No ideas hidden

When Carl Andre, the American artist, found his way to sculpture exploring the "sensuous" nature of steel, he denied there was anything more to it. "I said, 'There are no ideas hidden under those plates! They're steel plates and nothing else!'" When he was told a pile of stones did not make a work of art, he pointed to Stonehenge. "I was always fighting the rise of conceptual art," Andre says. "There was Joseph Kosuth's statement, 'Art as idea as idea.' And I said an idea in the head is not a work of art. A work of art is out in the world, is a tangible reality." Andre adds: "My work doesn't come from ideas – my work comes from desires." From interview in The Guardian 23.01.2012. http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2013/jan/23/carl-andre-turner-contemporary?INTCMP=SRCH

Remember, or forget?

What ideas do you need to remember? What ideas do you need to forget? That's the trouble with ideas lists. Although lists may help us to keep ideas organised, sometimes they just tie ideas to the past. And once we set out to realise the idea, something else happens. This new development makes the idea obsolete. But by then it might be too late. So in the fast moving world of ideas, forgetfulness may work in your favour. Memory, then, is not always the best friend of ideas.