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Speaker 1: Anna Mendietta and Carl Andre were a textbook example of

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Speaker 1: opposites attract two artists, a white man from New England

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Speaker 1: who became famous in the sixties for his minimalist sculptures bricks,

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Speaker 1: wood or metal placed directly on the floor, and a

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Speaker 1: Cuban woman who had been forced from her homeland and

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Speaker 1: discovered avant garde art in the middle of Iowa in

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Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies. She basically staged what looked like blood

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Speaker 1: in the doorway of a building, and it was extremely powerful.

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Speaker 1: I'm Helen Molesworth, an art historian, and I want to

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Speaker 1: tell you the story of these two people. As artists

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Speaker 1: and as lovers. They each push the boundaries of art

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Speaker 1: and change the trajectory of art history. It could have

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Speaker 1: been a love story, but instead it's a tragedy. Did

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Speaker 1: she ever sound like she was afraid of him? Yes,

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Speaker 1: that night he said, yeah, he's going to blow up

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Speaker 1: if I have this conversation with him. In the early

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Speaker 1: hours of September eighth, nineteen eighty five, Anna fell from

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Speaker 1: the thirty fourth floor window of Carl's New York apartment.

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Speaker 1: Carl was charged with murder, and the art world started

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Speaker 1: to split into There were those who couldn't believe such

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Speaker 1: an artistic genius was capable of that kind of violence.

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Speaker 1: How could Carl who revere then the purity of the desire,

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Speaker 1: how could he have done such an act like that?

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Speaker 1: And there were those who blame him for Anna's death,

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Speaker 1: that us jailed at him, that he was a murderer.

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Speaker 1: This might have remained a story remembered only by art

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Speaker 1: world insiders, except in the decades after her death. The

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Speaker 1: world changed a lot, and while Carl's career has remained strong,

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Speaker 1: Anna's has had a meteoric rise. So in twenty fourteen,

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Speaker 1: when Carl Andre was celebrated with a big museum retrospective,

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Speaker 1: Anna Mendieta's fans showed up in force, and for me,

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Speaker 1: the question was, could the art world's unofficial rule that

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Speaker 1: we separate the art from the artist still hold The

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Speaker 1: work is separate from the individual it has to be.

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Speaker 1: Could I continue to love both Animandiettas and Carl Andre's work.

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Speaker 1: It felt like the only way to answer that question

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Speaker 1: was by asking another what really happened to Anna Mendieta.

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Speaker 1: This is Death of an Artist Coming September twenty third

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Speaker 1: from Pushkin Industries, Something Else and Sony Music Entertainment. Listen

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Speaker 1: and follow wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe to pushkin

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Speaker 1: Plus and you can hear the whole season early and

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Speaker 1: add free. Find Pushkin Plus on the Death of an

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Speaker 1: Artist show page in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm,

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Speaker 1: slash plus