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Speaker 1: Pushkin that this show contains adult language and occasional descriptions

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Speaker 1: of violence. Please keep that in mind when choosing when

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Speaker 1: and where to listen. Previously on Death of an Artist.

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Speaker 1: She was very magnetic, but she was also very very argumentative,

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Speaker 1: and so often people would end up in a fight

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Speaker 1: with her. Yeah, Carl, Carl can be really quite nice

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Speaker 1: and wonderful, except when he drinks too much, he becomes

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Speaker 1: the doctor jacquet Worth emergency. Yeah. Yes, my wife has

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Speaker 1: committed suicide. We had a chorl about the fact that

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Speaker 1: I was more exposed to the public. That she went

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Speaker 1: to the bedroom and I went after her, and she

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Speaker 1: went out of the window. In twenty fourteen, I made

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Speaker 1: a pilgrimage to one of the holy sites of the

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Speaker 1: art world, Dia Beacon. DIA is a sprawling museum housed

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Speaker 1: in an old Nibisco factory in New York's Hudson River Valley.

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Speaker 1: It holds one of the most impressive collections of minimal

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Speaker 1: and conceptual art in the world. The work is always

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Speaker 1: perfectly installed, the vibe is one of purity, more than

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Speaker 1: anywhere else in the country. DIA stands for the belief

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Speaker 1: that art speaks for itself. That it doesn't need institutional interpretation.

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Speaker 1: There are no wall labels, no bells and whistles designed

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Speaker 1: to lure people in. It's a place for true believers,

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Speaker 1: for artists, and for hardcore art lovers like myself to

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Speaker 1: go and look. It's a place for art for art's sake.

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Speaker 1: DIA had just opened the first ever American retrospective of

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Speaker 1: one of the fathers of minimalism, Carl Andre. I was

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Speaker 1: in the midst of being courted for my dream job,

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Speaker 1: a chief curator position in my favorite American city, Los Angeles.

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Speaker 1: His fate would have it, it turned out that the

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Speaker 1: person doing the courting was also the person responsible for

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Speaker 1: the Carl Andre retrospective at DIA, so it seemed like

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Speaker 1: a good idea to see the show. I entered an

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Speaker 1: enormous open gallery. It was filled with both natural daylight

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Speaker 1: and Andre's minimal sculptures metal plates arranged in a checkerboard

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Speaker 1: pattern on the refurbished hardwood floors. It was breathtaking. There

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Speaker 1: were large rectangular pieces of cedars stacked in piles that

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Speaker 1: resembled staircases, a large table dotted with little sculptures made

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Speaker 1: of assembled bits and bobs, all with witty titles, terse

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Speaker 1: poems typed in caps on an old typewriter, or handwritten

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Speaker 1: in block mechanical lettering on graph paper, each letter perfectly

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Speaker 1: occupying one square. After I got my bearings, I asked

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Speaker 1: one of the security guards where the start of the

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Speaker 1: exhibition was. He said there wasn't one. You could just

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Speaker 1: start wherever. I was a little disappointed. I love a

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Speaker 1: story with a beginning, middle, and end. As I resigned

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Speaker 1: myself to just wandering around, my ego was too busy

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Speaker 1: fantasizing about that job in La to give room to

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Speaker 1: any of the questions in the back of my mind.

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Speaker 1: What happens when the art and ideas we once thought

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Speaker 1: were radical suddenly seemed stayed conventional, old fashioned? Even did

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Speaker 1: a man like Andrea deserve to be celebrated, worshiped, even

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Speaker 1: at a place like Dia? And what about Anamndieta. I

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Speaker 1: might have been avoiding these questions, but other people were

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Speaker 1: asking them, and they were angry. I'm your host, Helen

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Speaker 1: Molesworth and from Pushkin Industries, something Else and Sony Music Entertainment.

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Speaker 1: This is Death of an Artist, Episode two. What the

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Speaker 1: Wall label Doesn't tell You? After Carl called nine one one.

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Speaker 1: The police showed up, expecting to find the aftermath of

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Speaker 1: a suicide, but when they arrived things seemed off. The

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Speaker 1: brought Carl to the station, where two detectives began questioning him.

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Speaker 1: Detective Richard Nieves still remembers it. What he said to

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Speaker 1: nine to eleven was different than he told us in

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Speaker 1: the nine one one call. Carl had told the operator

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Speaker 1: that he and Anna had had a fight about who

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Speaker 1: was more famous, and then he said, quote, I went

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Speaker 1: after her and she went out the window. But now

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Speaker 1: he told us that he didn't know what happened to her.

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Speaker 1: She just disappeared with two detectives in front of him.

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Speaker 1: He said he'd stayed up watching TV after Anna went

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Speaker 1: to bed, and that when he went into the bedroom

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Speaker 1: to join her, he realized she was not in the apartment.

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Speaker 1: No mention of any argument. We confronted him on that

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Speaker 1: that he had two different stories, and he just said, well,

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Speaker 1: I said what I said, and that was it. It's

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Speaker 1: like he was trying maybe to tell us that, you know,

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Speaker 1: just take my word for it and shut up, and

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Speaker 1: that's it. That's all I'm going to say. Meanwhile, an

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Speaker 1: officer got a statement from the doorman of a nearby building.

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Speaker 1: He had been on his way to get some coffee

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Speaker 1: at the deli below Carl's high rise apartment. That's when

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Speaker 1: he heard a woman's voice pleading no, no, no, from

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Speaker 1: somewhere above. A few seconds later, the doorman heard what

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Speaker 1: sounded like an explosion. The deli night manager said he

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Speaker 1: heard it too, but it sounded more like a thud,

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Speaker 1: something landing on the roof of the deli. Anna had fallen.

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Speaker 1: And then there were the scratches. Nievis and his colleague,

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Speaker 1: a veteran detective named Ron Finelli, asked Carl about a

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Speaker 1: scratch on his nose. Carl said it had happened over

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Speaker 1: a week ago. He said that a straw gust of

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Speaker 1: wind when he was out in the terrorist said, shoved

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Speaker 1: the door into his face. But you know, a week

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Speaker 1: ago we would have been scabbed and tried. But that

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Speaker 1: the scratch, it looked pretty new to me. Carl, still

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Speaker 1: at the police station, agreed to return to his apartment

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Speaker 1: with the detectives. Detective Nieves noticed that the bedroom was

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Speaker 1: in disarray, an overturned chair, tossled bedclothes, and in the

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Speaker 1: kitchen there were several empty wine and champagne bottles, and

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Speaker 1: one other thing stood out for Detective Nieves, the window sill.

