Book twelve: Land Art by Michael Lailach.

For the first time in a long time, I read a real, live book instead of a Kindle edition.  It made sense as this was a book about Land Art and the pictures are always better in print.  Michael Lailach's book Land Art is a reasonably short, readable volume about the beginnings of earth art and other similar movements of the 1960s and 70s.  The introduction is a friendly review of the topic.  But the book is at its best when it gets into discussions about individual works by specific artists.  Each spread in the book provides a review of a single work of Land Art (although references to other works are also included).

I consider myself something of a Land Art expert and I'm proud to note that I have experienced four of the works mentioned in the book and a number of other works by artists mentioned in the book. You might say, that doesn't seem like all that much.  But when you consider how difficult it is to see some of this art, and the fact that most of the works in the book were temporary and can no longer be experienced, I'd put my record up against just about any other Art enthusiast out there.  And while I don't expect anyone to actually act on this recommendation, if you have any interest in the subject, Lailach's Land Art is well worth the time.

What I learned at Storm King: Sometimes a garden wall is not just a garden wall.

Andy Goldsworthy is an artist that has taken me out of my way before.  Although much of his work is fleeting and disappears shortly after it's created, you can find the occasional enduring works like his crack in the stonework at San Francisco's de Young Museum (Drawn Stone) which I visited in 2008.  In 2009 I trekked to the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City to see Garden of Stones which features drilled boulders with trees planted inside.

One of the works I wanted to see most at Storm King is Goldsworthy's Storm King Wall (1997-1998, field stone). The work is nearly half a mile long and appears and disappears throughout the park.  In one area it feels like it magically willed itself into being from the local rubble.

In another area, it disappears into a pond, only to reappear on the other side.

Then there are the moments where its gentle, winding shape embraces trees that have been there much longer than the wall.

Maybe I like Goldsworthy's work because living in the west has piqued my interest in Earth Art.  Or maybe it's because a lot of Earth Art can feel structured and invasive, while Goldsworthy's work exudes a quiet peacefulness. 

500 acres of Art. It's like an Art marathon.

After years of threatening to do so, I made the 1.5 hour trek north of New York City to visit Storm King, the massive sculpture park.  And I wasn't disappointed.  This is like no other Art-world experience I've ever had.  In fact, I'm pretty sure you can't have an experience like this anywhere else on the planet.  It's like you've landed on some strange planet that looks like earth but is peopled by giants who've created strange and wondrous objects. Sometimes, the experience feels surrealist, like Salvador Dali is messing with your mind.

There was so much to see and do, that I'm dedicating several posts over the coming days to my experiences at Storm King.  I'm calling this new Art Lobster series, "What I Learned at Storm King."  But to get things started, I thought I'd give you a few pointers for visiting Storm King.  

With a little advance planning, getting to Storm King is relatively easy.  You can purchase tickets for a Short Line Bus that leaves from Port Authority here.  I'd never taken a bus from Port Authority, so you can imagine my excitement as the bus quickly filled with other anxious Art enthusiasts, many speaking exotic foreign languages, eager for a day of inspiring sculpture.  I later learned that one of the largest outlet malls in the state of New York is on the way to Storm King.  There are a lot more eager bargain hunters than there are sculpture fans. Just three of us got off at Storm King.  And I think one of the three was there to interview for a job.

You may feel abandoned as you exit the bus.  The driver just opens the door and you're left in a field with a few imposing sculptures in the distance.  Someone will give you a map and little other advice.  We chose to walk to the Museum Building.  Don't. Turn to the right, walk a few feet, and rent bicycles.  This will save you a lot of walking.  And bike rentals will make the day more fun.

Stay tuned for more coll views from Storm King.

The art of never giving up.

The first thing you notice about Christo is his dedication to his ideas. Even at 76 years old, his enthusiasm for what he does is contagious. For all of you who question the reason of unleashing several thousand giant umbrellas in California and Japan for a mere two weeks. Or of skirting entire islands with millions of square feet of pink fabric, also for just a few weeks, don’t expect Christo to defend his work from the standpoint of logic, or societal value, or even academics. Christo readily admits that no one needs his work. No one will notice if the Reichstag in Berlin doesn’t get wrapped with fabric and ropes. And will anyone care if Christo doesn’t erect 7,000+ orange gates along the pathways of Central Park? And Christo doesn't really care.  We learned all of this at his recent visit to Salt Lake City where he lectured at Kingsbury Hall on the University of Utah campus.

