source: adamlernerinamerica
The art faculty at Yale University was not amused when their star student told them he knew how to make dulcimers. A free spirit with a passion for music, Fred Sandback actually considered selling the Appalachian instrument to help support himself through college in the early 1960s. His interest was unsettling, though, to his teachers, who were enmeshed in rigorous intellectual and historical ideas about art, and could not see how crafting something as common as a folk instrument fit with their aesthetic program.

Sandback did not try to ground his art in history or theory alone, but followed a very personal approach. Growing up, he had an uncanny fascination with things that were strung. According to his own accounts he liked to watch his uncle Fred, an antiques dealer, cane chairs, and he remembered being captivated as a child by a museum exhibition on how to make snowshoes. As a camp counselor in New Hampshire, he loved archery and began making his own bows. He also seems to have been interested in straight lines; as a freshman in college, he carved a tall, narrow cat out of wood, prefiguring a lifelong interest in linear forms.

Sandback didn’t abandon those early predilections when, as an undergraduate studying philosophy and art, he was drawn to the great master of Western sculpture, spending a summer in Paris drawing Michelangelo’s slave sculptures every day. His senior year, he made small-scale plaster versions of those canonical works, which he presented as a Scholar of the House at Yale, a prestigious program that allows seniors to pursue their own independent work. The sculptures of Rodin and Brancusi also profoundly moved him at the time. He admired these masters and eagerly consumed the theory offered by his instructors while marching to the beat of his own dulcimer. In turn, his teachers recognized something extraordinary in him and accepted Sandback into the graduate program, where he cultivated the artistic approach he would sustain his whole life.

As suggested by his early fascination with making stringed instruments and bows, he was interested in lines pulled taut. In 1967, in his basement studio at Yale, he made his first sculpture with wire and cord, outlining the shape of a twelve-footlong, two-by-four plank of wood resting on the floor. While his classmates were pounding, welding, and casting metals, he was clipping and bending thin wires and adhering bits of cord to them. He made a number of similar shapes in the basement studio that year, outlining cubes, planes, and other forms on the floor and against the wall. He was a burly, six-foot-two, outdoorsy guy who found his artistic voice tracing delicate lines in the air.

Sandback was fortunate that the insurgent sculptor Donald Judd was invited up from New York to offer feedback to the sculpture students. Judd saw something in the austere lines Sandback traced in air, and in 1968, he invited the young artist to show sculptures at his studio in New York. Sandback’s world suddenly got much bigger when the simple sculptures impressed the circle of critics and art dealers who visited. Before the end of the year, Sandback had solo exhibitions in Munich and Dusseldorf, and was included in group exhibitions in Berlin and New York. By the following year, he was exhibiting at the Dwan Gallery in New York as part of a roster that included some of the top artists of the time.

Beginning with wire and cord and moving to acrylic yarn, his earliest exhibitions looked like someone had drawn in the air with a pencil the outlines of objects or furniture that might have filled an otherwise empty room. There a plate of glass leaning against a wall, here a picture in the corner, and over there a neat row of boxes pushed against another wall—except these things weren’t actually there; all that existed were the lines that defined their perimeters. He expanded the sculptures, but only slightly. He would fasten the yarn diagonally floor-to-ceiling, or wall-to-wall, and work with the entire volume of the room. He would run straight lines through the space and along the wall or floor, cutting the air with the most rudimentary of shapes.

In 1969, the year Sandback received his MFA, an aggressive German newspaper reporter interviewed him in conjunction with a large-scale solo exhibition of his sculpture at the Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld, Germany. The reporter didn’t criticize Sandback’s sculptures directly. He didn’t exactly make the emperor-has-no-clothes argument that was (and still is) the common criticism of contemporary art. Instead, he attacked the entire field of art. He asked Sandback to comment on the idea that, even as artists claim to be doing something noble, they are ultimately just seeking personal wealth and fame. In the face of such a hostile question, it would be understandable for a young artist, just graduating from school, to be defensive. Most people in his position would have vehemently defended the righteousness of their calling, upholding the idea of the artist as a unique figure in society, as someone who provides new ways of seeing the world. Sandback took the opposite tack. Instead of defending the integrity of contemporary art, he was open to the possibility that there might be nothing at all special. Sandback did not make any pretenses about his art.
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source: icouldpaintthat
The art faculty at Yale University was not amused when their star student told them he knew how to make dulcimers. A free spirit with a passion for music, Fred Fred Sandback is one of those artist, who you either love or hate, with no chance of standing in the middle.

Died early, at the age of 60 in 2003, he can be considered one of the main representatives of the american minimalist movement. His works are equally innocent, evocative, playful and strikingly beautiful; at the same time, they’re extremely simple and linear – someone mean could say “cheap”.

Sandback’s main medium was acrylic yarn – more or less colorful; sometimes he also used elastics or metal wire. The concept here is simple: every piece is developed based on the surrounding context. The artist studied the room and developed a specific configuration of the yarn, that was then stretched across it, creating volumes and formes.
The artist left to the viewer the job to perceive the substance of the form he drew, engaging him/her activily. Sandback’s interventions could be considered monumental and extremely slender at the same time.

