VPA 311

INSTRUCTOR: TATIANA SIZONENKO, PhD

11/19/2014 Art and Environmentalism

“Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb. If the vast majority of the world’s scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics, and killer heat waves beyond anything else we have ever experienced.”

Al Gore, Film, “Inconvenient Truth” (2006)

Art and Ecological Consciousness

Designer and theorist Gyorgy Kepes wrote in his essay “Art and Ecological Consciousness” (1972):

“The forces of nature that man brought under a measure of his control have again become alien: they now approach us menacingly by avenues opened up by science and technology….Without an ecological consciousness, we have little hope for change….Clearly, the artist’s sensibility has entered a new phase in which its prime goal is to provide a format for the emerging ecological consciousness….The artist now has the opportunity to contribute to the creative shaping of the earth’s surface on a grand scale….[Second,] Nature has become an artistic challenge once again. Artists, instead of representing nature appearances, have explored ways to represent nature’s processes in their phenomelogical aspects….Third, some artists, finding it hopeless to formulate their experiences of the expanding new world in sensuous objects or images, have attempted to capture the expanding space-time parameters in conceptual presentations that catch these experiences only partially.” Earthworks: Spiral Jetty, 1970 A Land-Reclamation Sculpture

Robert Smithson's (1938-1973) earthwork Spiral Jetty (1970) is located at Rozel Point peninsula on the northeastern shore of , on an abandoned industrial site used to drill for oil. Using over six thousand tons of black basalt rocks and earth from the site, Smithson formed a coil 1,500 feet long and 15 feet wide that winds counterclockwise off the shore into the water. In 1999, through the generosity of the artist , Smithson’s wife, and the Estate of , the artwork was donated to the .

http://www.robertsmithson.com/earthworks/spiral_jetty.htm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCfm95GyZt4 http://smarthistory.khanacademy.org/earth-artsmithsons-spiral-jetty.html From The Spiral Jetty (1972) essay:

“About one mile north of the oil seeps I selected my site. Irregular beds of limestone dip gently eastward, massive deposits of black basalt are broken over the peninsula, giving the region a shattered appearance. It is one of the few places on the lake where the water comes right up to the mainland. Under shallow pinkish water is a network of mud cracks supporting the jigsaw puzzle that composes the salt-flats. As I looked at the site, it reverberated out to the horizons only to suggest an immobile cyclone while flickering light made the entire landscape to appear to quake. A dormant earthquake spread into the fluttering stillness, into a spinning sensation without movement. This site was a rotary that enclosed itself in an immense roundness. From that gyrating space emerged the possibility of the Spiral Jetty.”

Robert Smithson Michael Heizer (b. 1944), Earthworks: Nine Nevada Depressions : Rift 1, 1968

Heizer began to create “negative” sculptures by cutting directly into the earth in 1968. “Nine Nevada Depressions” were located primarily on dry lakes throughout the state, comprising a 520-mile earthwork.

“Rift 1” is a zigzag trench dug into the Jean Dry Lake, south of Las Vegas, was the first of the “Nine Nevada Depressions,” is now totally absorbed by the lake. Michael Heizer (b. 1944), Earthworks: Displaced-Replaced Mass, 1969

Heizer transported three 30- to 68-ton granite boulders a distance of 60 miles from High Sierras down to the Nevada desert and placed them in cement-walled depressions. Michael Heizer, Earthworks: Double Negative, 1969-1970

An earthwork created by the artist Michael Heizer in 1969 and 1970. The piece consists of two gouges in the edge of a mesa, in southern Nevada. The 30-foot wide, 50-foot deep cuts, made by dynamite and bulldozers, face each other from either side of a scallop on the eroded edge of the natural landform, suggesting a continuous, invisible, negative form between them. Heizer displaced 240,000 tons of rock in the Nevada desert. The piece, totaling almost 1,500 feet from end to end (including the space between), is now property of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Christo and Jean Claude Wrapped Coast, 1969, Australia

A non-interventionalist aesthetic engagement with natural phenomena—the largest single earthwork ever realized, but no trace of it remains at the site.

A symbolic celebration of the locality and its temporary transformation into an imaginary lanscape

Wrapped Coast included one million square feet (92,900 square meters) of fabric and 35 miles (56.3 kilometers) of rope shrouding a 1.5 mile (2.4 kilometer) long section of the Australian coastline.

http://www.christojeanneclaude.net/projects/wrapped-coast#.VBrFylduWSo

Christo and Jean Claude Valley Curtain 1972 (USA)

http://www.christojeanneclaude.net/projects/valley-curtain#.VBrGqVduWSo Valley Curtain was installed between two Colorado mountain slopes in 1972. The orange curtain was made from 200,200 square feet (18,600 square meters) of woven nylon fabric. 28 hours after completion, a gale made it necessary to start the removal.