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Speaker 1: The weather was pretty high. I understand that she was

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Speaker 1: a short woman, and in order for her to jump,

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Speaker 1: she would have had to go upon a chair on

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Speaker 1: the edge of the bed but accidentally fall from that.

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Speaker 1: Now it's it's unless she was setting up there, which

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Speaker 1: I understand that she was afraid of heights, so us

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Speaker 1: that was not possible. As they spoke, Carl offered to

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Speaker 1: show the dectives a catalog of his work. I just

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Speaker 1: looked at it, and he was proud of it, and

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Speaker 1: you know, and he was saying that he was more

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Speaker 1: successful than she was. But then again, he was older

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Speaker 1: and he had many, you know, more years of experience.

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Speaker 1: The crime scene squad dusted for prints and took photographs.

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Speaker 1: Carl asked the cops if he could make some phone calls,

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Speaker 1: and then he phoned several friends to cancel dinner plants.

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Speaker 1: At no point did Carl attempt to call on his

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Speaker 1: family to break the news. By this time, the two

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Speaker 1: detectives were starting to feel like they had a murder

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Speaker 1: on their hands. I knew he was guilty. He was

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Speaker 1: just covering up. He was guilty of just kind of

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Speaker 1: picking her up and just you know, just throwing her

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Speaker 1: out the window. She landed in between the Delhi and

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Speaker 1: the Chinese takeout. It may have been the crime scene

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Speaker 1: unit that said if she fell, she would have fell here,

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Speaker 1: not over there. The police decided to take Carl back

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Speaker 1: to the station for more questioning. Word began to spread

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Speaker 1: that something terrible had happened to Anna and that Carl

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Speaker 1: was about to be arrested. A group of Carl's close friends,

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Speaker 1: many of whom were major players in the art world,

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Speaker 1: sprung into action. Toby We went to a police station

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Speaker 1: to ask what had happened, not just myself, but various

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Speaker 1: and sundry other friends. That's Lawrence Wiener, tall, bird, thin,

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Speaker 1: notoriously funny, a man who almost always had a cigarette

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Speaker 1: in either his mouth or his hand. He was a

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Speaker 1: much loved conceptual artist and one of Carl's oldest friends.

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Speaker 1: He helped Carl find a lawyer, any lawyer, and fast. Ultimately,

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Speaker 1: there would be three different lawyers who would come to

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Speaker 1: Carl's aid. First up was Jerry Rosam. Lawyers like want

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Speaker 1: to get their nose into the tent as soon as possible.

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Speaker 1: He would trying to get control of the case. I

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Speaker 1: didn't have that, you know feeling, is it thought that

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Speaker 1: that here was a really important artist in need of

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Speaker 1: some kind of help. At the police station, an assistant

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Speaker 1: DA had shown up, a young woman named Martha Bashford.

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Speaker 1: She made sure Carl understood his rights, requested photography of

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Speaker 1: the scratches not only on his face, but on his

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Speaker 1: upper left arm as well, and asked if he would

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Speaker 1: be willing to have their conversation videotaped. Just then, Carl's

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Speaker 1: lawyer showed up. My advice to the Carl was to

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Speaker 1: not go any further with any video statements. From a

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Speaker 1: legal point of view, I thought that he would wasn't

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Speaker 1: appropriate for him to do. Carl took his lawyer's advice

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Speaker 1: and declined to make a videotape statement. He also said

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Speaker 1: he didn't want to be photographed. When the assistant DA

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Speaker 1: heard Carl was refusing both a video statement and having

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Speaker 1: his picture taken, that's when Marsh I've said, f you

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Speaker 1: if he's under arrest now. He didn't have a choice,

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Speaker 1: and the detective found another scratch, this time on his back,

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Speaker 1: right below his neck. After pictures were taken, Carl was

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Speaker 1: arraigned and sent to Rikers. Meanwhile, his lawyers were already

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Speaker 1: working to bail him out. And I just made an

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Speaker 1: argument that he was a very famous artist, and they

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Speaker 1: had like a half million dosworth of art in New York,

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Speaker 1: and that all of this was substantial collateral. That basically

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Speaker 1: there was no way for him to go into hiding

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Speaker 1: because he was such a public person, even though you're

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Speaker 1: a judge had probably never heard of him, but you're

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Speaker 1: this is an esoteric art, world contemporary art. So I

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Speaker 1: was able to portray that to the judge. Of the

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Speaker 1: judge set Bay Twitter fifty thousand dollars, Carl's second lawyer,

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Speaker 1: Jerry Ordivar, was tasked with getting a quarter million dollars

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Speaker 1: of bail money. They called someone who liew of Andre

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Speaker 1: and would be sympathetic and who would have the funds

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Speaker 1: or the cloud to get the funds. The turn to

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Speaker 1: fifty thousand dollars and he called his bank and they

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Speaker 1: delivered a check to me. That person was Carl's equally

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Speaker 1: famous friend, the legendary painter Frank Stella. Stella had made

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Speaker 1: history with a game changing suite of black paintings made

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Speaker 1: by dipping your average hardware store brush into a can

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Speaker 1: of house paint and then meticulously covering the canvas with

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Speaker 1: stripes of black paint. Both Andrea and Stella had attended

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Speaker 1: the same prep school, though their friendship started in earnest

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Speaker 1: when they moved to New York in hopes of becoming artists.

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Speaker 1: Stella was rich and famous, and in this instance he

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Speaker 1: was also generous and loyal. He worked with some of

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Speaker 1: Carl's other friends to gather the bail money as fast

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Speaker 1: as possible, and so the lawyer headed to Rikers to

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Speaker 1: pick up Carl along with a two hundred and fifty

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Speaker 1: thousand dollar check and two passengers, artist Lawrence Weiner and

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Speaker 1: the renowned art dealer Paula Cooper. Paula was and still

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Speaker 1: is Carl's gallerist more than anyone else. Paula was the

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Speaker 1: person who made sure that Carl had a place to

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Speaker 1: show his work to the public and to sell it

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Speaker 1: to maintain his livelihood. She's legendary because she was the

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Speaker 1: first person to set up shop in Soho, and she's

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Speaker 1: always been beloved by artists because of her commitment to

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Speaker 1: new ideas. Carl waited in a cell away from the

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Speaker 1: general population, special treatment because of his art world fame.

