker 1: on grounds of infidelity. I find that my roots are Cuban.
Speaker 1: The branches might be American, but the trunk of the
Speaker 1: tree is Cuban or the roots. You know, she was
Speaker 1: not a santea. She was not dressed in white. There
Speaker 1: is a very big difference between a practitioner of santea
Speaker 1: and somebody who studies or uses it as a way
Speaker 1: of working with culture. I want to take you back
Speaker 1: to nineteen eighties Manhattan. In those days, you could actually
Speaker 1: smoke in the hallways of the courtroom, and many a
Speaker 1: jury weight took place in the hallways with people smoking
Speaker 1: cigarettes and playing cards and things like that. It was gritty.
Speaker 1: That's Ron Koubi, a long time New York City defense lawyer.
Speaker 1: He's going to be our tour guide through the legal
Speaker 1: dynamics of Carl's trial. The city had suffered a recession.
Speaker 1: Crime was rampim. There had been a spate of high
Speaker 1: profile horrors. I remember taking the subway to school and
Speaker 1: reading the ominous headlines in the post or the daily news.
Speaker 1: Fear was in the air, and much of it played
Speaker 1: on white people's deep seated racism that equated crime with
Speaker 1: people of color. The judges were almost exclusively white, the
Speaker 1: defendants were almost exclusively people of color. And the almost
Speaker 1: there is important because, oh, from nineteen eighty five through
Speaker 1: eighty eight eighty nine, there was a plethora of defendants
Speaker 1: in cases that I'll just call white boys behaving badly.
Speaker 1: There was the Robert Chambers case. That's the so called
Speaker 1: preppy murder case. Chambers claimed his friend Jennifer Levin accidentally
Speaker 1: died during rough sex. This trial was actually happening just
Speaker 1: down the hall from Carl Andre's trial and was getting
Speaker 1: all the media attention. Paul Castellano, who was rubbed out
Speaker 1: at the steakhouse in plain View on the street again
Speaker 1: being a crime family mafio so killed in a hit
Speaker 1: ordered by John Gotti. There was Bernard gets, the white
Speaker 1: man who shot four young African American teenagers on the
Speaker 1: subway in a highly dubious act of vigilante justice, and
Speaker 1: of course less well known but still significant in the
Speaker 1: art world, there was Carl Andre This was the backdrop
Speaker 1: of Carl's trial, a swirl of high profile cases of
Speaker 1: white men accused of murder. The new Assistant DA on
Speaker 1: the case was Elizabeth Letterer, and by nineteen eighty eight
Speaker 1: she was ready to go to trial. Several of Anna's
Speaker 1: friends rallied and joined Anna's family in the courthouse to
Speaker 1: witness the proceedings. One of the people who attended almost
Speaker 1: every day was b Ruby Rich. She remembers a stark scene.
Speaker 1: There's an aisle down the middle, and one side is
Speaker 1: reserved for the defendants friends and family, and the other
Speaker 1: sides reserved for the victim's friends and family. It's exactly
Speaker 1: a bad wedding where one side of the family disapproves
Speaker 1: of the marriage, as I think they did in fact
Speaker 1: disapprove of the marriage. On his side was packed with
Speaker 1: friends and family, while Carl's side remained empty. He had
Speaker 1: apparently asked his friends and supporters not to come to
Speaker 1: the courthouse. All of Carl's friends were telling people in
Speaker 1: the art world not to go. Carl doesn't want you there,
Speaker 1: and under the guise of sensitivity, you know you don't
Speaker 1: want to see Carl like this was kind of the
Speaker 1: implication of it. Under that guise, nobody knew what was
Speaker 1: going on. They prevented people from actually hearing the testimony,
Speaker 1: from actually hearing the evidence, from actually finding out what
Speaker 1: had gone on. This would come to feel symbolic of
Speaker 1: the whole affair. For honest people, it was a profoundly
Speaker 1: public matter that demanded visibility, and for Carl's people, it
Speaker 1: was a situation to be kept private. You can publicize
Speaker 1: his works, but you can't talk about his private life
Speaker 1: with That's Carl's defense lawyer Jack Hoffinger, Carl Andre is
Speaker 1: an extremely private person. I mean he doesn't want a
Speaker 1: photograph taken. Carl Andre has never talked publicly, and I
Speaker 1: doubt that he's talked really privately about this case to anybody.
Speaker 1: This image of Karl alone in the courtroom, no friends,
Speaker 1: no family, is both tragic and chilling. We can see
Speaker 1: a man bereft, a man on the brink of losing everything,
Speaker 1: or we can see a man set apart from others
Speaker 1: because of his intellect, his power to transform the history
Speaker 1: of art, his genius. I'm your host. Helen Wallsworth from
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries, Something Else and Sony Music entertainment. This is
Speaker 1: Death of an Artist, Episode four. The Genius Problem. Here's
Speaker 1: the thing, and this is probably going to feel familiar.