Nancy Holt (1938-2014) Sun Tunnels, 1976 in Lucin,

The work consists of four large concrete tubes, laid out in the desert in an open X configuration. The nine foot diameter, 18 foot-long tunnels are pierced by holes of varying size that correspond with the pattern of selected celestial constellations. There is a tunnel for Draco, Perseus, Columba and Capricorn. The tunnels line up with the rising and falling sun of the summer and winter solstices. “It is a very desolate area, but it is totally accessible, and it can be easily visited, making Sun Tunnels more accessible really than art in museums . . . A work like Sun Tunnels is always accessible . . . Eventually, as many people will see Sun Tunnels as would see many works in a -in a museum anyway.” Nancy Holt Nancy Holt (1938-2014), Dark Star Park, 1979-1984 Dark Star Park "I was the landscape designer as well as the sculptor, so the whole park became a work of art. And I was on the committee to approve the architectural design of the building adjacent to the park. I don’t think either of these situations ever happened before for an artist, so that was unusual, and it broke new ground for public art.“

Nancy Holt

 Dark Star Park was commissioned by Arlington County, Virginia in 1979, in conjunction with an urban-renewal project.

“The artwork is at once a park and a sculpture. Built on two-thirds of an acre of land where a run-down, old gas station and warehouse once stood, Holt transformed the space. The park consists of five spheres, two pools, four steel poles, a stairway, a large tunnel for passage, a smaller tunnel for viewing only and plantings of crown vetch, winter creeper,willow oak, and earth and grass.”

Walter de Maria, Lightning Field (1977)

http://www.diaart.org/sites/main/lightningfield

It is comprised of 400 polished stainless steel poles installed in a grid array measuring one mile by one kilometer. The poles -- two inches in diameter and averaging 20 feet and 7½ inches in height -- are spaced 220 feet apart and have solid pointed tips that define a horizontal plane.

The Lightning Field is intended to be experienced over an extended period of time. A full experience of does not depend upon the occurrence of lightning, and visitors are encouraged to spend as much time as possible in the field, especially during sunset and sunrise. Walter de Maria, (1977)

An interior earth sculpture. 250 cubic yards of earth (197 cubic meters) 3,600 square feet of floor space (335 square meters) 22 inch depth of material (56 centimeters) Total weight of sculpture: 280,000 lbs. (127,300 kilos) The New York Earth Room has been on long-term view to the public since 1980. This work was commissioned and is maintained by Dia Art Foundation. James Turrell, , 1974

Turrell made scandal more than 30 years ago by buying the volcano Roden in Arizona to install an observatory as an unprecedented artistic project there.

It is an open-air installation, meeting between sky and earth. Roden Crater (1974) Roden Crater is an extinct volcanic cinder cone, situated at an elevation of approximately 5,400 feet in the San Francisco Volcanic Field near Arizona’s Painted Desert and the Grand Canyon. It is roughly 400,000 year old, 600 foot tall red and black cinder cone.

In addition to exploring the interplay of light and space in his art, Turrell has looked closely at the design of ancient observatories as places for visual perception.

“At Roden Crater I was interested in taking the cultural artifice of art out into the natural surround. I did not want the work to be a mark upon nature, but I wanted the work to be enfolded in nature in such a way that light from the sun, moon and stars empowered the spaces … I wanted an area where you had a sense of standing on the planet. I wanted an area of exposed geology like the Grand Canyon or the Painted Desert, where you could feel geologic time. Then in this stage set of geologic time, I wanted to make spaces that engaged celestial events in light so that the spaces performed a ‘music of the spheres’ in light. The work I do intensifies the experience of light by isolating it and occluding light from events not looked at. I have selected different portions of the sky and a limited number of events for each of the spaces. This is a reason for the large number of spaces.” James Turrell

http://www.misionmisericordia.com/blogmision/2011/03/11/art-james-turrell/ Richard Long (born 1945) A Line Made by Walking, 1967

This formative piece was made on one of Long’s journeys to St Martin’s from his home in Bristol. Between hitchhiking lifts, he stopped in a field in Wiltshire where he walked backwards and forwards until the flattened turf caught the sunlight and became visible as a line. He photographed this work, and recorded his physical interventions within the landscape.

“Nature is the source of my work. The medium of my work is walking.”