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Speaker 1: They bailed him out, and Lawrence Weener recalled the somber

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Speaker 1: drive back from jail. There's four people sitting in a

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Speaker 1: car in absolute shock. The truth was just the most

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Speaker 1: horrendous situation. No, Carl is a very private man, and

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Speaker 1: the only thing he ever expressed to me was this

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Speaker 1: deep sense of loss that Anna wasn't there. According to Lawrence,

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Speaker 1: there was no discussion about what happened to Anna. I

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Speaker 1: don't intrude on my friends, and that's not the kind

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Speaker 1: of thing you can intrude on it. There are two questions.

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Speaker 1: You asked, you know what happened, and somebody says no,

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Speaker 1: and then they say that there's a deep sense of loss.

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Speaker 1: They really are totally broken up about it. And that's

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Speaker 1: the end of it. What else is there to say,

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Speaker 1: I confess this comment stuns me. This instinct to be silent,

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Speaker 1: to never talk about it, to sweep it under the rug,

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Speaker 1: to think there's nothing more to discuss. I find this

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Speaker 1: disturbed because silence would ultimately be Carl's legal strategy, and

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Speaker 1: it's set the template for the art world silence in

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Speaker 1: the decades that followed. To understand how Carl came to

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Speaker 1: have friends with two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in

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Speaker 1: their back pocket, lawyers at the ready, and then know

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Speaker 1: how to get their friends sprung from jail before you

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Speaker 1: had to spend too many hours at rikers. I'm going

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Speaker 1: to have to take you back to the beginning. I'll

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Speaker 1: tell you the story the way Carl told it in

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Speaker 1: an interview for Art Forum. I was born in Quincy, Massachusetts,

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Speaker 1: many many years ago. I always liked art class. Whenever

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Speaker 1: I said that to my parents, boy, I loved art class,

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Speaker 1: and my father was thinking, of course, let's clay. Carl's

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Speaker 1: father was an immigrant from Sweden who worked as a

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Speaker 1: marine raftsman at Quincy's famous shipyards. He read poetry at

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Speaker 1: the dinner table and forbade his wife to work. Carl

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Speaker 1: described his childhood playing in the salt marshes of northern

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Speaker 1: Massachusetts as quote almost Ferrell. He excelled in his public

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Speaker 1: elementary school and earned himself a full scholarship to one

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Speaker 1: of the East Coast's most prestigious private schools, Phillips and

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Speaker 1: Over Academy. Even though Frank Stella was one of cars

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Speaker 1: Phillips Academy classmates, they didn't meet until after Carl moved

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Speaker 1: to New York in nineteen fifty seven. Frank even let

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Speaker 1: Carl use his studio for a while. Around this time,

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Speaker 1: Carl was mostly writing poetry and made his living working

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Speaker 1: on freight trains. His four year stint working the railroad,

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Speaker 1: his friendship with Frank Stella, and his childhood and Quincy

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Speaker 1: would all become part of his legend. Here he is

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Speaker 1: reading one of his poems. He has Quincy Index one,

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Speaker 1: a list of words describing his birthplace. Abigail Academy, Adams, Adams, Adams, Adams, Adams, Adams, Adams, Adams, Adams, Adams, Adams, Artery,

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Speaker 1: Atlantic Bay, Bethlem Black's Blue, Boston, Brave, broad Book. Carl

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Speaker 1: wrote poetry throughout his career, but it would be the

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Speaker 1: sculpture that really got him noticed. Here he is in

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Speaker 1: a documentary about minimalism. He's the first of eleven artists,

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Speaker 1: all white, all men. He explains how he finds materials

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Speaker 1: to put together, usually sometime once a day. I'm walking

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Speaker 1: along Mercy Street, walking between the post office and the gallery.

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Speaker 1: We see Carl walking in a relatively derelict street in Soho,

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Speaker 1: which in the nineteen sixties was still a light manufacturing neighborhood,

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Speaker 1: not yet home to fancy renovated lofts and the art

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Speaker 1: galleries of the nineteen eighties or the glorified shopping mall

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Speaker 1: it's become today. While walking, Carl finds five or six

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Speaker 1: rectangular metal plates, which he assembles into a line on

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Speaker 1: the pavement. Now, this is absolutely like gold. Define these

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Speaker 1: because these are the materials of which I actually make

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Speaker 1: my sculptures. I really like the elements, the aluminum and copper,

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Speaker 1: magnesium and steel and lead and zinc. As we watch

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Speaker 1: him nudge the plates into alignment with his foot, we

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Speaker 1: see the new art and the new artist at work.

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Speaker 1: Nothing is fixed, no bolts, no welding. The pieces are

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Speaker 1: simply placed or stacked. Everything can be picked up and

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Speaker 1: moved around. Nothing is permanent. The act of assembling the

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Speaker 1: work and the act of walking on it or looking

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Speaker 1: at it are almost the same. All of the acts

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Speaker 1: ask you to think about the space you are in

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Speaker 1: and how that space exists, both before and after your

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Speaker 1: arrival and departure. This refusal to make anything like a monument,

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Speaker 1: or anything permanent, or anything that related to what things

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Speaker 1: looked like before was completely mind blowing for folks inside

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Speaker 1: the art world. I remember in sixty five having a

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Speaker 1: real epiphany. I warked into the galler and there were

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Speaker 1: piles of bricks on the floor, and I thought, oh, oh,

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Speaker 1: there's some construction going on. And I started to leave

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Speaker 1: the gallery and then I thought, wait a minute, what

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Speaker 1: if it's art? And I went and aft and it

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Speaker 1: went art, and I got so excited. It was like

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Speaker 1: a like a revolutionary moment. This is Peter Sheldall, who,

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Speaker 1: even at eighty years old, as the enthusiasm and sprightly

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Speaker 1: energy of a teenager. He's the renowned art critic for

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Speaker 1: The New Yorker, though back then he was mostly writing

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Speaker 1: for The Village Voice. It was literal in the world,

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Speaker 1: real stuff, you know. Form was condensed to tidiness, and

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Speaker 1: it was about me. It was about my presence barking

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Speaker 1: around these things. It was such a cleanliness and dignity

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Speaker 1: and insolence about it. I got a sense of a

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Speaker 1: revolution and that I was here at the start. It

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Speaker 1: was something that shifted, shifted to culture. You know. I

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Speaker 1: was like a pivot and nothing that's quite the same afterwards.