Speaker 1: When a super talented man, someone who's been called a genius,
Speaker 1: gets accused of harming someone they're fans meaning us, Well,
Speaker 1: it turns out we don't really want to believe it,
Speaker 1: at least not at first and not for a long time.
Speaker 1: Roman Polanski, Michael Jackson, Bill Cosby, Woody Allen. So when
Speaker 1: Carl was accused of honest murder, there was a sense
Speaker 1: of shock on two levels. City Confidential, a cheesy true
Speaker 1: crime TV show, described the art world's reaction. There was
Speaker 1: shock on the Sheik Streets of Solo to the shock
Speaker 1: was that Carl had murdered on it and you others.
Speaker 1: It was a shock that anyone could possibly accused the
Speaker 1: Great Carl Andre of something so heinous. But when Carl
Speaker 1: finally stood trial, his defense team recognized that the folks
Speaker 1: in the art world who thought he was a genius
Speaker 1: were not going to be the ones deciding his fate.
Speaker 1: A typical jury in Manhattan in the late nineteen eighties
Speaker 1: would have largely been civil servants and retired veterans. They
Speaker 1: probably weren't going to be impressed by an avant garde
Speaker 1: art star. This is a guy who throws pieces of
Speaker 1: metal on a floor, throws some bricks on top. You know,
Speaker 1: he's sort of the classic definition of art about which
Speaker 1: people say, I don't know much about art, but I
Speaker 1: know shit when I see it. Okay, Carl wasn't throwing
Speaker 1: pieces of metal or bricks on the floor. But it's
Speaker 1: true that Carl made sculptures that challenge the very idea
Speaker 1: of art, so I can forgive the folks who couldn't
Speaker 1: see it as art. And it's also true that Carl
Speaker 1: came to trial wearing his usual overalls and carrying a
Speaker 1: tote bag filled with newspapers and books. He arrived early
Speaker 1: every day, read the paper, and remained silent. But even
Speaker 1: though he was wearing working class overalls, he lived in
Speaker 1: a luxury high rise apartment, traveled to Europe for art exhibitions,
Speaker 1: and sold his work for handsome prices. All of this
Speaker 1: contradiction probably wasn't going to endear him to a jury.
Speaker 1: Carl Andre is a remarkably and was a remarkably unsympathetic character.
Speaker 1: First of all, there's his look. He's a big hulking guy.
Speaker 1: He's affecting a working class attitude, but he's not. The
Speaker 1: question the lawyers and Carl were faced with was how
Speaker 1: in the world do you explain his art and his
Speaker 1: lifestyle to the everyday folks who make up the jury
Speaker 1: pool in Manhattan. But the judge, Alvin Schlessinger, was not
Speaker 1: an everyday person. Schlessinger fancied himself as a more sophisticated person,
Speaker 1: somebody who appreciated arts and culture and all of those
Speaker 1: kinds of things, you know, theater and opera and art,
Speaker 1: and so he would naturally be a more sympathetic audience
Speaker 1: to Andre and his work than your average jury of
Speaker 1: twelve plus alternates. Journalist Robert Katz was there when Carl's
Speaker 1: defense team hit upon their fundamental strategy. He described the
Speaker 1: moment in a radio interview after the trial. Jack Hoffinger
Speaker 1: stood up and said, my client wishes to waive a jury.
Speaker 1: And everybody looked around, and nobody really understood what he meant,
Speaker 1: because no one could remember the last time anybody had
Speaker 1: ever waived a jury and murder trial. It's a very
Speaker 1: very rare event. That was truly an amazing surprise in
Speaker 1: a decision that would have lasting implications. He opted for
Speaker 1: a bench trial, which means the judge and only the judge,
Speaker 1: decides the verdict. On the one hand, it makes sense
Speaker 1: to me that Karl foregoes a jury trial. I can
Speaker 1: totally see how he would have seemed very weird to people.
Speaker 1: And it also makes sense to me that he didn't
Speaker 1: choose a jury trial, because, let's face it, a genius
Speaker 1: is going to have a hard time finding a jury
Speaker 1: of their peers. Honest friends viewed the decision to waive
Speaker 1: a jury as cynical. The art world's very special, very special.
Speaker 1: This is when people used to say, don't go above
Speaker 1: fourteenth Street because all the Vulgarians are there. They don't
Speaker 1: understand truth, they don't understand beauty, they don't understand meaning
Speaker 1: nobody else could understand the full genius of a figure
Speaker 1: like Carl andre Or. I think, frankly, nobody us could
Speaker 1: understand that Anna's life didn't matter. For some people, Carl's
Speaker 1: work was too important to be tethered to the actions
Speaker 1: of a flawed man. And for other people, whatever happened
Speaker 1: that night was private. And because whatever happened that night
Speaker 1: was private, it had no place in discussions of his work.
