1 on Site, out of Sight
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1 On Site, Out of Sight: Viewing Devices in Canadian Land Art, 1969-1980 by Tai van Toorn Department of Art History and Communication Studies McGill University, Montreal December 2013 A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy © Tai van Toorn 2013 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Table of Contents . 2 List of Illustrations . 4 Abstract in English . 10 Résumé en français . 12 Acknowledgements . 14 Preface . 15 Introduction . 19 Calibrating the Focus on Land Art . 19 A Review of the Literature on Site-Seeing: Theories of Perception and Site Specificity in Contemporary Art in the Natural Environment . 28 (I) Site Inspection . 29 (II) Site Recovery . 31 (III) Voiding Perception and Splicing Site: Robert Smithson . 36 Chapter Outline . 42 Figures 1-4 . 45 Chapter One. Charting the Terrain of Land Art . 47 Debating Definitions . 47 Situating Sites . 56 Conceptual Strategies and Photographic Documentation . 59 The Canoeman’s Reconnoitering Eye versus Land Art’s Oppositional Sight . 61 Figures 5, 6 . 68 Chapter Two. Roadside Attractions: The Vehicular Frames of the N.E. Thing Company, 1969 . 69 Automobile Landscapes . 69 Start Viewing . 73 Passing Views . 76 Road Trips . 90 Highway Readings . 108 Site Sensitivity . 116 Figures 7-18 . 137 Chapter Three. Conflicting Perspectives: The Shoreline Viewfinder of Dean Ellis, 1970- 1973 . 142 Aquatic Apparitions . 142 Perceptual Tools . 146 Illusory Views . 147 3 Paradoxical Planes . 159 Perspectival Traps . 168 Figures 19-32 . 181 Chapter Four. Shifting Sightlines: The Lakeside Viewfinder of Robin Mackenzie, 1973- 1974 . 188 Mutable Prospects . 188 Land Lines . 191 Declared Sites . 193 Somatic Stonework . 203 Tangled Triangulations . 214 Contested Loci . 223 Figures 33-47 . 227 Chapter Five. Hidden Habitats: The Arboreal Apertures of Reinhard Reitzenstein, 1975- 1976 . 234 Sylvan Glades . 234 Earthen Excavation . 237 Breaking Ground . 241 Subterranean Strata . 254 Hybrid Habitats . 259 Insights on Sites . 263 Sacred Loci . 269 Disappearing Acts . 273 Family Trees . 281 Figures 48-68 . 285 Conclusion. Targeted Terrain: The Site-Inscriptions of Bill Vazan, 1977-1980 . 295 Inscribed Sites . 295 Site Typology . 296 Reviewing Devices . 298 Sight, Site, Body, Technology, Identity . 299 Re-Writing, Re-Educating, Un-Inhabiting . 302 Hot Spots, Dark Spots . 304 Figure 69 . 307 Bibliography . 308 4 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 1. Gary Lee-Nova, Mirror/Waterfall (detail), October 1969. Trapezoidal mirror supported on a frame installed in a stream in Vancouver. 185.4 cm x 121.9 cm x 109.2 cm. Reproduced in Gene Youngblood, “World Game: The Artist as Ecologist,” Artscanada 27 (August 1970): 46. Figure 2. Robert Bowers, Search (detail), summer 1971. Series of photographs and a twenty- minute videotape made on Toronto Island, Ontario. Dimensions unknown. Reproduced in Joe Bodolai, “Borderlines in Art and Experience,” Artscanada 31 (Spring 1974): 78. Figure 3. Bill Vazan, Roches solaires (Solar Stones), winter 1972-1974. Stones placed in tree branches, original location unknown. Dimensions unknown. Reproduced on the cover of Bill Vazan (Quebec City: Musée du Québec, 1974). Figure 4. Michael Heizer, Double Negative (detail), 1969. 240,000-ton displacement of rhyolite and sandstone, Mormon Mesa, Overton, Nevada. 450 m x 15 m x 9 m. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Gift of Virginia Dwan, 85.105. Figure 5. Tom Thomson, Northern River, 1914-15. Oil on canvas. 114.3 cm x 101.6 cm. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Figure 6. Emily Carr, Red Cedar, 1931. Oil on canvas. Vancouver Art Gallery. Figures 7, 8, 9. N.E. Thing Company, Quarter-Mile N. E. Thing Co. Landscape, Prince Edward Island, 1969. Lettered signs planted along a road in PEI, series of tinted chromogenic prints. Each photographic panel 53.5 cm x 81.5 cm. Collection of the artists. Figure 10. N.E. Thing Co., Quarter-Mile N. E. Thing Co. Landscape, Prince Edward Island (detail), 1969. Map and mixed media. 53.5 cm x 81.5 cm. Collection of the artists. Figure 11. N. E. Thing Co., View, 1967. Cibachrome transparency, light box. 76 cm x 122 cm x 15 cm. Assembled 1995. Collection of the artists. Figure 12. N. E. Thing Co., You Are Now in the Middle of a N.E. Thing Co. Landscape, September 26, 1969. Painted signboard attached to a tree in Inuvik, Northwest Territories, Canada. Dimensions unknown. Photograph by Lucy R Lippard. Reproduced in Lippard, “Art within the Arctic Circle,” The Hudson Review 22 (Winter 1969-1970): 672 Figure 13. “Big mistake / many make / rely on horn / instead of / brake/ Burma-Shave.” Burma- Vita Corporation road signs advertising Burma-Shave on Route 66, Hackberry, Mohave County, Arizona, pre-1963. Photograph by Ken Koehler, “BurmaShaveSignsRoute66.jpg,” Wikipedia, published 2006, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BurmaShaveSigns_Route66.jpg. Figure 14. View of highway traffic as seen from a moving car and reflected in the rear-view mirror. Cover illustration of The View from the Road (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1964). 