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Speaker 1: That's high praise coming from someone who saw almost every

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Speaker 1: exhibition there was to see in New York during the

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Speaker 1: nineteen sixties and seventies. But then Peter actually met Carl

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Speaker 1: when I'm matt him did not like him. You know

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Speaker 1: what he would say, Prima Donna and a bully. In

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Speaker 1: the before times, like before the Internet, even the New

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Speaker 1: York art world basically revolved around a handful of bars

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Speaker 1: and restaurants in Lower Manhattan. Bars such as the Cedar

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Speaker 1: Tavern and Max's Kansas City regularly get name checked in

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Speaker 1: the art history books. The basic template remained the same.

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Speaker 1: An art bar is a kind of divy bar where

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Speaker 1: you just show up and know that folks would be there.

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Speaker 1: In my day, it was the Shark Bar on Prince Street.

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Speaker 1: Once they're people, okay, mostly men, raged on about this

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Speaker 1: that or the other art theory and so and so's

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Speaker 1: latest exhibition or whatever exhibition review had been published in

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Speaker 1: last week's New York Times. Bars were where high stakes

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Speaker 1: ideas and strongly held feelings got mixed with politics and

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00:22:01,040 --> 00:22:05,320
Speaker 1: booze to get sorted out in a major way. And

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Speaker 1: so at one of these art bars Peter and Carl met.

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Speaker 1: I started talking to him, and he said, you're like

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Speaker 1: Frank O'Hara, right, Frank O'Hara was a prominent poet as

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Speaker 1: well as a young curator at the Museum of Modern Art.

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Speaker 1: And then he started running down Frank O'Hara, and I

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Speaker 1: gave him the finger and laid my finger up an

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Speaker 1: indoctive nose, and you know, and I'm still marveling that

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Speaker 1: he didn't kill me. I mean he could have. He

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Speaker 1: was a strong man. I mean, it's right, and I was.

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Speaker 1: I was a skinny poet and we were drunk. I

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Speaker 1: was drunk. Did you continue to see andre in bars?

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Speaker 1: I see him, but but not not talked to him.

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Speaker 1: Disavoided him. You avoided it. Real Peter's version of the

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Speaker 1: nineteen sixties art world sounds like West Side Story, complete

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Speaker 1: with rival art gangs scoping out different parts of SOHO,

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Speaker 1: and much of the action took place at Max's Kansas City.

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Speaker 1: The division was between the Warhole people and the minimalist people.

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Speaker 1: The minimalist people were on the front along the bar,

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Speaker 1: and the Warhole people were in the back room. And

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Speaker 1: I could say that going in was like walking past

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Speaker 1: heavy metal to Strawberry Shortcake. And I went to the

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Speaker 1: Warhold people. I'm not sure how much the Insider Baseball

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Speaker 1: is translating here, so for those of you who aren't

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Speaker 1: up to speed on your art world posses. Shortcake refers

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Speaker 1: to Warhole's notoriously Swiss friends as they were called back

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Speaker 1: in the day, meaning gay people and anyone on the

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Speaker 1: fringe of white masculinity circa nineteen sixty You went to

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Speaker 1: the Shortcake, Yeah, well, I mean it was I felt

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Speaker 1: comfortable there. All the minimums are ashall Robert's mission, well, Donald, Judge, Jesus, Hey,

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Speaker 1: I'll accept shallow wit who was an angel in human form.

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Speaker 1: What a wonderful guy. Okay, back to the main story.

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Speaker 1: The other thing Carl was getting noticed for were his politics.

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Speaker 1: He was an important member of the art Workers Coalition.

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Speaker 1: Art historian Julia Brian Wilson describes it this way. Artworkers

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Speaker 1: Coalition was a brief lived artists rights organization that came

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Speaker 1: together in nineteen sixty nine, originally around issues of kind

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Speaker 1: of artists rights visa VI the museum and the institution.

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Speaker 1: Does the museum have the right to display an artist's

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Speaker 1: work in a way that the artist doesn't want or intent,

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Speaker 1: and very quickly demanded a whole slate of things that

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Speaker 1: included more representation around African American artists and Puerto Rican artists.

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Speaker 1: Carl was known as the resident Marxist of the group.

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Speaker 1: He was the one who seemed to have actually read

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Speaker 1: Carl Marx. I probably first read Carl's Artworkers Coalition Statement

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Speaker 1: and grad school, and I'm just as enthralled with it

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Speaker 1: now as I was then. It's so badass. The problem,

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Speaker 1: he says, is not museums, but this baggy thing called

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Speaker 1: the art world, a world he thinks should cease to exist.

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Speaker 1: No galleries standing in between the artist and the collector,

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Speaker 1: no critic in between the artists and the public, just

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Speaker 1: artists making work for themselves and anyone else who shows

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Speaker 1: up with interest and curiosity. Written in nineteen sixty nine,

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Speaker 1: it's still a kind of utopia I could get behind.

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Speaker 1: The Fact is Carl might not have always been well liked,

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Speaker 1: but damn if he didn't have good politics. There was

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Speaker 1: Carl the anti war activist and Carl the Artworker's Coalition activist,

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Speaker 1: and there was also the Carl who sent checks to

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Speaker 1: feminist causes. Between his groundbreaking work, his sharp tongue, and

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Speaker 1: that he showed at the trailblazing Paula Cooper Gallery. All

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00:26:28,960 --> 00:26:31,639
Speaker 1: of this contributed to a reputation that was hard to

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Speaker 1: be denied. But Carl's official biography, the one that would

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Speaker 1: appear in every exhibition catalog about his work, started and

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Speaker 1: stopped with Quincy and the railroad job. And this is

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Speaker 1: pretty much the standard of how artists were discussed, birthplace, school,

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Speaker 1: other important men they knew, with little to no mention

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Speaker 1: of the wives, lovers, or children they spent their lives with.

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Speaker 1: Carl Andre spent six years of his life with Anna Mendieta.

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Speaker 1: Anna was born into a well to do family in Havana.