Speaker 1: This kind of thinking is in the very dna of
Speaker 1: how art history is taught. So imagine a pact room
Speaker 1: in a library. That's the art historian Julia Brian Wilson.
Speaker 1: She's taking us back to the late nineteen nineties when
Speaker 1: she was a young grad student at UC Berkeley, the
Speaker 1: heart of leftist intellectual life and renowned for its stars
Speaker 1: studded art history department. A visiting scholar was in town
Speaker 1: to give a lecture on Carl Andre, and the room
Speaker 1: was packed. One of the folks in the room was Julia,
Speaker 1: a punk rock kid from Houston, a far cry from
Speaker 1: the girls with pearls back east who typically populated art
Speaker 1: history departments. I think I might have still been wearing
Speaker 1: like this lab coat that I sometimes wore as a
Speaker 1: dress that I had stolen because I was quite a
Speaker 1: little thief in my riot girl days, you know, not
Speaker 1: the usual uniform of the art history graduate student. The
Speaker 1: speaker talked in formal terms about Carl Andre, using the
Speaker 1: buzzword of the nineties, horizontality. That's horizontality as opposed to verticality.
Speaker 1: Instead of thinking about uplifting monuments or upward progress, folks
Speaker 1: were interested in the horizontal as a metaphor for non
Speaker 1: hierarchical thinking, think crabgrass versus a tree, sib and cousins
Speaker 1: versus parent and child. But Julia was thinking about another
Speaker 1: version of horizontality, mouth agape at the fact that forty
Speaker 1: five to fifty minutes had gone by talking about this,
Speaker 1: that the other, about Carl Andre and again that this
Speaker 1: key term of horizontality, where in my mind, I'm thinking
Speaker 1: Anna Mendietta, you know, died in the most brutal way.
Speaker 1: And the fact that there is no mention of this,
Speaker 1: I just can't believe it to intone horizontality with all
Speaker 1: of its implications of the ground and of gravity, and
Speaker 1: to leave out how Anna died. That felt like not
Speaker 1: just an art history problem, but a history history problem.
Speaker 1: Why was the story so incomplete? And I was just
Speaker 1: boiling with rage in my seat in the lecture room.
Speaker 1: People were asking questions that had to do with the
Speaker 1: formal terms that the speaker was laying out, and no
Speaker 1: one was engaging with what to me seemed like the
Speaker 1: bigger moral aches of like why are you giving airtime
Speaker 1: to this artist? So heart pounding, the young grad student
Speaker 1: stood up and asked her question, what about Anna Mendieta.
Speaker 1: Where does she fit into this discussion? She just dismissed it.
Speaker 1: Me just feeling like I cannot believe what this discipline
Speaker 1: permits and what it erases, and just my baptism, I
Speaker 1: would say, by fire into art history, which was really like,
Speaker 1: you are here to learn this cannon, and this cannon
Speaker 1: is pretty fixed. I was just constantly at sea, always
Speaker 1: just hating the discipline in a way while also trying
Speaker 1: to ingratiate myself to it. I mean, I still feel
Speaker 1: that way. I still very much feel that way. Julia
Speaker 1: had just walked into one of art history's brick walls,
Speaker 1: the wall that separates the artist and their life from
Speaker 1: the artwork they make. I want to go back to
Speaker 1: Peter Sheldall, the fabulous art critic for The New Yorker,
Speaker 1: the art who loved Carl Andre's work but disliked his personality.
Speaker 1: See if all the minimalists were assholes, and you're walking
Speaker 1: through the gauntlet to get to the strawberry shortcake at
Speaker 1: the back of Max's, you had made some kind of
Speaker 1: peace or understanding that you could like artwork made by
Speaker 1: people who you didn't like personally. It sounds like Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that just seemed to me a given a start.
Speaker 1: We don't give a car of Aggio grief for being
Speaker 1: a murderer, you know, which he absolutely was. The controversy
Speaker 1: about Ezra Pound after a Second World War, it was
Speaker 1: a kind of a watershed for me that, you know,
Speaker 1: he had been a traitor and a Semitic propagandist agi
Speaker 1: American during the war and then after where he was
Speaker 1: given a hugely christ ticket bowling in a war, and
Speaker 1: then he he copied an insanity plea and got, you know,
Speaker 1: put in a metal hospital for a while. And there
Speaker 1: was a big debate about it, and I said, no,
Speaker 1: you know, gave him the bowling an award and put
Speaker 1: him the fucking jail. So it's not that Peter Sheldall
Speaker 1: or the professor who gave the talk at you see,
Speaker 1: Berkeley necessarily thought Carl was innocent. It's that they thought
Speaker 1: it didn't matter when you were looking at his work.
Speaker 1: I never met her, but you know I knew of her,
Speaker 1: and she was not going to throw herself out a window.