5 Figure 15. Iain Baxter demonstrating “visual or sensory art instruction” in a non-verbal course in the Centre for Communications and the Arts, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, late 1960s. Photographer unknown. Illustration reproduced in R. Murray Schafer, “Cleaning the Lenses of Perception,” Artscanada 25 (October/November 1968): 11. Figures 16, 17, 18. Above left and below: dancers and architecture students of the “Experiments in Environment” course build a “driftwood city” on the beach near Sea Ranch, San Francisco, summer of 1966. Photographs by Paul Ryan. Reproduced in James T. Burns, Jr., “Experiments in Environment,” Progressive Architecture 48 (July 1967): 134. Above right: Lawrence Halprin watches participants install a driftwood totem during the “Exercises in Environment” workshop, summer of 1968. Photograph by Paul Ryan. Reproduced in David Lloyd-Jones, “Lawrence Halprin: Eco-architect,” Horizon 12 (Summer 1970): 54. Figure 19. Dean Ellis, Perspective Construction for the Salish, from the series of 39 slides entitled Landscape Morphology and Perceptual Tools, 1970-1973. Logs and stones assembled on a shore in British Columbia. Colour photograph, 35 mm slide. Collection of the artist. Figure 20. Robert Smithson on Miami Islet, Georgia Strait, British Columbia, December 1969. Photograph courtesy of Nancy Holt. Reproduced in Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, ed. Jack Flam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 196. Figure 21. Artscanada critic and artist Joe Bodolai “‘touching up the landscape’ at Revelstoke, B.C.,” 1973. Photograph by Erik Taynen. Reproduced in Joe Bodolai, “Borderlines in Art and Experience,” Artscanada 31 (Spring 1974): 80. Figure 22. Barbara and Michael Leisgen, Description of the Sun, 1975. Performance in a field, black and white photograph on canvas. 120 cm x 180 cm. Figure 23. Claude Lorrain (Claude Gellée), The Roman Campagna, circa 1639. Oil on canvas. 101.6 cm x 135.9 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Figure 24. Dean Ellis, untitled image from the series of 160 slides entitled Grounds, 1974. Colour photograph, 35 mm slide. Courtesy of Richard Prince. Figure 25. Albrecht Dürer, Draughtsman Making a Perspective Drawing of a Woman, illustration from Unterweysung der Messung, 2nd ed. (Nuremberg: 1538). Figure 26. Betty Edwards, “What Dürer saw; an approximation,” in Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (Los Angeles: J.P. Tarcher, 1979), 117. Figure 27. Perspective Machine, illustration from Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola, Le due regole della prospettiva pratica . con i comentarij del R. P. M. Egnatio Danti, ed. Ignazio Danti (Rome: 1583). 6 Figure 28. Vincent van Gogh, sketch of a perspective frame in a letter to Theo van Gogh, August 1882 (223). Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam. Reproduced in Van Gogh: A Retrospective, ed. Susan Alyson Stein (New York: H.L. Levin Associates, 1986), 52. Figure 29. Richard Long, England 1967, 1967. Rectangular frame and circle on grass in a park. Black and white photograph. 124 cm x 88 cm. Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London. Figure 30. Jan Dibbets, Untitled [Perspective Correction], May-June 1969. Patch of turf cut from the grounds of the Simon Fraser University campus, Burnaby, British Columbia. Dimensions unknown. Reproduced on a postcard acquired by Iain Baxter, 1969, Unit General – 5, 1969, Box 10, File 2, Iain Baxter Fonds CA OTAG SC064, E.P. Taylor Research Library and Archives, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. Figures 31, 32. Above: Coast Salish fishermen standing on a weir and spearing salmon in the Cowichan River, British Columbia, 1973. Below: Coast Salish weir with trap and movable woven panels, British Columbia, 19th century. Reproduced in Reg Ashwell, Coast Salish: Their Art, Culture and Legends (Saanichton, BC: Hancock House Publishers, 1978), 29. Figure 33. Robin Mackenzie, The Same Length of Line Connecting 1, 2, 3, 4, 1973-1974. 60.96 m (200 feet) of twine, found stones, and water, Loch Awe, Scotland. Twelve black and white wall-mounted photographs. 248.92 cm x 294.64 cm. Canada Council Art Bank, Ottawa. Figure 34. Robin Mackenzie, Split Stone Pieces, 1973-circa 1976. Granite and/or limestone boulders found and split open on the artist’s farm, Stonecraft, Pickering Township, Ontario. Black and white photographs. Reproduced in Angelo Sgabelloni, “Robin Mackenzie: The Long Vertical 1974/75 and The Split Stone Pieces,” Queen Street Magazine, Spring/Winter 1976/1977, 64. Figure 35. Robin Mackenzie, No. 2 (Working Procedure), circa first half of the 1970s. Series of photographs. Photographer unknown. Reproduced in Eight from Toronto (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1975), n.p. Figure 36. Robert Smithson walking along the Spiral Jetty, Great Salt Lake, Utah, 1970. Photograph by Gianfranco Gorgoni. Reproduced in Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, 281. Figure 37. Bill Vazan standing on Stone Maze during its demolition on a traffic island near Sherbrooke Street, Montreal, summer 1976. Photograph by Michel Gravel. Reproduced in “Corridart,” La Presse (Montreal), June 26, 1976, S:7. Figure 38. Bill Vazan, Bridge, 1968-1972.