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Speaker 1: Both of her parents, Ignacio and Raquel, came from political

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Speaker 1: families dotted with generations of military men and politicians. Her father,

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Speaker 1: a lawyer, carried on this tradition and was an early

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Speaker 1: supporter of Fidel Castro. Their house in Havana bustled with

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Speaker 1: extended family and maids and cooks. They spent a lot

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Speaker 1: of time at a family beach house that has been

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Speaker 1: called a mansion. It was in Varadero Beach, a long

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Speaker 1: stretch of white sand that has been a resort destination

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Speaker 1: for decades. Her friend Talia Delgado, whose family socialized with

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Speaker 1: the Mendiettas in Varadero remembered it this way. I remember

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Speaker 1: going to the beach to Bararedo, where her family used

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Speaker 1: to also go. Our lives were pretty easy, filled with

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Speaker 1: a lot of caretakers, an extended family, and Anna's outspokenness.

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Speaker 1: Well apparently that started pretty early. She was very, very strong,

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Speaker 1: determined person, even as a child. I remember telling me

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Speaker 1: that whenever her parents had a fight, she would go

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00:28:33,359 --> 00:28:35,840
Speaker 1: in and spreak it up and say, I don't want

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Speaker 1: to hear any more of this, because if you fight,

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00:28:38,320 --> 00:28:40,800
Speaker 1: you're going to break up, and if you break up,

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Speaker 1: it's going to be terrible for me and for my siblings.

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Speaker 1: So you have to really keep it together and work

399
00:28:45,880 --> 00:28:53,800
Speaker 1: this out. This idyllic childhood would not last. This was

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00:28:53,880 --> 00:28:56,640
Speaker 1: the scene of turmoil in the capital Havana as the

401
00:28:56,720 --> 00:29:00,680
Speaker 1: climax of revolution was reached. Anyone suspect of sympathy for

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00:29:00,720 --> 00:29:04,840
Speaker 1: the Bautista regime came in for a rough time. In

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00:29:05,040 --> 00:29:08,800
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty nine, when Anna was eleven years old, Fidel

404
00:29:08,920 --> 00:29:15,240
Speaker 1: Castro's Revolutionary Army forced President Bautista out of power. At first,

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00:29:15,480 --> 00:29:17,800
Speaker 1: Anna's father was swept up in the new wave of

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00:29:17,920 --> 00:29:22,440
Speaker 1: optimism and possibility that Castro represented, and he secured his

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00:29:22,560 --> 00:29:26,760
Speaker 1: place in the new government. However, as Castro began to

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00:29:26,840 --> 00:29:31,600
Speaker 1: crack down on Cubans with ties to American businesses, Ignazio

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00:29:31,680 --> 00:29:36,160
Speaker 1: Mendieta came under fire. The collective promise that was made

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00:29:37,480 --> 00:29:45,720
Speaker 1: was slowly being taken over by a very autocratic managerial policy.

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Speaker 1: This is Tanya Brigera, a Cuban artist, an activist. You've

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00:29:50,760 --> 00:29:53,400
Speaker 1: heard her as our voice of Anna, but she's also

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00:29:53,560 --> 00:29:57,959
Speaker 1: something of an expert about Cuba's autocratic policies. She's been

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00:29:58,080 --> 00:30:02,120
Speaker 1: detained several times by the Cuban authorities because of her

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00:30:02,280 --> 00:30:07,760
Speaker 1: art and her activism. At some point, Castro started deciding

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00:30:07,840 --> 00:30:12,320
Speaker 1: thing without consulting anybody. He started, you know, having an

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00:30:12,360 --> 00:30:15,560
Speaker 1: autonomy that you should not have the president. He was

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00:30:15,720 --> 00:30:19,960
Speaker 1: very clear from the nineteen fifty nine that it was

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00:30:20,160 --> 00:30:24,280
Speaker 1: with him or against him. While Anna's father maintained public

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00:30:24,320 --> 00:30:28,080
Speaker 1: support for Castro, he refused to join the Communist Party

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00:30:28,440 --> 00:30:34,040
Speaker 1: and ultimately became an elite counter revolutionary, working clandestinely to

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00:30:34,280 --> 00:30:39,440
Speaker 1: challenge Castro's power. Anna and her sister rat Clean followed

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00:30:39,520 --> 00:30:42,200
Speaker 1: in his footsteps, going so far as to hand out

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Speaker 1: anti Castro leaflets. This is what Anna told a reporter

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00:30:46,520 --> 00:30:53,320
Speaker 1: in one of her very few filmed interviews Miami. Tanya translates,

426
00:30:55,280 --> 00:30:58,320
Speaker 1: my grandmama politicized me since I was a younger in Cardines.

427
00:30:58,560 --> 00:31:01,760
Speaker 1: She always told me all the war stories, all this

428
00:31:01,880 --> 00:31:05,040
Speaker 1: story of Cuba, everything about that side of the family.

429
00:31:06,200 --> 00:31:08,920
Speaker 1: By nineteen sixty, things were starting to get dangerous for

430
00:31:09,000 --> 00:31:13,959
Speaker 1: the Mendietta family. Ultimately, Ignazio would be arrested and sentenced

431
00:31:14,000 --> 00:31:17,760
Speaker 1: to twenty years in prison. But right before that happened,

432
00:31:18,040 --> 00:31:20,960
Speaker 1: the family made the difficult decision to send Anna and

433
00:31:21,080 --> 00:31:24,000
Speaker 1: her sister to the United States as part of a

434
00:31:24,120 --> 00:31:28,320
Speaker 1: secret Cold War program that sent Cuban children to America.

435
00:31:29,000 --> 00:31:32,200
Speaker 1: On his mother pregnant with her third child, her husband

436
00:31:32,280 --> 00:31:41,480
Speaker 1: and trouble stayed behind. Please, he's from Cuba. He's going

437
00:31:41,520 --> 00:31:49,240
Speaker 1: to stay here a WHI. It's a refugee camp. He's

438
00:31:49,240 --> 00:31:53,480
Speaker 1: a refugee. The audio you're hearing is from a film

439
00:31:53,600 --> 00:31:57,160
Speaker 1: made by the US government designed to explain to thousands

440
00:31:57,240 --> 00:32:00,680
Speaker 1: of Cuban children why their parents had sent them away.