“So my work comes from a desire to be in a dynamic, creative, and engaged harmony with nature…Making art in the type of landscapes which still covers most of our planet gives me a quite optimistic and realistic view of the world.” Andy Goldsworthy (born 1956): The Art of Rock Balancing

Materials: Andy Goldsworthy often uses brightly colored flowers, icicles, leaves, mud, pinecones, snow, stone, twigs, and thorns. He has been quoted as saying, “I think it's incredibly brave to be working with flowers and leaves and petals. But I have to: I can’t edit the materials I work with. My remit is to work with nature as a whole.”

Art Process: The founder of modern rock balancing. For his ephemeral works, Goldsworthy often uses only his bare hands, teeth, and found tools to prepare and arrange the materials; however, for his permanent sculptures like “Roof,” “Stone River” and “Three Cairns,” “Moonlit Path” (Petworth, West Sussex, 2002) and “Chalk Stones” in the South Downs, near West Dean, West Sussex he has also employed the use of machine tools. Andy Goldsworthy: The Art of Rock Balancing Goldsworthy relies less on abstract forms and has developed ways of encouraging natural materials and processes to generate each work.

Goldsworthy regards his creations as transient, or ephemeral. He photographs each piece once right after he makes it. His goal is to understand nature by directly participating in nature as intimately as he can. He generally works with whatever comes to hand: twigs, leaves, stones, snow and ice, reeds and thorns.

Sculpture in National Museum of Scotland by Andy Goldsworthy. Sheepfolds, 1996-2003. Cumbria, England, UK.

His works echo human structures (dry stone walls) in farming communities and are site-specific installations.

Cairn, 1997. (a man-made pile (or stack) of stones). Herring Island, Victoria, Australia. Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Polar Vortex. Andy Goldsworthy.

The urge to be one with nature.

Icicle Star, joined with saliva. Andy Goldsworthy. “Movement, change, light, growth and decay are the lifeblood of nature, the energies that I try to tap through my work. I need the shock of touch, the resistance of place, materials and weather, the earth as my source. Nature is in a state of change and that change is the key to understanding. I want my art to be sensitive and alert to changes in material, season and weather. Each work grows, stays, decays. Process and decay are implicit. Transience in my work reflects what I find in nature.”

Andy Goldsworthy Woven Branch Arch, 1986. Andy Goldsworthy. Langholm, Dumfriesshire. “Looking, touching, material, place and form are all inseparable from the resulting work. It is difficult to say where one stops and another begins. The energy and space around a material are as important as the energy and space within. The weather--rain, sun, snow, hail, mist, calm--is that external space made visible. When I touch a rock, I am touching and working the space around it. It is not independent of its surroundings, and the way it sits tells how it came to be there.” Andy Goldsworthy

Oak Leaves and Holes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njbYDlIguDw Crisis and Catastrophe

Artists have became alarmed at the signs of a rapid environmental degradation since 1980s.

Many artists turned their attention to quickly expanding landfills, ocean acidification, and issues of climate change.

Artists shared a belief that art works should lead to some kind of transformation – “social sculpture.” Agnes Denes (born 1931)

It was created during a six-month period in the spring, summer, and fall of 1982 when Denes, with the support of the Public Art Fund, planted a field of golden wheat on two acres of rubble-strewn landfill near Wall Street and the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan (now the site of Battery Park City and the World Financial Center). Joseph Beuys, 7,000 Oaks, 1982-87

In 1982, Joseph Beuys created one of his more famous and ambitious pieces of art.

The social sculpture project consisted of planting 7000 Oak trees in Kassel (Germany), each with an accompanying basalt stone.

Joseph’s main aim for this project was to create ecological awareness. Mierle Laderman Ukeles (born 1939)

A New York City-based artist known for her feminist and service-oriented artwork.

As an undergraduate, Ukeles studied history and international studies at Barnard College and later began her artistic training at the Pratt Institute in New York.

In 1969 she wrote a manifesto entitled Maintenance Art Manifesto 1969! Proposal for an exhibition "CARE", challenging the domestic role of women and proclaiming herself a "maintenance artist". Aside from "personal" or household maintenance, the manifesto also addressed "general" or public maintenance and earth maintenance, such as addressing polluted waters waste management.

