Carl Andre frequently used sand-lime bricks as a material in his sculptures, notably first in his “Equivalent” series, which caused a major controversy when first presented at the Tate. The most significant source of the outrage stemmed from the use of the Tate’s taxpayer funding to purchase the work for £2,297. Many felt this was an exorbitant price for a simple arrangement of bricks, promptly headlines like “What a load of rubbish” in The Daily Mirror. This particular material, a type of synthetic limestone, was chosen for its industrial, unadorned quality, emphasizing the bricks’ physicality and the space they occupy.
