1985 An Interview: Fred Sandback and Stephen Prokopoff  

Stephen Prokopoff
For years I have known and admired your line constructions—works that are at once ethereal and precise in their command of space—yet I know little about your early work, your sources. Will you describe that work? How does it differ from the line constructions made from string or wire that comprise the most familiar aspect of your work? 

Fred Sandback
Although I don’t consider it overly interesting, the work I did immediately preceding the first line construction was welded and assembled steel sculpture. It was a narrative-additive sort of sculpture with an open-ended pictorial quality. Its method was not unlike David Smith’s sculptures of the early 1940s. 

Prokopoff
Were you thinking of Smith at the time or did the work develop in this direction on its own? 

Sandback
Sure, at that point Smith and Mark di Suvero were both very interesting figures for me. The roughness and immediacy of the work of both men had a tremendous appeal—and the actual speed of its execution: these looked like real no-nonsense approaches. I liked some of Caro’s work, too. 

Prokopoff
At the time you were a student at Yale and had had some encounters with Naum Gabo, I believe. How did that experience affect your work? 

Sandback
It had a strong influence then. His work was compelling: it was very good work. He was certainly one of the strong oaks around there. A little bit too strong, although it was work that had a great deal of what I thought I wanted in sculpture. It also had just as much of what, increasingly, I didn’t want. It ultimately seemed to focus itself in the opposite direction from the one I wanted to follow. And, also, it seemed to be leaning toward not doing what it sought to do, toward being a picture of a reality, rather than a literal reality. And it was this narrative pictorial quality that didn’t make sense to me. 

Prokopoff
Can you describe what you mean here by narrative? 

Sandback
I mean the way in which a completed sculpture, an existing thing, might be a picture of the voyage of a line in space. It’s a little story about a little line which is once removed from the original line. 

Prokopoff
And did you sense that such a line existed in a purer state in another artist’s work? 

Sandback
No, I am not even sure that at that point a line was so much what I was after. There weren’t so many other sculptors working with line at that point; but there seemed to be a natural scientific model adopted by a lot of the Post-Constructivist work—plug in an axiom here and see what the results are over there—that I wanted to get away from. De Rivera’s work looked good but seemed too closed, too introverted. 

Prokopoff
When did you make the first line construction? 

Sandback
I believe it was 1966. 

Prokopoff
Can you recall any of the thinking that impelled you to take that step—or perhaps imaginative leap would better describe it? 

Sandback
Maybe some perverse intentions: I wanted to make something without an interior, at least in the sense of a conventional sculpture which has an interior, an invisible interior; I didn’t want a volume enclosed by a surface. I also wanted a wholeness that was, approximately, not reducible. A wisecrack by George Sugarman about “getting rid of everything” preceded the first piece—though there really wasn’t much connection. There were also endless conversations with the sculptors Dan Edge, Adrian Hall, and Charlie Wilson. 

Prokopoff
Is it fair to say that you wanted to move away from the discrete object? 

Sandback
Yes, I did. I wanted to open the situation up more, and I wanted a more pedestrian situation—I wanted the art situation to be more or less congruent with the everyday world. 

Prokopoff
At that point did you begin to think about the surrounding space as an essential component of the piece? 

Sandback
I was still thinking in terms of sculptural space. It would have been easier, probably, if I had thought more in terms of a different kind of space. But it was unavoidable to perceive that the sculptures didn’t stop where the lines did, and that the situation had gotten more complex. 

Prokopoff
Where was the first line construction made? 

Sandback
At Yale while I was a student there. 

Prokopoff
Then when did you have your first one-person show? 

Sandback
While I was still a student. 

Prokopoff
You plunged right into the professional mainstream. Tell me about those pieces. How do they differ from more recent string works? 

Sandback
Well, the first construction was a depiction of the perimeter of an imaginary volume. It described the edges of a rectangular solid on the floor, two inches high by four inches wide by twenty feet long. A lot of the early pieces had the quality of being a boundary of an object, more or less. They still had a sense of containment that referred to the sculptural object. 