“Avant-garde art, which claims utter development, is infected by strains of maintenance ideas, maintenance activities, and maintenance materials…” -- Ukeles

“I am an artist. I am a woman. I am a wife. I am a mother. I do a hell of a lot of washing, cleaning, cooking, renewing, supporting, preserving, etc. Also, (up to now separately) I ‘do’ Art. Now I will simply do these everyday things, and flush them up to consciousness, exhibit them, as Art.”--Ukeles

The role of the artist for Ukeles is that of an activist: empowering people to act and change societal values and norms. This agenda stems from a feminist concern with challenging the privileged and gendered notion of the independent artist. Mierle Laderman Ukeles: Public Art Projects Chronology

New York Department of Sanitation Residency, 1976-present

“Touch Sanitation,” 1979-1980

“Sanitation Celebrations,” 1983

“Flow City,” 1983-present

“Fresh Kills Landfill,” 1989-present

The performance was inspired by New York’s major fiscal crisis, layoffs of “sanmen,” and destruction of their equipment by the major blizzard of 1978. “Sanitation Celebrations,” 1983

Showcased the sanmen’s work as spectacle and performance and performance. Included 3 parts: 1) The social mirror; 2) Ballet mechnique for 5 mechanical sweepers; 3) Ceremonial sweep, a participatory performance on Madison Avenue “Social Mirror,” 1983

Sanitation track covered with mirrors reflecting the street onlookers.

Viewers can see themselves in the reflection of the truck, as well as possibility thinking about the sanitation workers and their contribution to their lives on a daily basis. “Ballet Mechanique for 6 Mechanical Sweepers,” 1983

A ‘ballet mechanique’ – whereby 6 sanitation tracks were choreographed in an attempt to bring the town together to think communally about its relationships with its waste and its safety. “Ceremonial Sweep,” 1983

Executive Committee and Labor Leaders and Media Work Hierarchy Ritual Turned Upside Down. (@32 block, Madison Avenue, NYC)

“Bosses and members of the city council, among many others, took on the role they typically supervised to sweep a 32-block Manhattan route.” “Sanitation Manifesto,” 1984

Ukeles asks visitors and inhabitants of New York to renew their commitment to democracy and urban culture by acknowledging waste and caring for it intelligently:

“Sanitation is the principal symbol of Time’s passage and the mutable value of materiality in organized urban life…Waste, our immediate unwanted past, is central to Sanitation…the City’s first cultural system.” “Flow City,” 1983-present

Flow City is another example of how Ukeles addresses issues of positive social change through her art.

At the 59th Street Marine Transfer Station, Ukeles constructed Flow City as a point of public access to the reconceptualization of urban ecological systems.

The transfer station is where garbage is loaded onto barges prior to being transported to and dumped in a landfill. Ukeles constructed this visitor center as a way for people to view the transference of used and recyclable material and the labor of everyday maintenance workers.

She constructed a space with three separate views of city life and urban ecology. Facing east was a beautiful panoramic representation of the city; to the west was a picture of large barges filled with trash and urban waste; and to the south was a bank of video monitors.

Scientists, ecologists, artists, and others were invited to contribute information for video displays to help educate people about ecological urban issues. These three perspectives provided a range of views for visitors to see and question everyday consumer choices and to learn more about the consequences of their lifestyle on creating a healthy environment in the future.

Phillips (1995) writes, "Using the culture of sanitation work as an allegory of global environmental management, the project reflects Ukeles' commitment to bring citizens to a visceral, participatory experience of the scale and issues of solid-waste management in New York City. As always, the social, political, and environmental issues are inextricably connected."

Flow City 59th Street Marine Transfer Station NYC Department of Sanitation 1983 – currently. “Fresh Kills Landfill” Staten Island, NYC 1992-2002

Fresh Kills Landfill Staten Island, NYC 1992-2002 The largest landfill across the street from the largest shopping center in the area. This landfill was closed, out of respect ,after debris from the World Trade Center was deposited there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y xPJYiZNFGg

Mierle Laderman Ukeles Danehy Park, Cambridge, Massachusetts,1990-1998, glassphalt

Laderman Ukeles designed this park over a landfill in a lower economic part of the city to bring recreation and beauty to its residents. Video links on Ukeles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aR8voZ1Rk1w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJ9GWlFZz1g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y38PjCYSaqM

Margaret and Christine Wertheim The Coral Reef Project, 2005-current

Margaret is the co-creator with her twin sister Christine of the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef project. The two sisters curate the project together from their home in Highland Park, Los Angeles, where they dreamed up the Reef while watching episodes of Battlestar Gallactaca and other television fantasies. Much of the Reef has been crocheted during long sessions of serial TV-addictions, including Battlestar, Zena Warrior Princess, Ugly Betty, Sex and the City, and Lost. http://crochetcoralreef.org/contributors/margaret_wertheim.php

Olafur Eliasson “I want people to know that this is both a natural phenomenon and a cultural one”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCGuG0uT6ks