The silence of critics

All the reviews of Carl Andre's new exhibition of sculpture mentioned the Bricks, but not his trial for his wife's murder and the controversial acquittal. Why?

Although one school of thought holds that art criticism should systematically purge itself of biographical references - the work, not the minutiae of an artist's life, is what matters - reviews of Carl Andre's minimalist sculpture currently on view at east London's Whitechapel Gallery contain predictable references to his past. All of them have mentioned the tabloid attack on him when in 1976 the Tate Gallery paid a rumoured £7,000 for Equivalent VIII, a piece that consisted of 120 firebricks spread out on the floor. Several reviews refer to this Fleet-Street flap as the greatest controversy of Andre's career.

Although one school of thought holds that art criticism should systematically purge itself of biographical references - the work, not the minutiae of an artist's life, is what matters - reviews of Carl Andre's minimalist sculpture currently on view at east London's Whitechapel Gallery contain predictable references to his past. All of them have mentioned the tabloid attack on him when in 1976 the Tate Gallery paid a rumoured £7,000 for Equivalent VIII, a piece that consisted of 120 firebricks spread out on the floor. Several reviews refer to this Fleet-Street flap as the greatest controversy of Andre's career.

Most observe that he was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, a town of factories, granite quarries and shipyards, one of which employed his father as a draftsman. Later, Andre himself worked on the Pennsylvania Railroad. This, it is suggested, explains his dependence on industrial materials - lumber, brick, steel - and demonstrates that his creativity springs from physical experience, from a childhood spent playing with wood and metal off-cuts, rather than swanning around museums and arts colleges. Even his clothing - an invariable uniform of blue bib overalls - is invoked as an insight into an enigmatic artist who insists on calling himself a "matterist", a man who conceives of sculpture as a "place" rather than a thing.

One aspect of Carl Andre's biography, however, doesn't come in for a single mention. In September 1985, his third wife, Ana Mendieta, also a sculptor specialising in floor installations, plunged to her death from the window of Andre's 34th-storey apartment in Greenwich Village, in New York. In his recorded phone message to the emergency services, Andre said that he and his wife had had an argument, and she had gone into the bedroom and "went out the window". From his description, it sounded very much like suicide.

In later retellings, this original story changed; then Andre stopped talking altogether. The police noticed that Andre had what appeared to be fresh scratch-marks on his face, arms and chest. According to the coroner's report, Ana Mendieta had blood under her fingernails, but it had been contaminated by the tar rooftop she landed on, and forensic tests could not positively identify the blood type. None the less, on the basis of circumstantial evidence, Carl Andre was arrested and indicted for his wife's murder.

The news reverberated through the American art community, provoking debates that persist to this day. Mendieta's friends theorised that her increasing success and her feisty personality, combined with the drift in Andre's career, drove him into a murderous rage. Since Mendieta had never displayed self-destructive tendencies, and since her morbid fear of heights would have kept her from climbing up on to the high window ledge and slipping while shutting the window, they concluded her husband must have pushed her.

Andre's friends were equally adamant that he couldn't have done it. With some of the most influential figures in modern art supporting him - Frank Stella posted $250,000 in bail to allow Andre to remain free pending his trial - the dispute had all the trappings of a war between the establishment and the upstarts. But quickly it also became a cause célÿbre for feminists and Hispanics suspicious of an apparent coterie of famous white males.

In 1988, Carl Andre waived his right to have his case decided by a jury and instead elected to stand trial in front of a single judge. Though the proceedings lasted for weeks, some wags referred to it as "a minimalist trial" when Andre chose not to testify. While the prosecution marshalled circumstantial evidence to present Andre as the obvious culprit, the defence maintained that Mendieta's death was either accidental or what it characterised as "sub-intentional suicide". This prompted laughter from the judge but, after deliberating, he acquitted and released Andre.

After 12 years, fair-minded people will argue whether it's appropriate to revisit these issues. One side might contend that since the case doesn't have any direct bearing on Andre's art, it's irrelevant. The other could reasonably respond that it does suggest an answer to a question raised in reviews of the Whitechapel exhibition: Why has no New York museum shown Andre's new work for decades? Perhaps to avoid precisely this controversy. Robert Katz, an American investigative journalist and author of Naked by the Window, a book about Ana Mendieta's death and Carl Andre's trial, feels strongly that the case bears continued discussion for two reasons. The first, as Katz puts it bluntly, "has to do with justice". The second, "is what it illustrates about the art world".

No stranger to controversy or to subjects that require meticulous research, Katz has published full-length accounts of Pope Pius XII's passivity in the face of the Nazi round-up of Roman Jews, and of the kidnapping and assassination of Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades. Urged on by artists who got to know Ana Mendieta while she was a fellow at the American Academy in Rome, Katz studied the police reports and forensic evidence, attended the trial, and conducted dozens of interviews, including the trial judge.

Just as revealing, in Katz's opinion, as the interviews he conducted were ones that didn't come off. Realistically, he admits, people are often leery of journalists and reluctant to get involved in criminal investigations, especially of homicide. But in this instance major figures in Andre's life didn't just refuse to speak to Katz. "They refused to cooperate with the police," he says, "and with the prosecutors. The art world circled the wagons around Carl Andre." Asked why he thought this had happened, Katz laughs and recounts an incident from his book that took place shortly after Andre's arrest. A collector of his work called his dealer and, of all the things he might have asked under the circumstances, he blurted: "Do I buy or do I sell?"

In point of fact, prices for Mendieta's work, as well as Andre's, appear to have risen in recent years. Perhaps this is irrelevant, and it's too cynical to conclude that money and the tendency of artists to protect their own and reject the judgment of outsiders resulted in a conspiracy of silence. Still, speaking as one who knew both Ana Mendieta and Carl Andre, I believe it's worth remembering her death and his trial. As Andre Gide famously wrote in his preface to The Immoralist: "To tell the truth, in art there are no problems ... that are not sufficiently solved by the work of art itself." Yet after proclaiming this lofty aesthetic principle, Gide added: "I have not tried to prove anything but only to paint my picture well and to set it in a good light."

Subscribing to the same sentiment, I would never criticise a gallery for showing Andre's work, nor would I urge anyone to skip the current exhibition. The man, after all, was found not guilty. But I would recommend that the full picture be seen in clear light.