Prokopoff
Were those first mature works situated primarily on the floor or did they also move up onto the walls, ceiling? 

Sandback
In the first couple of weeks of exploration I think all of the basic orientations were present. 

Prokopoff
Were you familiar with Sol LeWitt’s and Carl Andre’s work at that time? Did they have any noticeable impact on your thinking? 

Sandback
I wasn’t familiar with Carl’s work at the time. I think I focused more on painting in terms of what I was addressing myself to. But I was certainly aware of some of the other so-called Minimal work. 

Prokopoff
While you are clearly attuned to the Minimalist ideas then in the air, the distillation of those notions in the line constructions still appears at this distance in time as a remarkable move into new territory. 

Sandback
I did feel that I was fairly much on my own. “New territory” was a plum I wanted at that time. 

Prokopoff
You describe the line constructions as containing space. Did you move into other directions after that initial statement? 

Sandback
Yes. I don’t like the idea of describing what I am doing as a progression from a worse to a better state. But I have moved from a more contained, enclosed situation to one in which the sculpture turns outward, exists more on an equal footing with an observer in a pedestrian space. 

Prokopoff
The original Minimal works often took the form of diagrammatic expression of geometric theory. Was your work ever fundamentally concerned with abstract notions such as, for example, progressions or other mathematical relationships? 

Sandback
Not seriously. There are a few pieces that have made use of various kinds of simple progressions or closed series. These devices are not terribly important except as a means for figuring out where to put something. They are convenient and they do not have much importance in themselves. They have occasionally determined the limits of a sculpture where a certain kind of proportion was not important, or where there were a number of possibilities available, all of which seemed equally good. 

Prokopoff
Would it be fair to say, then, that your work has become increasingly intuitive? For example, some of the recent pieces eschew symmetrical arrangements. 

Sandback
Yes. I stopped measuring the sculptures quite a while ago just because measuring didn’t seem to have anything to do with them. And because I had noticed that I was letting certain measures determine proportions while I wasn’t really interested in those measurements per se. So my method of working has probably become more direct. I don’t have many prescriptions for order or proportion that I bring to each new situation. 

Prokopoff
The lines defining the form in your earlier pieces were drawn with black or neutral colored thread. More recent work, within the restricted format that you created for yourself, has become coloristically varied. Is this, too, part of a more intuitive way of working, one inclining toward richness, subtlety, and diversity? 

Sandback
Actually, there were some early sculptures in very high-keyed color which were mostly a response to being invisible. I wanted to have the things as visible as possible so I used fluorescent colors. But yes, after working with both the fluorescent and neutral tones, I began to develop a more expanded palette in the early 1970s. 

Prokopoff
The surroundings into which you have placed your work are for the most part architecturally neutral. Have you ever sought a more theatrical statement, one in which the surroundings might be brilliantly colored or dark, an ambience in which the lines might take on a different character, for example, such as LeWitt’s more recent works on black or deeply colored walls? 

Sandback
It seemed contrary to my intentions at the time to do that. What I was doing was taking my environment in a broader sense as a given and building my work within that context. It would have seemed like putting the cart before the horse to paint a gallery a specific color. I am not necessarily crazy about the plasterboard cube but it’s what tends to be there. 

Prokopoff
Architecture is clearly important to your art because it is set in an architectural space. How do you see the work in relation to that context? How important is the configuration of the context? Do you find it a challenge to deal with eccentric spaces? 

Sandback
Yes. the specific configuration of a space is often very much of a challenge. And when the work is in order it reflects a particularly sympathetic combination with the existing context or given. In an exhibition like this one there is a certain inevitable order of muteness because of the generality and expanse of the architecture, which precludes, in a way, a finer tuning that can grow from a more intimate situation. 

Prokopoff
So your preferred environment would be small personal spaces, perhaps those of an apartment or studio? 

Sandback
Not necessarily, but certainly a particular space for one construction. The collection of a number of sculptures in one larger space is, in a way, off the mark. The space of the exhibition at P.S. 1 in New York was ideal: seven large and independent yet contiguous rooms, each treated separately It took a fair amount of pushing and pulling to get things right in the present context of one large exhibition space. 