So why do all these crazy things? Christo’s answer to this question was one of the most refreshing I’ve heard in a long time: beauty. These days most artists are making statements or challenging the status quo or destroying the traditions of Western art. And while Christo may be doing all those things, he’s doing them not because of some grand ideology, but rather for beauty. As he put it, “The absolute expression of poetry.”  I can't think of a better defense for art.

There were a lot of things to like about Christo. First is his unwillingness to pander to the art and academic world. I think that might stem from his method of funding his projects. Christo and his long-time wife and collaborator, Jeanne-Claude (who died in November) do not have a gallery, do not work with a dealer. They accept no donations and take no money from grants or public arts projects. Instead they sell original artwork (including preliminary drawings and paintings for future projects) directly to collectors and institutions. That money is used to fund their massive projects; projects which can cost tens of millions of dollars. Consider this, the environmental impact statement for their planned, upcoming work, Over the River, cost over a million dollars.

Christo and Jean Claude are also patient. It took 26 years to finally get the necessary permissions for The Gates. Over the River, a work which covers nearly 50 miles of the Arkansas river in Colorado with a ceiling of shimmering blue fabric, has been in the works for 19 years. That kind of dedication is fascinating from an artistic stanpoint.  Installations that last only two weeks, yet take decades to create are a reversal of the normal artistic processes.

Christo's take on the realities of getting permissions to create his works is also interesting. The process of navigating beaurocratic red tape is part of his artistry and may be one reason his art matters; a statement on how impossible it’s become to get anything done. Unless you have the dedication and determination to pursue a goal for decades, you may never make it through the beaaruacracy.  We need politicians that are this dedicated to getting inspiring things done.

A few other things I liked about the lecture:

Christo is foremost an artist, not an educator. OK, Christo might not agree with this statement exactly but hear me out. Lately it seems you can’t approach anything “Art” without being bombarded with arts education. Whether it’s performance or visual arts, artists are now forced to be educators first and artists second. Christo takes art as his priority. This was most evident when a woman stepped to the microphone to talk about using Christo’s work as part of her elementary school curriculum. She asked her students to write essays about what would happen if Christo were to wrap the White House. She brought those essays to give to the artist. He refused to accept them saying the best way to kill an idea is to suggest it to Christo. All of his ideas are original.

Also, love matters. Listening to Christo talk about Jeanne-Claude, his late wife and artistic partner was inspiring. He admitted that several of their works were ideas that Jeanne-Claude had originated and said that they worked together only because of love. "Our life is a work of art." I'm not generally sentimental, but that makes me want to be.

When asked why his works were installed for such short periods of time (usually just a few weeks), he offered a profound statement on the timliness of life.  "The work can't last. Like our childhood, like our lives, this is something that can never happen again."  I don't think I've ever heard an artist say, "The work can't last."

Christo’s lecture was inspiring. I’m rededicating myself to creating beauty simply because beauty matters. I’m also rededicating myself to not being afraid of doing things just because they seem too difficult. Sure, I may not have any 26-year projects up my sleeve. But writing off ideas because they might eat up a month or two of my life is a cop out. And now if Over the River gets approval in the next few months (as it looks like it might), and if it gets installed in the summer of 2014 as Christo suggested could happen, I’ll be road tripping to Colorado to spend a few days enjoying the beauty.

One gate isn’t art. Five gates isn’t art. 7,503 gates is art.

In 2005 I made a trip to New York City to see The Gates, a work by famed husband and wife couple, Christo and Jeanne Claude. Christo was recently here in Salt Lake City to deliver a lecture about his past work and to talk about his two remaining projects.  The headline for this post is a paraphrasing of one of his comments about The Gates. 

Because Art Lobster wasn’t a reality in 2005, I thought I would reminisce about a great NY visit by posting some of my pictures.  I’ll follow up with a post about Christo’s lecture.

Negativity squared.

Prepare to be bored with another land art adventure.

In my never ending quest to visit the West’s best claim to art-world fame, on my first day in Vegas we rented a car and headed to another remote land art destination. This time it was Michael Heizer’s Double Negative located a couple hours outside of Las Vegas in the wilds of Nevada.