441
00:32:03,440 --> 00:32:06,160
Speaker 1: When you are sending away to school for the first time,

442
00:32:07,200 --> 00:32:12,040
Speaker 1: or you go away to come, everything is strange. Every

443
00:32:12,120 --> 00:32:17,080
Speaker 1: body's strange. This is just an in between plays, or

444
00:32:17,160 --> 00:32:20,480
Speaker 1: you wait until they find you a foster home. Somewhere

445
00:32:20,560 --> 00:32:24,200
Speaker 1: in the United Anna and Raclean joined the fourteen thousand

446
00:32:24,320 --> 00:32:27,160
Speaker 1: other children flown to the US as part of Operation

447
00:32:27,240 --> 00:32:31,000
Speaker 1: Peter Pan. Where they landed was a far cry from

448
00:32:31,080 --> 00:32:34,800
Speaker 1: never never Land. The sisters boarded a plane in tropical,

449
00:32:34,960 --> 00:32:39,520
Speaker 1: cosmopolitan Havana. They eventually ended up in the flat, cold

450
00:32:39,640 --> 00:32:43,280
Speaker 1: corn fields of Iowa and were immediately sent to a

451
00:32:43,400 --> 00:32:47,080
Speaker 1: Catholic orphanage. They get off the plane in Iowa and

452
00:32:47,240 --> 00:32:50,440
Speaker 1: this priest comes on to tell them how they're very

453
00:32:51,480 --> 00:32:53,600
Speaker 1: lucky to be in the United States, and the United

454
00:32:53,600 --> 00:32:56,720
Speaker 1: States has a lot of development. For example, he said,

455
00:32:56,800 --> 00:33:00,800
Speaker 1: look at this, we have ballot pans. And Anna and

456
00:33:00,960 --> 00:33:03,240
Speaker 1: her sister looked at each other like, oh my god,

457
00:33:03,960 --> 00:33:06,240
Speaker 1: where we ended up. I mean, they knew all about

458
00:33:06,360 --> 00:33:09,959
Speaker 1: poppointments in Cuba, and they were just really shocked by

459
00:33:10,960 --> 00:33:14,480
Speaker 1: the lack of knowledge really of who these kids were

460
00:33:15,000 --> 00:33:20,480
Speaker 1: and where they were coming from. It's hard to imagine

461
00:33:20,800 --> 00:33:23,960
Speaker 1: these two sisters ripped from their beach house, their big

462
00:33:24,040 --> 00:33:28,360
Speaker 1: extended family, their social status, and suddenly placed in an

463
00:33:28,520 --> 00:33:32,800
Speaker 1: orphanage organized by age, which meant they were immediately separated.

464
00:33:34,200 --> 00:33:37,200
Speaker 1: The sisters were shuffled through a few different foster homes

465
00:33:37,280 --> 00:33:40,280
Speaker 1: and a boarding school, all of which made the temporary

466
00:33:40,360 --> 00:33:46,400
Speaker 1: separation from their parents feel more and more permanent. This displacement,

467
00:33:46,760 --> 00:33:50,800
Speaker 1: as emotional as it was physical, would have a profound effect.

468
00:33:51,720 --> 00:33:56,080
Speaker 1: Here's Anna's friend be Ruby Rich. She's lied to about

469
00:33:56,120 --> 00:33:58,640
Speaker 1: where she and her sister are being sent. They are

470
00:33:58,720 --> 00:34:01,800
Speaker 1: both lied to about being kept together. They're allied to

471
00:34:01,920 --> 00:34:04,520
Speaker 1: about going to a home like their own. They're allied

472
00:34:04,560 --> 00:34:07,760
Speaker 1: to about everything, and over and over, every time they moved,

473
00:34:07,800 --> 00:34:10,400
Speaker 1: they allied to again. So she not only has no

474
00:34:10,520 --> 00:34:15,600
Speaker 1: control as a child, but she is absolutely betrayed as

475
00:34:15,640 --> 00:34:19,680
Speaker 1: a child repeatedly. And I think that must have left

476
00:34:19,840 --> 00:34:23,719
Speaker 1: a really deep mark. Years later, Anna described the long

477
00:34:23,880 --> 00:34:27,440
Speaker 1: lasting effect of this displacement to a group of college students.

478
00:34:28,239 --> 00:34:32,600
Speaker 1: Here's Tanya Brigera voicing Anna again, since I left Cuba

479
00:34:32,680 --> 00:34:35,279
Speaker 1: when I was twelve because of the political situation there,

480
00:34:35,920 --> 00:34:40,640
Speaker 1: that mark has marked, you know, an aspect of my life,

481
00:34:40,719 --> 00:34:44,040
Speaker 1: so that I have failed, that I was torn away

482
00:34:44,160 --> 00:34:52,680
Speaker 1: from the womb, from the modern land. Miraculously, despite all

483
00:34:52,760 --> 00:34:56,560
Speaker 1: of this trauma, both sisters managed to graduate from high

484
00:34:56,560 --> 00:34:59,160
Speaker 1: school and by the time their mother and little brother

485
00:34:59,320 --> 00:35:03,920
Speaker 1: joined them nineteen sixty six, Anna had already discovered her calling.

486
00:35:04,719 --> 00:35:08,480
Speaker 1: She wanted to be an artist. I think also that

487
00:35:08,600 --> 00:35:13,239
Speaker 1: she's intoxicated by art making. I think it delivers her

488
00:35:13,360 --> 00:35:17,440
Speaker 1: to herself in a way that nothing else had. And

489
00:35:17,640 --> 00:35:20,000
Speaker 1: I think she's able there to put together all the

490
00:35:20,120 --> 00:35:24,560
Speaker 1: different parts of her personality and her life and make

491
00:35:24,719 --> 00:35:29,000
Speaker 1: something powerful out of that. And she'd been powerless, very

492
00:35:29,040 --> 00:35:33,000
Speaker 1: powerless for a very key part of her life, and

493
00:35:33,160 --> 00:35:35,480
Speaker 1: I think that part of her really needed filling up

494
00:35:35,880 --> 00:35:45,319
Speaker 1: with its opposite. What happened next was one of those

495
00:35:45,440 --> 00:35:48,880
Speaker 1: plot twists that can only be called fate. On a

496
00:35:48,960 --> 00:35:53,000
Speaker 1: transferred to the University of Iowa, where against all the odds,

497
00:35:53,560 --> 00:35:55,840
Speaker 1: she ended up enrolled in one of the most avant

498
00:35:55,880 --> 00:35:58,799
Speaker 1: garde art departments in the country, led by a guy

499
00:35:59,160 --> 00:36:03,000
Speaker 1: named Hans Brader. Brader came out of a super radical

500
00:36:03,080 --> 00:36:06,400
Speaker 1: group of performance artists, and he was inviting all of

501
00:36:06,480 --> 00:36:08,960
Speaker 1: the most cutting edge people from New York to come

502
00:36:09,000 --> 00:36:12,920
Speaker 1: in lecture at the university. Brader's radical program was like

503
00:36:13,000 --> 00:36:16,480
Speaker 1: a portal to another world, and Anna went right through it.

