Modern Art, Day 341 May 2013

Earthworks/Land Art

Walter De Maria, “Munich Earthroom (Fifty Meters Cubed),” 1968 Room filled with 1600 cubic feet of dirt Rejection of the commercialism of galleries and the buying and selling

of art Specifically wants viewers to have the reaction of wanting to get away

from it as quickly as possible

Smithson, “Spiral Jetty, Great Salt Lake,” 1970 semi-permanent structure, but there is the fact that these respond to

nature and at some point in the far future it will completely disintegrate and disappear

sometimes the jetty is underwater, sometimes the water around it is pink due to the algae and bacteria that feed off the highly saline crystallized salt that fills in the spiral shape

Died while surveying a place for a future earthwork

Nancy Holt, “Dark Star Park,” 1984

Publicly funded reinforcement of the sense of recession and perspective by virtue of

the differing sizes of the balls inset gravel discs under the balls that mimic the shadows these objects

create; once a year on August 1st at 9:32 AM the actual shadow lines up with the gravel disc

artist sees tunnels as being about transitions such as birth and death

De Maria, “Lightning Field,” 1971-7 effectively drawing on the sky with light “the land is not the setting for the art but part of the work” “Isolation is the essence for land art”

Christo, “Valley Curtain,” 1970-2 makes art that is very social and purposefully forces the public to

engage with it, even if it only means that they get annoyed by it

Christo, “The Gates, Central Park, New York,” 2005 Had been trying to get the permission to do this work since the 1970s extend over 23 miles of paths saffron-nylon fabric used when the wind blows, the gates billow out and create a tunnel through

which pedestrians could go each of the gates were on a stand so that no permanent damage was

down to the park paths has a different effect depending on your vantage point