Created in 1969 and 1970, this is the work that put Heizer on the fine-art map. Land art was all the rage at that moment in history, with Robert Smithson’s iconic Spiral Jetty completed in 1970 and Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels created in 1976.

Double Negative asks many of the questions for which Heizer is famous. Mainly, what happens if art isn’t about building something, but instead about taking something away? Double Negative creates a rectangular void that spans a large ravine. As Heizer himself said, “There is nothing there, and yet it is still a sculpture.” God love the crazy artist.

This work is massive and challenging. It doesn’t offer the intrigue and charm of Spiral Jetty. But it is engaging. I wanted to see it because rumor has it that Michael Heizer’s City (another massive land art project that’s been under construction since 1972) is going to be open to the public in 2010 and I wanted to see this work before I experience City.

Double Negative is hard to find, largely because the work is fading into the landscape—and the artist doesn’t mind. The work is owned by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (although I’m not sure what it means to own this.) And the artist has given very explicit instructions that Double Negative is not to be restored or conserved. Rather, nature should be left to tend to the sculpture.

And nature is doing its job. Double Negative is cut into very soft strata. The once sharp edges have now softened, to the point that it almost feels like a natural phenomenon. And yet, it still inspires.

I’m sad there are no land artists today. Because trekking to the middle of nowhere, driving through the remotest areas of rural America, meeting new people, experiencing works of art on the most massive of scales, and discovering new landscapes so remote you’d never be there without the art is intensely rewarding.

Here are pictures from the North side of Double Negative:

Here are pictures from the South side of Double Negative.

New at Lagoon: Land Art Land!

Recently, I made a return visit to Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty. As we drove past Lagoon we had a total art-geek moment, imagining that near Lagoon's Pioneer Village or Kiddie Town we’d find Land Art Land. You’d be able to ride The Spiral Jetty, rickety carts that spiral downward on a precarious track. Or how about The Sun Tunnels? Spinning, twisty tunnels that randomly flash lights in the shape of constellations. Or maybe The Double Negative, a thrilling, gravity-defying zip line over a rocky gorge.

OK, only an art geek would laugh as hard as we did. But we in the Rocky Mountain West don’t have much when it comes to destination art. Land Art may be our one claim to fame. And after my second visit to Spiral Jetty, I think that fame is well deserved.

I’m guessing Smithson would be pretty dang happy with the way the whole Spiral Jetty thing is going. I last visited exactly five years ago when, thanks to a long drought, the Jetty had emerged from the Great Salt Lake. It was beautiful, crystallized white with sparkling salt diamonds. It almost disappeared against a vast expanse of blindingly white salt flats.

This trip, the blindingly white salt flats remained. But the Jetty’s salt crystals have worn away revealing a dramatic black-rock spiral. It was beautiful in a whole new way. OK, it’s a trek to get to the Spiral Jetty. (And the last ten miles of rocky dirt road are tough traveling.) But the trip was worth the inspiration. I plan to visit this and other Land Art destinations more often.

Here are a few photos from my recent visit to Robert Smithson’s intriguing Spiral Jetty.

Felix at the epicenter of the Spiral Jetty.

Me on the hike to the hill above Spiral Jetty.

Amazing orange lichen on the black rocks in the surrounding area.

Sunflowers are everywhere on the road to Spiral Jetty.

My white tennies against the blinding salt flats.

And finally a few random photos of the Spiral Jetty.

Nice crack: East coast edition.

Not long ago I paid a visit to Andy Goldsworthy’s Drawn Stone (2005) at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. And since I like to see multiple works by artists, I went in search of another Goldsworthy work in New York City.
We found it at the Museum of Jewish Heritage at the very bottom of Manhattan. The work is Garden of Stones (2003) and consists of a series of glacial boulders that have been drilled to allow for the planting of dwarf oak saplings. The result is a reminder that life will succeed even in the most difficult circumstances. The garden includes eighteen boulders, a reference to the Hebrew word for life (chai), which also has a numerical value of eighteen.
I preferred the San Francisco piece mainly because this work felt cramped—I wish the boulders had more room to breathe. But with a view that included the Statue of Liberty in the distance, this work is emotional, reminding me how great it is to live in a country that has so often welcomed the world’s outcasts. Let’s hope we haven’t forgotten that tradition.