504
00:36:17,160 --> 00:36:21,960
Speaker 1: He identified her energy immediately and the two became lovers yep.

505
00:36:22,320 --> 00:36:25,719
Speaker 1: Anna was that girl, the super smart one, the wild one,

506
00:36:26,040 --> 00:36:28,640
Speaker 1: the one that slept with the teacher. But their thing

507
00:36:28,760 --> 00:36:31,480
Speaker 1: was no flash in the pam. They stayed together for years.

508
00:36:34,840 --> 00:36:37,960
Speaker 1: While she was in Iowa, she moved from painting to performance.

509
00:36:38,640 --> 00:36:41,719
Speaker 1: She said paintings were an illusion. They weren't real enough

510
00:36:41,800 --> 00:36:44,759
Speaker 1: for her. What was real to her was trying to

511
00:36:44,840 --> 00:36:48,879
Speaker 1: figure out the violence of the world around her, specifically

512
00:36:48,960 --> 00:36:51,720
Speaker 1: the rape and murder that had recently happened on campus.

513
00:36:52,840 --> 00:36:56,799
Speaker 1: In one performance, she invited viewers into her apartment where

514
00:36:56,840 --> 00:37:00,320
Speaker 1: she was stripped down, bent over a table, and covered

515
00:37:00,360 --> 00:37:04,160
Speaker 1: with animal blood. She was just as radical as the

516
00:37:04,280 --> 00:37:06,880
Speaker 1: artist from New York, and that's where she was headed.

517
00:37:09,600 --> 00:37:12,279
Speaker 1: In January of nineteen seventy eight, Anna moved to New

518
00:37:12,400 --> 00:37:16,040
Speaker 1: York City. Hans helped her get situated by introducing her

519
00:37:16,080 --> 00:37:19,520
Speaker 1: to artists, one of whom was the filmmaker Ella Troyano.

520
00:37:20,200 --> 00:37:23,560
Speaker 1: Here's how Ella remembered Anna when she first arrived in Manhattan.

521
00:37:24,200 --> 00:37:27,840
Speaker 1: I remember she had this notebook where she was so

522
00:37:28,000 --> 00:37:31,200
Speaker 1: worried about money that she was writing down in a

523
00:37:31,320 --> 00:37:35,439
Speaker 1: column every single thing that she spent money on. Every day.

524
00:37:36,480 --> 00:37:39,400
Speaker 1: Anna Wood brag that she furnished her entire apartment with

525
00:37:39,480 --> 00:37:43,040
Speaker 1: stuff she found on the street. Mattress and all her

526
00:37:43,120 --> 00:37:47,120
Speaker 1: early years in New York were a whirlwind. She worked

527
00:37:47,200 --> 00:37:49,560
Speaker 1: whatever job she could to make ends meet, and she

528
00:37:49,760 --> 00:37:53,080
Speaker 1: was slowly gaining traction in the art world, appearing in

529
00:37:53,160 --> 00:37:56,759
Speaker 1: group shows, making all the right connections, and eventually she

530
00:37:56,920 --> 00:38:04,759
Speaker 1: met Carl. Here's ele Troiano again. You've got somebody who

531
00:38:05,080 --> 00:38:07,560
Speaker 1: is in the city who totally believes an art, who

532
00:38:07,680 --> 00:38:11,920
Speaker 1: is very, very poor, is working her ass off to

533
00:38:12,160 --> 00:38:15,440
Speaker 1: get to situations where she can meet people that can

534
00:38:15,520 --> 00:38:19,759
Speaker 1: give her a show, and she does everything right. And

535
00:38:20,000 --> 00:38:24,120
Speaker 1: here is somebody all of a sudden, who, by the way,

536
00:38:24,320 --> 00:38:28,600
Speaker 1: looks a little bit like Hans Braider. Looking at pictures

537
00:38:28,640 --> 00:38:31,439
Speaker 1: of Carl and Hans, you can clearly see that Anna

538
00:38:31,480 --> 00:38:36,240
Speaker 1: had a type. They were both stocky and bearded, bearish

539
00:38:36,400 --> 00:38:40,000
Speaker 1: kind of men. When Carl came courting, some of Anna's

540
00:38:40,040 --> 00:38:43,680
Speaker 1: friends even called him Hans of the East. And you know,

541
00:38:43,800 --> 00:38:46,920
Speaker 1: Hans was a sweetheart, but Carl was less of a

542
00:38:47,000 --> 00:38:52,480
Speaker 1: sweetheart and more of an unlikely lefario. One reporter even

543
00:38:52,600 --> 00:38:56,840
Speaker 1: called him one of the art world's most notorious womanizers.

544
00:38:57,680 --> 00:39:00,520
Speaker 1: You know, this guy is now wooing her the way

545
00:39:00,600 --> 00:39:04,880
Speaker 1: he loves wooing with champagne, expensive dinners. And this is

546
00:39:04,960 --> 00:39:08,080
Speaker 1: somebody who's writing down I have ten cents that I

547
00:39:08,280 --> 00:39:12,320
Speaker 1: used to put on a stamp or whatever. That's enticing.

548
00:39:12,960 --> 00:39:15,520
Speaker 1: But it wasn't just the bubbly and the coin. Carl

549
00:39:15,640 --> 00:39:19,080
Speaker 1: had something much more important to offer an artist newly

550
00:39:19,200 --> 00:39:23,560
Speaker 1: arrived in the city. Carl had an entry into every

551
00:39:23,640 --> 00:39:27,520
Speaker 1: gallery and every museum. But I do think that she

552
00:39:27,800 --> 00:39:33,279
Speaker 1: really loved him, and she thought that she knew who

553
00:39:33,400 --> 00:39:38,960
Speaker 1: he was. While Carl and on his relationship went up

554
00:39:39,000 --> 00:39:41,720
Speaker 1: and down, on his career was on a steady climb.

