Land Is Not the Setting: the Lightning Field And
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! ! LAND IS NOT THE SETTING: THE LIGHTNING FIELD AND ENVIRONMENTS, 1960-1980 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF ART AND ART HISTORY AND THE COMMITTEE ON GRADUATE STUDIES OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY James Nisbet September 2010 © 2011 by James Proctor Nisbet. All Rights Reserved. Re-distributed by Stanford University under license with the author. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/ This dissertation is online at: http://purl.stanford.edu/py903cr4833 ii I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Pamela Lee, Primary Adviser I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Maria Gough I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Pavle Levi I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Bryan Wolf Approved for the Stanford University Committee on Graduate Studies. Patricia J. Gumport, Vice Provost Graduate Education This signature page was generated electronically upon submission of this dissertation in electronic format. An original signed hard copy of the signature page is on file in University Archives. iii "#! ABSTRACT The following dissertation—“Land Is Not the Setting: The Lightning Field and Environments, 1960-1980”—examines land art and ecological thought in the 1960s and 1970s through a sustained and unconventional investigation of Walter De Maria’s single work The Lightning Field of 1977. A large, site-specific sculpture consisting of four hundred sharpened steel poles arranged in a regular grid, The Lightning Field is a remarkably variable object and site which present a range of experiences from reflective metal palpably shifting in form and orientation with the angle of the sun to a dramatic stage for electrical fireworks. The focus of this study extends the manifold nature of The Lightning Field to examine how this single work enfolds not only various modes of experience, but, more importantly, the most significant strands of De Maria’s artistic practice beginning around 1960 alongside competing conceptualizations of the environment throughout the 1960s and 1970s. During this period, the idea of an environment was rapidly on the move. Artists and critics employed the term to suggest gallery installations, ecosystems, multimedia projections, and natural sanctuaries. In short, the concepts “environment” and “ecology” experienced two decades of rich investigation in social and intellectual registers, and the emergence of land art provides unique access to their larger turns within the period. ! #! ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Projects, like ideas, begin in many places and across many conversations. Though this dissertation may arise most directly from a particular trip to The Lightning Field taken in August 2006, I would like to acknowledge here some of the people most important to its realization. First among these is Pamela M. Lee, my advisor at Stanford University and a seemingly tireless source of insight, voice of support, and trotter of the globe. Maria Gough has been an intellectual model, and, along with my other committee members, Pavle Levi and Bryan Wolf, instrumental in the shaping and refining of what follows. Colleagues at Stanford and one glorious apartment in North Adams, Massachusetts who have offered invaluable conversation and reflection over recent years include Karen Rapp, Soyoung Yoon, Mary Campbell, Kiersten Jakobsen, Kevin Smith, Sara Levavy, Emily Brink, Sam Johnson, Jim Thomas, and David Breslin. I thank Eddie Vazquez and Dan Hackbarth in particular for being steadfast friends as much as indispensable interlocutors. Thanks also to Jill Davis in the Art and Art History Department and Peter Blank in the Art Library for all of their support. My research owes much to the institutions and archives that assisted in marshalling the many branches of environmental art in the late twentieth century. I would like to recognize the assistance and reception I received from the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, Archives of American Art in Washington, DC, Museum of Modern Art Archives in New York, Herbert F. Johnson Museum at Cornell University, Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, Menil Collection in Houston, and Beinecke Library at Yale University. #"! Finally, I thank my family. My parents, Jay and Anne Nisbet, have encouraged curiosity and a free-thinking streak in all three of their boys. I might not have known this would lead to my own pursuit of art history as I sulked through Scottish portrait galleries when I was young, but my brothers, Thom and Jeff, have both helped me learn to articulate my ideas and passions as I pursued them as well. And to Jessica, who has lived and breathed through mountains of books on our dining-room table and late-night mumblings that accumulated on scraps of paper on the side table, I dedicate this work and offer my deepest gratitude, for everything. #""! Table of Contents ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………….iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………...............v LIST OF FIGURES…………………………………………..................ix INTRODUCTION………………………...