Speaker 1: And you know he has scrat from our fantics face
Speaker 1: they were fighting. Did its squalidness ever make you not
Speaker 1: want to go and see his show. No no, I
Speaker 1: kept going for you to shows, so shell Doll, like
Speaker 1: so many in the art world, like me, for instance,
Speaker 1: kept going to his shows because whatever Carl Andre did
Speaker 1: or did not do in his personal life, his work
Speaker 1: was and would remain fill in the blank canonical great
Speaker 1: genius historical. The art world doesn't have the statistics that
Speaker 1: govern the world of sports, but it does have its
Speaker 1: own version of being a goat, and that's genius, and
Speaker 1: it is the art world's highest praise. The word typically
Speaker 1: refers to someone who did something no one had ever
Speaker 1: done before. So Picasso is a genius because he invented cubism.
Speaker 1: Warhole is a genius because he bridged the gap between
Speaker 1: art and popular culture. Carl Andrea is a genius because
Speaker 1: he solved the problem of sculpture's relationship to the floor.
Speaker 1: By the time of Anna's death, though, feminists were starting
Speaker 1: to scrutinize the whole idea of artistic genius, because while
Speaker 1: genius seems like a good thing, it was hard to
Speaker 1: overlook the fact that what the term seemed to describe
Speaker 1: was male genius, which really meant white male genie. Some
Speaker 1: of the loudest and funniest feminist voices in the art
Speaker 1: world are an anonymous group of women called the Gorilla Girls.
Speaker 1: That's gorilla spelled like rebel fighter, not the primate. The
Speaker 1: Gorilla Girls are all anonymous and use the names of
Speaker 1: famous dead women artists. We talked to the Gorilla Girl
Speaker 1: free to CALLO. We decided from the very beginning that
Speaker 1: we had to be anonymous because we really didn't want
Speaker 1: to bite the hand that we hoped would feed us.
Speaker 1: It would be very damaging to one's career to complain
Speaker 1: in public like that because the art world is, you know,
Speaker 1: is such a kind of self congratulatory place at that time.
Speaker 1: They didn't want to hear anything negative. The way they
Speaker 1: protect their identity out in public is by wearing gorilla
Speaker 1: masks this time spelled like the primate. The gorilla girls
Speaker 1: we spoke to would not tell us their real names
Speaker 1: or turn on their cameras during the interviews, and the
Speaker 1: secrecy works to this day. I still don't know who
Speaker 1: is and is not a gorilla girl. We wanted to
Speaker 1: confound stereotypes. Gorillas are not the vicious, violent animal or
Speaker 1: culture casts on them. They're vegetarian, peaceful animals that live
Speaker 1: in large groups of females and the hilarious masks. In
Speaker 1: a way, it's become our hallmark, and to be honest,
Speaker 1: I think it allows us to say things that we
Speaker 1: might not be able to say through our own identities.
Speaker 1: And the visuals of it is absolutely crazy picture. It
Speaker 1: a bunch of women in miniskirts and gorilla masks using
Speaker 1: humor to poke fun at the absurdities of the white,
Speaker 1: male dominated art world. Their primary form of attack were
Speaker 1: posters that combine jokes with found images. Basically, they memes,
Speaker 1: and instead of posting them on Instagram, they put them
Speaker 1: up all around New York City. In nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: we put up a poster saying, you know, these galleries
Speaker 1: show fewer than ten percent women artists, are none at all?
Speaker 1: Was it really just a mistake or some kind of
Speaker 1: terrible oversight that there were almost no women geniuses in
Speaker 1: art history books and so few women represented in galleries
Speaker 1: and museums. Part of the genius myth is that the
Speaker 1: genius is a solitary figure. He is a lone wolf.
Speaker 1: He is not hemmed in by conventional thinking or the
Speaker 1: rules and rags of everyday life. A genius does not
Speaker 1: do the dishes, or shop for dinner, or raise children.
Speaker 1: It's a hard category for women to be a part of.
Speaker 1: One of the Guerrilla girls most famous posters is called
Speaker 1: The Advantages of being a Woman Artist. It has a
Speaker 1: list of perks that include working without the pressure of success,
Speaker 1: knowing that your career might pick up after your eighty
Speaker 1: and not having to undergo the embarrassment of being called
Speaker 1: a genius. The other thing about genius is it always
Speaker 1: trump's bad behavior. There was this crazy thing called artistic license,
Speaker 1: which meant that artists get excused because whatever it is
Speaker 1: that they produce is so much more important than whatever
Speaker 1: damage they could do to people in their lives. Even
Speaker 1: though Anna died in nineteen eighty five, it would be
Speaker 1: a decade before the Guerrilla Girls would tackle the problem
Speaker 1: of Carl Andrea and Anna Mendieta head on. They weren't alone.