555
00:39:42,360 --> 00:39:45,680
Speaker 1: She'd been getting good teaching gigs, and she was starting

556
00:39:45,719 --> 00:39:49,360
Speaker 1: to win awards and grants, and then she won the

557
00:39:49,440 --> 00:39:53,040
Speaker 1: prestigious pre Drome, a fellowship that came with an all

558
00:39:53,120 --> 00:39:57,040
Speaker 1: expensive paid apartment and studio in Italy. It was almost

559
00:39:57,080 --> 00:39:59,800
Speaker 1: too good to be true. She moved to Rome and

560
00:40:00,000 --> 00:40:04,080
Speaker 1: October nineteen eighty three and immediately took to it. She

561
00:40:04,400 --> 00:40:07,040
Speaker 1: loved her life in Rome. She told me that she

562
00:40:07,200 --> 00:40:10,760
Speaker 1: felt that finally she could put together New York and Cuba,

563
00:40:10,920 --> 00:40:13,879
Speaker 1: and it was called Roma. This is be Ruby rich again.

564
00:40:14,400 --> 00:40:16,520
Speaker 1: She had so much nerve. I mean, she would pretty

565
00:40:16,600 --> 00:40:18,560
Speaker 1: much do anything she wanted to do. She was not

566
00:40:19,360 --> 00:40:23,120
Speaker 1: a fearful person, except interestingly when it came to heights.

567
00:40:24,920 --> 00:40:28,920
Speaker 1: I want to pause here. This seems like a negligible detail,

568
00:40:29,520 --> 00:40:32,359
Speaker 1: but Honest's sphere of heights would become an important part

569
00:40:32,400 --> 00:40:35,160
Speaker 1: of the story. Everyone seemed to have a story about

570
00:40:35,200 --> 00:40:40,279
Speaker 1: how afraid she was, But the anecdote that would make

571
00:40:40,320 --> 00:40:43,840
Speaker 1: it to trial was from Marcia Pelle's, one of Anna's

572
00:40:43,880 --> 00:40:47,760
Speaker 1: friends in Rome. Marsha learned about Honna's sphere of heights

573
00:40:47,880 --> 00:40:50,040
Speaker 1: when they were hiking up to a friend's house at

574
00:40:50,080 --> 00:40:53,360
Speaker 1: the top of a hill. She described what happened on

575
00:40:53,440 --> 00:40:57,680
Speaker 1: a true crime show called City Confidential. And we start

576
00:40:57,800 --> 00:41:00,960
Speaker 1: to walk up and the ocean is like a five

577
00:41:02,680 --> 00:41:06,400
Speaker 1: Depp cut there, and this just a little thing of cactus.

578
00:41:06,520 --> 00:41:09,440
Speaker 1: There's no fencer or anything. And we start to walk

579
00:41:09,480 --> 00:41:11,960
Speaker 1: and she started to because she starts to completely freak out.

580
00:41:12,040 --> 00:41:15,080
Speaker 1: And I had no idea what was wrong. And she said,

581
00:41:15,120 --> 00:41:18,520
Speaker 1: I can't do this. I'm an agrophobiac. I'm petrified of heights.

582
00:41:18,560 --> 00:41:23,040
Speaker 1: I can't get near the edge. So the idea that

583
00:41:23,200 --> 00:41:27,359
Speaker 1: Anna had voluntarily climbed up onto the windowsill of an

584
00:41:27,360 --> 00:41:31,919
Speaker 1: apartment on the thirty fourth floor. The people who knew

585
00:41:31,960 --> 00:41:39,520
Speaker 1: Anna best were not buying it. Next time, on Death

586
00:41:39,600 --> 00:41:42,759
Speaker 1: of an Artist, I thought it is better to tell

587
00:41:42,880 --> 00:41:47,120
Speaker 1: him and say, look, I want a divorce. It never

588
00:41:47,200 --> 00:41:49,560
Speaker 1: occurred to me that he would kill her. I wrote

589
00:41:49,560 --> 00:41:52,000
Speaker 1: the article on the first anniversary of her death to

590
00:41:53,320 --> 00:41:56,680
Speaker 1: raise the profile of the case again and make it

591
00:41:56,760 --> 00:42:00,839
Speaker 1: too embarrassing for the district attorney to draw the case.

592
00:42:01,520 --> 00:42:03,360
Speaker 1: At one point it was what they believe was a

593
00:42:03,480 --> 00:42:06,959
Speaker 1: feminist cabal were about to get it. Sometimes people would

594
00:42:07,000 --> 00:42:09,600
Speaker 1: scream at you on the street. I used jilled at

595
00:42:09,680 --> 00:42:14,800
Speaker 1: him that he was a murderer. Death of an Artist

596
00:42:15,000 --> 00:42:18,640
Speaker 1: is a co production between Pushkin Industries, Something Else and

597
00:42:18,840 --> 00:42:22,880
Speaker 1: Sony Music Entertainment, Written and hosted by me Helen Mouldsworth.

598
00:42:23,200 --> 00:42:27,680
Speaker 1: Executive producers are Lizzie Jacobs, Tom kinnig Leetel Mulad, Jacob

599
00:42:27,760 --> 00:42:32,200
Speaker 1: Weissberg and Lucas Werner. Produced by Maria Luisa Tucker, editing

600
00:42:32,280 --> 00:42:36,840
Speaker 1: by Lizzie Jacobs. Our managing producer is Jacob Smith. Associate

601
00:42:36,920 --> 00:42:41,239
Speaker 1: producers are Pooge Rue and Eloise Linton. Additional production helped

602
00:42:41,239 --> 00:42:45,720
Speaker 1: by Tally Abacassas Annamandieto's quotes were read by Tanya Brigera,

603
00:42:46,160 --> 00:42:50,480
Speaker 1: engineered by Sam Baar, fact checking by Andrea Lopez Crusado.

604
00:42:51,040 --> 00:43:02,239
Speaker 1: Our theme song is by Pooge Rue. If you love

605
00:43:02,320 --> 00:43:05,800
Speaker 1: this show, consider subscribing to pushkin Plus to listen early,

606
00:43:06,000 --> 00:43:09,239
Speaker 1: add free and get exclusive bonus content. Look for the

607
00:43:09,280 --> 00:43:13,560
Speaker 1: Pushkin Plus channel on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm.

608
00:43:14,160 --> 00:43:18,319
Speaker 1: Find more great podcasts from Sonymusic Entertainment at sonymusic dot com.

609
00:43:18,560 --> 00:43:20,240
Speaker 1: Backslash Podcasts