Andre’s career as a sculptor started just after he moved to New York and, by 1959, he was making small assemblages called ‘Dada Forgeries.’ The construction of the Dada Forgeries is driven by language, with puns created by precisely chosen juxtapositions. These works are rarely shown, but a number of them, including this piece, were displayed together as part of Andre’s 2014 retrospective at Dia: Beacon, titled “Sculpture in Place,” and provided an interesting angle on the gestation of Andre’s later minimalist works. Andre was extremely widely-read and the apparent source for the title of this work is a line from an obscure play of Auguste Strindberg’s, Margit (La Femme du Chevalier Bengt), where Act 5, scene 9 begins, “Margit!…. Endormie sur cet escalier, avec un sablier….”