Speaker 1: Critics like Peter Sheldall and curators like me continued to
Speaker 1: separate bad male behavior from good male art. Even Julia
Speaker 1: Brian Wilson, who was so angry at that Berkeley lecture
Speaker 1: about Carl Andre, found herself a few years later writing
Speaker 1: a chapter of her dissertation about Carl's role in the
Speaker 1: Artworkers Coalition and only mentioning an A. Mendietta's death in
Speaker 1: a footnote. I had to convince myself and be convinced
Speaker 1: to grapple with his work in the book, because I
Speaker 1: felt for myself, as a young feminist, that there was
Speaker 1: something troubling to me about talking about his work divorced
Speaker 1: from the fact of the marriage and Mendietta's death. And
Speaker 1: I have a footnote. I mean, and you know, I
Speaker 1: do acknowledge it that it was a fact. Julia had
Speaker 1: to write to Carl to get his permission to access
Speaker 1: some research materials, and that correspondence resulted in an invitation
Speaker 1: to his apartment. When she recounted the story, it was
Speaker 1: clear how uncomfortable it made her. I went to his
Speaker 1: apartment and met him. I was really shocked when he
Speaker 1: sent me his address and I saw that it was
Speaker 1: the same building where he had lived with on A Mendietta.
Speaker 1: And to me, I thought, gosh, you know, sort of,
Speaker 1: no matter what happened with that death, I would not
Speaker 1: want to stay in the same place where my partner
Speaker 1: had died. She was in a deeply ambivalent place, somewhere
Speaker 1: between grateful and spooked. If you're working on a living artist,
Speaker 1: there is some feeling like it is part of the
Speaker 1: research process that you make contact with them. I felt
Speaker 1: like I was checking a box. Why was just spooked?
Speaker 1: I mean the word really is spooked. By being there
Speaker 1: in that space where I knew that on A Mendietta
Speaker 1: had died. She tried not to seem too nosy, didn't
Speaker 1: look around the apartment much. Instead, she focused on the
Speaker 1: faces of Carl and his fourth wife, Melissa. They talked briefly,
Speaker 1: and then the three of them went to dinner at
Speaker 1: a seafood restaurant. Yeah, it was deeply weird. Then we
Speaker 1: marched down to this fish restaurant and there was really
Speaker 1: a prodigious amount of drinking, not mine. And just noticing
Speaker 1: that and knowing that the story of Carl Andrean on
Speaker 1: A Mendietta was very much also a story of alcohol,
Speaker 1: it must have been weird. It's hard for me to
Speaker 1: fathom even now that Carl's life is so unchanged, He's
Speaker 1: still in the same apartment, still going out to dinner,
Speaker 1: and still drinking too much. I don't want to seem judge.
Speaker 1: I used to drink very heavily back in the day.
Speaker 1: Every art world event has an open bar. It's almost
Speaker 1: like an occupational hazard. But I know I would have
Speaker 1: watched Carl's alcohol consumption like a hawk too, especially given
Speaker 1: the huge role Booze played in the story of Anna
Speaker 1: and Carl's relationship. It's just one more thing in our
Speaker 1: culture that we're not supposed to talk about. This culture
Speaker 1: of discretion of what can and cannot be said would
Speaker 1: get played out in the courtroom, especially since the strategy
Speaker 1: for Carl's defense was to keep anyone from saying much
Speaker 1: of anything. The trial began in Earnest on a January
Speaker 1: morning in nineteen eighty eight. In some ways, a trial
Speaker 1: is similar to a museum exhibition. Both are places where
Speaker 1: a story is being told, and the truth of that
Speaker 1: story matters. Experts get to decide how the story is told, lawyers, judges, curators,
Speaker 1: and the rules about what evidence or artwork can be
Speaker 1: used to tell those stories are not always straightforward, transparent,
Speaker 1: or fair. When you walk into a museum, you only
Speaker 1: see the artworks that were selected through a careful process
Speaker 1: to tell a particular story. There are always other works
Speaker 1: that are left out that would tell a different story.
Speaker 1: For instance, artworks made by women of color. They are
Speaker 1: rarely seen, no matter how wonderful they might be in
Speaker 1: a courtroom. Evidence is also carefully selected before the big
Speaker 1: show the trial, and even evidence that everyone agrees is
Speaker 1: factual can still get left out deemed inadmissible for a
Speaker 1: variety of reasons. When that happens, the judge or jury
Speaker 1: are not allowed to consider those facts when they formed
Speaker 1: their verdict. This was the case in Anna's trial. A
Speaker 1: lot of evidence got left out, which means the story
Speaker 1: wasn't complete. Natalia Delgado was the first witness called by
Speaker 1: the prosecution. She had flown to New York from her
Speaker 1: home in Chicago, bringing along her six week old child,
Speaker 1: a little girl she'd named after Anna, and she was
Speaker 1: ready to testify about the last phone call with Anna
Speaker 1: just hours before her death, when Anna had told her
Speaker 1: about her plan to expose Karl as a cheater and
Speaker 1: file for divorce. But I couldn't talk about any of that.
