Talking about sculpture: just a pile of bricks?

Carl Andre: Equivalent VIII 1966, 127 x 686 x 2292cm

When I analysed this work with some of my students, this is how they talked about it and added to what they thought are some of my ideas:

Strength, solidity, fire retardant qualities of bricks, an assisted readymade?
Easy to disassemble, ambiguous structural integrity
One unit replicated in the shape and form of the whole; grid pattern, repetition, rhythm, cells
Earth bound, lying, flat
Representative of industry and urban construction, synthetic yet beautifully proportioned, elegant, austere and abstract
Functional object transformed into aesthetic object
Calm, stillness
Mastaba, grave, sarcophagus,
Intellectual, rational level?
‘noble simplicity and quiet grandeur’ Winckelmann 1764
Is each brick of equivalent value?
The bricks are similar, but in addressing their uniformity, the imagination fires-up a looking process that leads to the discovery of nuanced differences. This is a response that Minimalist artists such as Andre and the painter Robert Ryman anticipated
Challenges to our understanding of what sculpture can be; this work is not based in craft, but it is based in selection and decisions.
The process is additive, reductive and assembled all at the same time

The work challenges our expectation that sculptures ascend rather than lie flat and hug the floor
Geometry and multiple symmetries
The synthetic materials absorb the light
These bricks resemble neatly stacked bricks on a site, which would be ignored for their aesthetic value; this work forces us to look at the over-looked

What is less well known than this image is the collection of the many Equivalents series shown together. These were made between 1966-78. Find this on the internet and then see how it changes your perception of Equivalent VIII.

I'll move away from boxes next time.