………………...............1 CHAPTER ONE: ONE OR MANY ENVIRONMENTS……………………................20 Boxes Light Environment/environment LAND Words and Things: On the Conclusion of Environments CHAPTER TWO: THE CRUCIBLE OF NATURE……………………………………72 Danger at Dwan Gallery A Brief History of Ecology Ecologic Art (Eco)Systems Aesthetics The Scale of the Whole Earth Land Is Not the Setting CHAPTER THREE: PHOTO-ENERGY AND THE MEDIA OF LAND ART…..............139 Walter De Maria’s Magazine Work Index Redux “Situations of Energy” Photomechanical Mediation Other Entropies Teledynamic Environments Energy Forms CHAPTER FOUR: LAND ART IN THE 1970s?...........................................................193 Earthworks, Revisited The Public Life of Ecosystems Beyond Biomes: The Harrisons Embedded Environments On the Road Earth (as) Sculpture #"""! CONCLUSION…....……………………………………………..254 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………..261 "$! LIST OF FIGURES Note: figures, at the suggestion of the Stanford University Registrar, are not included due to copyright restrictions. Figure. 1.1: Walter De Maria, The Lightning Field Figure 1.2: Walter De Maria, The Lightning Field Figure 1.3: Walter De Maria, The Lightning Field Figure 1.4: Walter De Maria, Calendar Figure 1.5: Walter De Maria, Ball Drop Figure 1.6: Walter De Maria, Boxes for Meaningless Work Figure 1.7: Allan Kaprow, Untitled Environment Figure 1.8: Walter De Maria, view of The Arch and The Columns at Paula Johnson Gallery exhibition Figure 1.9: Walter De Maria, view of Paula Johnson Gallery exhibition Figure 1.10: Robert Whitman, Flower Figure 1.11: Walter De Maria, Press release for !"#$%&'#(%)%!"#$%*+#(,%)%!"#$%-+./!%&! '%()*")!Heiner Friedrich Figure 1.12: Walter De Maria, !"#$%&'#(%)%!"#$%*+#(,%)%!"#$%-+./ Figure 1.13: Walter De Maria, The Color Men Choose When They Attack the Earth Figure 1.14: Walter De Maria, Dirt Box Figure 2.1: Walter De Maria, Bed of Spikes Figure 2.2: Walter De Maria, The Lightning Field Figure 2.3: Walter De Maria, Mile-Long Drawing Figure 2.4: Walter De Maria, Danger advertisement in Artforum, April 1969 $! Figure 2.5: Las Vegas Piece Figure 2.6: Advertisement for CBS Reports on Silent Spring in New York Times, April 3, 1963 Figure 2.7: Ecologic Art at John Gibson Projects for Commission Figure 2.8: Peter Hutchinson, Storm King Mountain Project Figure 2.9: Dennis Oppenheim, Nebraska Project Figure 2.10: Robert Morris, Mirror Cubes Figure 2.11: Dennis Oppenheim, Time Line Figure 2.12: Dennis Oppenheim, Directed Seeding Figure 2.13: Apollo 17, “The Blue Marble” Figure 2.14: R. Buckminster Fuller, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth Figure 2.15: Whole Earth Catalog, Fall 1968 Figure 2.16: Whole Earth Catalog (detail), Fall 1968 Figure 2.17: Ronald Bladen, The X Figure 2.18: Walter De Maria, Drawings for Mile-Long Walls in the Desert Figure 2.19: Walter De Maria, Drawings for Mile-Long Walls in the Desert Figure 2.20: Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty Figure 2.21: Walter De Maria, Desert Cross Figure 2.22: Richard Serra, Shift Figure 2.23: Michael Heizer, Double Negative Figure 3.1: Walter De Maria, The Lightning Field in Artforum, April 1980 Figure 3.2: Walter De Maria, The Lightning Field in Artforum, April 1980 Figure 3.3: Walter De Maria, The Lightning Field in Artforum, April 1980 $"! Figure 3.4: Walter De Maria, High Energy Bar Figure 3.5: Walter De Maria, advertisement in Artforum, June 1973 Figure 3.6: Walter De Maria, Avalanche, Spring 1972 Figure 3.7: Walter De Maria, Avalanche, Spring 1972 Figure 3.8: Walter De Maria, Avalanche, Spring 1972 Figure 3.9: Walter De Maria, Avalanche, Spring 1972 Figure 3.10: Walter De Maria, Avalanche, Spring 1972 Figure 3.11: Walter De Maria, Avalanche, Spring 1972 Figure 3.12: USCO, We Are All One Figure 3.13: Robert Smithson, Fossil Quarry with Four Mirror Displacements Figure 3.14: Television Gallery Gerry Schum, Land Art Poster Figure 3.15: Robert Smithson, view of gallery at Earth Art, Cornell University Figure 3.16: Robert Smithson, The Sandbox Monument Figure 3.17: Robert Smithson, Untitled work at Earth Art, Cornell University Figure 3.18: Rudolf Arnheim, Entropy and Art: An Essay on Disorder and Order Figure 3.19: Giovanni Anselmo, My Shadow Projected to Infinity from the Top of Stromboli During Sunrise on 16 August 1965 Figure 3.20: Robert Barry, Inert Gas Series (Argon) Figure 3.21: Robert Barry, 1600 kc Carrier Wave (AM) Figure 3.22: Robert Barry, 88 mc.