Prokopoff
So the ideal is to really control the space through your gesture. 

Sandback
Well, not to control it—that is the wrong word—but to cooperate with it, to coproduce with it. 

Prokopoff
Space, then, is a counterpoint to structure. 

Sandback
If you make something, you can take into account the place where you’re doing it to a lesser or greater degree. In my work place is fairly important. 

Prokopoff
Because there is teamwork involved. 

Sandback
Sure. The work takes into account the elements of broader situation: the nature and structure of my being in a space, the nature and structure of that space, and the possibilities that those two offer to whatever kind of a statement I wish to make. 

Prokopoff
The material you commonly use is string or yarn. Have you used other materials? 

Sandback
There have been some other materials. They are all a matter of convenience. They don’t have any particular weight. There is a steel wire sculpture in the show. There is more than one way to draw a line. 

Prokopoff
It is, of course, possible to define a line as a one-dimensional description or record of the distance between two points, that is, as idea rather than object. It is this thought that is at the back of my question about materials. Do they really play a crucial role in your thinking? 

Sandback
Well, the materiality of the situation that I am involved in certainly is of major concern to me. My manipulated material is simply a small part of that, proportionally. There are big “empty” spaces in between the lines. They’re no less real or material than the lines themselves. 

Prokopoff
Throughout your career you have made drawings which are sparse and elegant. Are the drawings studies or are they independent of the sculpture? 

Sandback
The drawings are both. I have an ongoing sketchbook which is just a manner of conceiving, of conjecturing, and these drawings usually don’t have much relationship with the finished work. They are a kind of preliminary notation, suggestions of possible ways of building and proportioning things. There are other drawings which are after the fact. These proceed from the given dimensions of the sculpture as executed rather than toward them—so in a way there is just as much room for free play there. 

Prokopoff
When you are drawing, are you always thinking about sculpture?

Sandback
No, I am thinking about drawing, too; but sculpture is more important. 

Prokopoff
For some time you have been engaged in printmaking. Your prints are very rich in the exploration of the medium and seem to stand at an opposite pole from the general spartan statements of the drawings. 

Sandback
Yes. The prints really are prints. They always make use of sculptural motifs, but beyond that they are properly graphics. They are dealing with themselves first as graphics and only secondarily as a system of representation or documentation. 

Prokopoff
Your art is soft-spoken, and it commands space by its adroitness and precision of gesture rather than by its weight; I perceive it to be supremely an affirmation of individual sensibility. As such, it appears to stand at a distance from much of the public and interdisciplinary work of the 1970s and 1980s: art together with dance, theatre, and so forth. Is the joining of your work into a larger whole an idea that attracts you? 

Sandback
In terms of my own choice of format or the arena in which I will make a statement, I suppose I have moved closer to other disciplines, at least in the sense of occupying a more complicated sort of space. But I do see my work as specific and self-contained in its intention. It doesn’t seem to be a possibility for me now to work, furthermore, with theatre or dance in a secondary sort of way—doing the sets, as opposed to making the whole thing. 

Prokopoff
Is it that the very intimacy and subtlety of the work will be lost, or have you considered ways of compensating for that? 

Sandback
It’s probably something that can be done and it’s not at all uninteresting. It’s simply that until now, it has always seemed to lead away from the meaning of the work. 

Prokopoff
Most works of art, however formalistic, inevitably seek to make a statement about something other than themselves, is that the case in your work? And if it is, is it the kind of statement that can be described? 

Sandback
It always seems tough to sit down and describe a specific intention which informs a given work—its color, its proportions, its place, its occurrence in time are all aspects of its intention. This work obviously doesn’t have intentions that go beyond it in the sense of depicting something, or making a reference to a different situation which is over there, or behind the canvas, or someplace else. Its intentions center themselves around the location of its physical presence. 

This interview was first published in The Art of Fred Sandback: A Survey, (Champaign-Urbana, Illinois: Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois, 1985).

This interview was first published in The Art of Fred Sandback: A Survey, (Champaign-Urbana, Illinois: Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois, 1985).

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