Speaker 1: Any conversation about Anna's plans for divorce was deemed hearsay
Speaker 1: and ruled inadmissible. I couldn't say that I had recommended
Speaker 1: to her that night that she confronted Carl and tell
Speaker 1: him that she'd collected evidence of his infidelity, that she'd
Speaker 1: been photocopying records that would establish his being with these
Speaker 1: other women. I could not say that she feared his anger,
Speaker 1: that she said he would blow up when she said
Speaker 1: this to him. I couldn't establish that she wanted to
Speaker 1: get a divorce on the grounds of infidelity, and that's
Speaker 1: why she was collected this information as she feared his reaction.
Speaker 1: None of that. I could only say she was making
Speaker 1: plans for the future. So what was on Anna's mind
Speaker 1: the night of her death inadmissible. And remember how Natalia
Speaker 1: was surprised that Carl's lawyer was in the apartment after
Speaker 1: Carl had been taken to the police station. She was
Speaker 1: concerned about what would happen to the secret copies of
Speaker 1: phone and credit card bills that Anna had been collecting,
Speaker 1: documents she thought proved Karl was being unfaithful. Well, those
Speaker 1: documents went missing. Even though the apartment was a possible
Speaker 1: crime scene. Even though Karl was at the station for questioning,
Speaker 1: the cops let both Carl's lawyer and maybe one other
Speaker 1: person into the apartment. In an interview after the trial,
Speaker 1: Robert Katz explained what he thought happened to the documents
Speaker 1: that Anna considered evidence of Carl's infidelity. While Carl Andre
Speaker 1: was being questioned by the police before he was under arrest,
Speaker 1: somebody entered the apartment and removed what she called evidence.
Speaker 1: It turned out this would be one of several police
Speaker 1: errors that would dramatically affect the evidence considered a trial.
Speaker 1: But still there was other evidence that pointed to murder.
Speaker 1: If Anna had jumped out of the window of her
Speaker 1: own volition, or even if she had merely closed or
Speaker 1: opened the window, there would have been footprints on the
Speaker 1: window sill. Here's Robert Katz again. By the configuration of
Speaker 1: the room would be almost impossible for her to have
Speaker 1: committed suicide with asked somehow getting onto that ledge, the
Speaker 1: window sill came up Brahma's breast level, and yet they
Speaker 1: found no footprints on the window sill. But there was
Speaker 1: a problem with this evidence too, another police mistake. The
Speaker 1: police had forgotten to put taking a fingerprints in the
Speaker 1: search wire, and so the police record showing that there
Speaker 1: were no footprints on the window sill that was also
Speaker 1: deemed inadmissible. The most convincing pieces of evidence of murder
Speaker 1: had been to borrow a phrase curated out of the show.
Speaker 1: Ona's desire for a divorce, Anna's evidence of Carl's infidelity,
Speaker 1: and the proof that Anna had not stood on the
Speaker 1: window sill. These were all things the judge was not
Speaker 1: allowed to consider. And when the evidence that pointed to
Speaker 1: murder was discussed at trial, then the defense worked to
Speaker 1: sow the seeds of doubt. There was the doorman out
Speaker 1: on a coffee run who heard a woman yell no, no, no,
Speaker 1: just before Anna fl He was allowed to testify, but
Speaker 1: they discredit hit him by saying he had had some
Speaker 1: prior psychological issues, so he wasn't a good witness for
Speaker 1: purposes of hearing her screams and hearing the thud. It
Speaker 1: turned out he had been treated several years prior for
Speaker 1: auditory hallucinations. His testimony was admissible, but questionable. And what
Speaker 1: about those scratches, particularly the one on Carl's nose. The
Speaker 1: scratch was either proof that Anna and Carl had a
Speaker 1: physical altercation that night, or the scratch was just a coincidence.
Speaker 1: Everything came down to when Carl got the scratch. Carl
Speaker 1: said the terrace door had blown into his face about
Speaker 1: a week or so before and scratched him, So the
Speaker 1: question was, had anyone actually seen a scratch on Carl's
Speaker 1: nose before the night Anna died. The prosecutor had fewer
Speaker 1: witnesses in her corner than she had hoped for. Several
Speaker 1: people who had seen Carl in the days leading up
Speaker 1: to Anna's death initially said no, Carl had not had
Speaker 1: any scratches, but one by one they started doubting their
Speaker 1: own memories. The people who had dinner with him didn't
Speaker 1: want to testify as to whether or not yet those
Speaker 1: deep scratches on his face and arms. She's referring to
Speaker 1: a couple who had dinner with Carl and Anna a
Speaker 1: few days prior to Anna's death. They told the detective
Speaker 1: they had not noticed any scratches on Karl's face, but
Speaker 1: later said they couldn't remember. Another witness showed up to
Speaker 1: take the stand, but then suddenly also couldn't remember. Prosecutor
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Letterer was watching her witnesses fall away one by one.