Julienne Schwarz, another artist who has been working with cables, wires and similar materials – in a very different way – tells us about one of her favorite Sandback’s pieces, Untitled, an installation comprised of tile-red acrylic yarn. The work is from Fred Sandback’s Diagonal construction series and was created for his 1989 exhibition at the Yale University Art Gallery.

If you find difficult to appreciate such a minimal approach to the art practice, well, don’t worry because you’re not alone. The same problem existed in 1975. Sandback was being interviewed by Ingrid Rein, on the occasion of a show in Munich, and when she asked him why the wider public was finding difficoult to grasp this formally reduced art, he replied: “Perhaps they walk too fast, perhaps they should approach things a bit slower and not think too much. You can’t just come, look at my work, and expect it to provide a story or image of something. But this way of thinking about art is very widespread. The image of my perception is reflective. It can only be seen. ”
You can find some amazing material – interviews, artist’s notes and thoughts – in his Archive website. If you want to see some of his work for real, Sandback was one of the first artists to be included in the permanent installation space at DIA in the New York State, so you always have a chance to see him there. But right now there’s a big retrospective of his work at the amazing Glenstone space – you have until August 2016 to see him there. If you’re still planning to go to Venice before the Biennale shuts down, you can see Sandback’s work at the PROPORTIO exhibition in the Palazzo Fortuny.

Sandback actually considered selling the Appalachian instrument to help support himself through college in the early 1960s. His interest was unsettling, though, to his teachers, who were enmeshed in rigorous intellectual and historical ideas about art, and could not see how crafting something as common as a folk instrument fit with their aesthetic program.

Sandback did not try to ground his art in history or theory alone, but followed a very personal approach. Growing up, he had an uncanny fascination with things that were strung. According to his own accounts he liked to watch his uncle Fred, an antiques dealer, cane chairs, and he remembered being captivated as a child by a museum exhibition on how to make snowshoes. As a camp counselor in New Hampshire, he loved archery and began making his own bows. He also seems to have been interested in straight lines; as a freshman in college, he carved a tall, narrow cat out of wood, prefiguring a lifelong interest in linear forms.

Sandback didn’t abandon those early predilections when, as an undergraduate studying philosophy and art, he was drawn to the great master of Western sculpture, spending a summer in Paris drawing Michelangelo’s slave sculptures every day. His senior year, he made small-scale plaster versions of those canonical works, which he presented as a Scholar of the House at Yale, a prestigious program that allows seniors to pursue their own independent work. The sculptures of Rodin and Brancusi also profoundly moved him at the time. He admired these masters and eagerly consumed the theory offered by his instructors while marching to the beat of his own dulcimer. In turn, his teachers recognized something extraordinary in him and accepted Sandback into the graduate program, where he cultivated the artistic approach he would sustain his whole life.

As suggested by his early fascination with making stringed instruments and bows, he was interested in lines pulled taut. In 1967, in his basement studio at Yale, he made his first sculpture with wire and cord, outlining the shape of a twelve-footlong, two-by-four plank of wood resting on the floor. While his classmates were pounding, welding, and casting metals, he was clipping and bending thin wires and adhering bits of cord to them. He made a number of similar shapes in the basement studio that year, outlining cubes, planes, and other forms on the floor and against the wall. He was a burly, six-foot-two, outdoorsy guy who found his artistic voice tracing delicate lines in the air.

Sandback was fortunate that the insurgent sculptor Donald Judd was invited up from New York to offer feedback to the sculpture students. Judd saw something in the austere lines Sandback traced in air, and in 1968, he invited the young artist to show sculptures at his studio in New York. Sandback’s world suddenly got much bigger when the simple sculptures impressed the circle of critics and art dealers who visited. Before the end of the year, Sandback had solo exhibitions in Munich and Dusseldorf, and was included in group exhibitions in Berlin and New York. By the following year, he was exhibiting at the Dwan Gallery in New York as part of a roster that included some of the top artists of the time.

Beginning with wire and cord and moving to acrylic yarn, his earliest exhibitions looked like someone had drawn in the air with a pencil the outlines of objects or furniture that might have filled an otherwise empty room. There a plate of glass leaning against a wall, here a picture in the corner, and over there a neat row of boxes pushed against another wall—except these things weren’t actually there; all that existed were the lines that defined their perimeters. He expanded the sculptures, but only slightly. He would fasten the yarn diagonally floor-to-ceiling, or wall-to-wall, and work with the entire volume of the room. He would run straight lines through the space and along the wall or floor, cutting the air with the most rudimentary of shapes.

In 1969, the year Sandback received his MFA, an aggressive German newspaper reporter interviewed him in conjunction with a large-scale solo exhibition of his sculpture at the Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld, Germany. The reporter didn’t criticize Sandback’s sculptures directly. He didn’t exactly make the emperor-has-no-clothes argument that was (and still is) the common criticism of contemporary art. Instead, he attacked the entire field of art. He asked Sandback to comment on the idea that, even as artists claim to be doing something noble, they are ultimately just seeking personal wealth and fame. In the face of such a hostile question, it would be understandable for a young artist, just graduating from school, to be defensive. Most people in his position would have vehemently defended the righteousness of their calling, upholding the idea of the artist as a unique figure in society, as someone who provides new ways of seeing the world. Sandback took the opposite tack. Instead of defending the integrity of contemporary art, he was open to the possibility that there might be nothing at all special. Sandback did not make any pretenses about his art.