Speaker 1: Pushkin, Hey, Bad Women, listen, Nurse Hallie here. We're working
Speaker 1: hard on the new season of Bad Women coming October eleventh,
Speaker 1: But in the meantime, I wanted to share a new
Speaker 1: true crime podcast from Pushkin. I think you're going to
Speaker 1: love it. It's called Death of an Artist. Anna Mendietta
Speaker 1: was on her way to the top of the art
Speaker 1: world when she fell thirty four stories to her death
Speaker 1: on September eighth, nineteen eighty five. She was in the
Speaker 1: prime of her life and gaining recognition for her genre
Speaker 1: bending performance art while living with her husband, the famous
Speaker 1: sculptor Carl Andrea. From the outside, it looked like a
Speaker 1: romance for the ages between two incredibly talented and fascinating people,
Speaker 1: but Mendietta and Andrea's inner circle saw something very different.
Speaker 1: Mendy at his untimely death caused a rift in the
Speaker 1: art world, one that pit women against men, feminists against
Speaker 1: non feminists, and a new generation against the old god.
Speaker 1: On Death of an Artist, critically acclaimed curator Helen Molesworth
Speaker 1: revisits Mendieta's death, the trial that followed, and both the
Speaker 1: protest and silence that have accompanied this story ever since.
Speaker 1: Here's the preview. You can follow Anna's story by searching
Speaker 1: for a death of an artist wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: We've arrived at the threshold of our terrible story Sunday,
Speaker 1: September eighth, nineteen eighty five, a mere nine months after
Speaker 1: their wedding. There's a lot we don't know about that evening.
Speaker 1: Here are a few things we know for certain. We
Speaker 1: know that Anna never moved her things as she had
Speaker 1: planned to. We know that the unhappy couple spent the
Speaker 1: evening at Carl's place, an apartment on the thirty fourth
Speaker 1: floor of a relatively new luxury high rise in Greenwich Village.
Speaker 1: That night, like New Yorkers everywhere, they ordered Chinese food
Speaker 1: and watched TV. Then, sometime after five am, a passerby
Speaker 1: on the street below heard a woman's scream, no, no, No.
Speaker 1: A moment later, there was a sound like an explosion
Speaker 1: on the roof of the deli below Carl's apartment. Anna
Speaker 1: had fallen from above. Carl called five twenty nine am.
Speaker 1: We don't have the tape of that call. After the verdict,
Speaker 1: the whole trial record, including the call, was sealed, but
Speaker 1: a reporter who heard it played at trial said Carl.
Speaker 1: Andre's voice was distressed that he wailed and that his
Speaker 1: explanation was interrupted with cries and moans. We've asked voice
Speaker 1: actors to read parts of the transcript of the nine
Speaker 1: one one call Police Worth Emergency, Yes, my wife has
Speaker 1: committed suicide, saying my wife has committed suicide. Carl gives
Speaker 1: the address his phone number and says they're on the
Speaker 1: thirty fourth floor. The operator asks what happened exactly? Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: what happened was we had a my wife is an
Speaker 1: artist and I'm an artist, and we had a chorl
Speaker 1: about the fact that I was more exposed to the
Speaker 1: public than she wasn't She went to the bedroom and
Speaker 1: I went after her, and she went out of the window.
Speaker 1: So she jumped out of the window. How long ago
Speaker 1: did this happen? Well, I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know. It wasn't I don't know.
Speaker 1: They talked for several more seconds, did it and recently?
Speaker 1: Did it happen just now? Oh, it happened just now.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't I can't tell you the building
Speaker 1: and yeah, I don't know, it's it's I can't, I
Speaker 1: can't help you. I can't help you. In September of
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five, I was a sophomore in college in Albany,
Speaker 1: New York. I had already walked on top of one
Speaker 1: of carl Andre's sculptures. They were installed in nearly every
Speaker 1: museum in the country. I'd be lying if I didn't
Speaker 1: tell you how much I love them. I was completely
Speaker 1: turned on by their taboo breaking fuck you energy. The
Speaker 1: severity of his metal plates lying on the floor in
Speaker 1: a simple checkerboard pattern almost struck me as punk in
Speaker 1: my younger Brasher years. I didn't learn about Anna Mendietta
Speaker 1: until years after her death, when I was well into
Speaker 1: graduate school, and even then I learned about her from
Speaker 1: a fellow student, not through any of my professors. I
Speaker 1: was trained by art historians who believe the prime directive
Speaker 1: was to separate the life of the artist from their work.
Speaker 1: This meant no one ever said that Carl Andre was
Speaker 1: married to Anna Mendietta, much less that he was accused
Speaker 1: of murdering her. Topped that off with the fact that
Speaker 1: Anna Mendietta was a Cuban immigrant showing at a feminist
Speaker 1: gallery working with blood, making work that summoned the idea
Speaker 1: of the Earth goddess. Nothing could have been less cool.
Speaker 1: In my philosophically inclined education the privileged theory over feeling.
Speaker 1: But during the first two decades of the twenty first century,
Speaker 1: the world changed a lot and fast, and I think
Speaker 1: I did too. If I had a son, he looked
Speaker 1: like Trebon. That this moment and where we are right
Speaker 1: now is a resurgence from where the civil rights movement
Speaker 1: left up. President Trump is defending a temporary travel band
Speaker 1: for seven Muslim majority countries as a monument of life supprise.
Speaker 1: Thousands of women are using two words on social media
Speaker 1: to identify themselves as survivors of sexual harassment and assault.
Speaker 1: Today it's hashtag me too. I found myself thinking about
Speaker 1: Anna because she did go on to become a free
Speaker 1: to call a like figure, more powerful after her death
Speaker 1: than before, larger than life, revered. Scores of artists, mostly women,
Speaker 1: studied her, reenacted her performances, paid homage to her with
Speaker 1: their own work. They make pilgrimages to the important sites
Speaker 1: of her life Havana, Iowa City, Rome, Greenwich Village. And
Speaker 1: over the years I came to love Anna Mendieta's art
Speaker 1: because it felt so urgent, so relevant, because politics did
Speaker 1: start to feel personal and identity does matter. But could
Speaker 1: I love Mendietta's work while also still being a fan
Speaker 1: of Carl Andre's sculptures, or did I have to choose sides?
Speaker 1: It felt like the only way to answer that question
Speaker 1: was by asking another what really happened the night Anna died?
Speaker 1: I wondered what we might be able to learn if
Speaker 1: we returned to her story. When we first started making
Speaker 1: this podcast, I assumed folks would want to talk about
Speaker 1: what happened between Anna and Carl Man. Was I wrong?