Speaker 1: Nancy Spirow, a witness who was waiting for her turn
Speaker 1: to testify, remembered the prosecutor growing frustrated as she tried
Speaker 1: to keep her witnesses on the same page. Here's what
Speaker 1: Nancy said, she was really a little impatient with saying
Speaker 1: that you know that you had told me. I mean,
Speaker 1: I gathered that she had said she hadn't seen it,
Speaker 1: and now she changed her story. In the end, Letterer
Speaker 1: would only call Nancy Spirow to testify about the scratch.
Speaker 1: Nancy sat uncomfortably in the witness chair as her friend
Speaker 1: Carl looked on. She was emphatic there was no scratch,
Speaker 1: the implication being that it must have been Anna who
Speaker 1: scratched him on the night of her death. Well, I
Speaker 1: was trying to count trade and to be as honest
Speaker 1: as I could, and I was so rattled as it was.
Speaker 1: It must have been so hard. She and her husband
Speaker 1: had been friends with both Carl and Anna. Carl sat
Speaker 1: quietly listening to his friend Nancy Sparrow testify against him. Well,
Speaker 1: he certainly didn't look at each other directly, but I
Speaker 1: was aware of his presidency. Meanwhile, there were two witnesses
Speaker 1: that said the scratch had been there all along. Carl's
Speaker 1: good friend Laurence Wiener, who had gone to Rikers to
Speaker 1: bail him out, and a woman who worked at Carl's gallery.
Speaker 1: Both took the stand to say that they'd seen Carl
Speaker 1: shortly before Anna's death, and that he did indeed have
Speaker 1: something on his face, maybe a scratch, maybe a pimple.
Speaker 1: Not only did these two witnesses not agree on what
Speaker 1: the mark was, they also didn't agree on where that
Speaker 1: mark was. Was it his nose or the side of
Speaker 1: his face. Either way, the defense addressed the evidence by
Speaker 1: planting seeds of doubt about it. For better or worse,
Speaker 1: the rule of law is designed to work in favor
Speaker 1: of the accused, but this case wasn't only playing out
Speaker 1: in a courtroom. This case was being discussed in every
Speaker 1: corner of the art world, because layered on top of
Speaker 1: the police gaffs, the suppressed evidence, and the seeds of doubt,
Speaker 1: there was a mixture of betrayal and disbelief that Carl Andre,
Speaker 1: the metaphorical father of minimalism, the ethical Marxist, the intellectual,
Speaker 1: the supporter of women's causes, could do something so monstrous.
Speaker 1: Even though Nancy Spirow was willing to testify against Carl,
Speaker 1: you can hear how ambivalent and confused her husband, artistly
Speaker 1: On Galabi, is at the idea that someone like Carl
Speaker 1: could do something so horrible. He told Robert Katz, there
Speaker 1: might be other things at stake than I'm in punishment.
Speaker 1: You don't want to see such a person brought down,
Speaker 1: because if that person who's brought down the whole range
Speaker 1: of you're what you have thought conceived, the alot is tainted.
Speaker 1: So the best way to protect him was to respect
Speaker 1: as a wish for rural silence, and also to take
Speaker 1: him at his word. Right, How could Carl, who represents
Speaker 1: the purity of the desart, how could he have done
Speaker 1: such an act like them? Carol represents something. I can't
Speaker 1: tell you how important he was symbolically, and that may
Speaker 1: be why Elizabeth Lederer had such difficulty getting people to talk.
Speaker 1: B Ruby Rich remembers how surprised she was about all
Speaker 1: of it. The assistant DA who was trying the case,
Speaker 1: said to me that in her career she had never
Speaker 1: encountered a wall of silence like this one, except in
Speaker 1: mafia cases. So I think that the art world was
Speaker 1: a closed world. I certainly agree that the art world
Speaker 1: is a closed world. We are a social formation structured
Speaker 1: by deep friendships that mix business with pleasure, love with money,
Speaker 1: and perhaps because the lines between personal and public are
Speaker 1: so thin, it's a world in which discretion is paramount.
Speaker 1: But when does discretion become silence? And what happens when
Speaker 1: people get fed up with that silence. We'll come back
Speaker 1: to the trial, but first I'm going fast forward up
Speaker 1: to the almost present, to a time when so many
Speaker 1: women were about to take aim at the walls of
Speaker 1: silence around them. The me Too movement was about to explode,
Speaker 1: and the air seemed filled with the tension that comes
Speaker 1: from being fed up. Now, when carl Andrea's work went
Speaker 1: on view, a generation of artists who revered Ana Mendieta
Speaker 1: was vocal about their displeasure, and they showed up to protest.
Speaker 1: They painted their hands red, linked arms and blocked the
Speaker 1: entrance of a museum in Germany. Cannavanieta was a woman
Speaker 1: of color, a refugee, an evidence following her death points
Speaker 1: towards the domestic violence there was ensu They dramatically cried
Speaker 1: inside the galleries where Andrea's sculptures were displayed. All of
Speaker 1: this was happening as plans were being made to bring
Speaker 1: carl Andrea's retrospective to the museum in Los Angeles, where
Speaker 1: I had landed my dream job of chief curator. But
Speaker 1: as the exhibition made its way to LA instead of
Speaker 1: thinking about Carl, I found myself thinking a lot more
Speaker 1: about Anna, And the more I thought about Anna and
Speaker 1: her work, the more uncomfortable I became thinking about Carl
Speaker 1: and his work. I'd had a serious change of heart.
Speaker 1: Like the protesters, I also didn't think we should be
Speaker 1: celebrating someone who had been accused of murder. But the
Speaker 1: reality was the ship had sailed. There was no turning back. Still,
Speaker 1: I felt like I had to do something. But what?
Speaker 1: A few months before the show, I invited a group
Speaker 1: of women I admired, artists, professors, curators to talk it out.
Speaker 1: One of them was an artist named Andrea Bowers. The
Speaker 1: thing I remember about that meeting is one of the
Speaker 1: participation and saying that there would be protests, and then
Speaker 1: another participant saying there will be blood. I do remember
Speaker 1: that because right because there had been this previous protest
Speaker 1: where animal blood had been thrown. Yeah. I really felt
Speaker 1: in a certain way it would require you and others
Speaker 1: in your position, as well as other artists, to speak
Speaker 1: out publicly against it. But I also felt like you
Speaker 1: felt like you would not have your job if you
Speaker 1: did that. You were looking for a creative solution. I
Speaker 1: didn't have the guts to step down at that point.
Speaker 1: I also did not realize the intensity of like institutional
Speaker 1: kind of submission, Like how can it be that there
Speaker 1: can be so many curators in these institutions and one
Speaker 1: curator can't say I'm uncomfortable with that show. I really
Speaker 1: believe there should be public internal discourse. I mean that's
Speaker 1: a democracy, right, Yeah, this is a pretty common misconception.
Speaker 1: An art museum is definitely not a democracy. In fact,
Speaker 1: they are the opposite of democracy. Like most workplaces, they
Speaker 1: are a very highly evolved hierarchy. The reality was the
Speaker 1: show was going to go on, which meant, pragmatically speaking,
Speaker 1: all that could be done was some light window dressing.
Speaker 1: We hosted a talk by a feminist art historian, one
Speaker 1: of the very few who was willing to discuss the
Speaker 1: accusations against Carl, the very same person who had also
Speaker 1: been invited to talk at DIA, But that was it.
Speaker 1: On opening night, felt vaguely nauseous. I couldn't tell what
Speaker 1: I feared more that the protesters would show up or
Speaker 1: that they wouldn't. They showed A group of women had
Speaker 1: lit candles and were handing out small xeroxes with honest
Speaker 1: picture on them. My wife brought one home and propped
Speaker 1: it up on our kitchen counter. I avoided their somber
Speaker 1: picket line. That night was the one and only time
Speaker 1: I visited the Carl Andrea exhibition. It was a really
Speaker 1: sad night for me, and the next morning, when I
Speaker 1: had my coffee and looked it on his picture, I
Speaker 1: just couldn't shake the feeling that I wasn't down with
Speaker 1: business as usual anymore. Next time, on Death of an
Speaker 1: Artist it was totally blamed the victim, but with an
Speaker 1: extra twist. They were trying to establish that she killed herself,
Speaker 1: like this was some sort of culminating art piece. Judges
Speaker 1: tend to be more meticulous about what a reasonable doubt is.
Speaker 1: This is press play. I'm Malone brand. Let's talk now
Speaker 1: about some bad news that's hit a couple of local museums.
Speaker 1: Death of an Artist is a co production between Pushkin Industries,
Speaker 1: Something Else and Sony Music Entertainment. Written and hosted by
Speaker 1: me Helen Mouldsworth. Executive producers are Lizzie Jacobs, Tom Kinig, Lietamlad,
Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberg and Lucas Werner. Produced by Maria Luisa Tucker,
Speaker 1: editing by Lizzie Jacobs. Our managing producer is Jacob Smith.
Speaker 1: Associate producers are pood Ru and Eloise Linton. Additional production
Speaker 1: helped by Tally Abacassas. Anamandieta's quotes were read by Tanya
Speaker 1: burgera special thanks to the New York Public Radio Archive,
Speaker 1: engineered by Sam Baar, fact checking by Andrea Lopez Crusado.
Speaker 1: Our theme song is by Pooge Rue. If you of
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