Land in Art at the New Mexico Museum of ArtOctober 27, 2009
SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO - On
day three in New Mexico, I find it's time to differentiate myself as an art
tourist, one who travels to see contemporary art, from tourist art. Art made
for tourists including the art made to hang on walls is beginning to wear me down, although I
consciously avoid looking at bad galleries. However, just walking around Santa Fe my companion
has already managed to call some paitings we've walked by 'insipidly lifeless'. The gallery called it Nouveau Surrealism, but the images were like a Doonesbury comic strip, my companion continued until he realized he was insulting the a comic strip. Nauseating, was his conclusion, in the first
ever use he has made of that word. Style without substance.
In a few days we'd already seen lots of attempts to
recreate, to emote, to aesthetically communicate the beautiful land around us. It's a hard job in a visually clutter world. Georgia O'Keefe's sensuous works usually do it for me, but here in Santa Fe, they are flaunted everywhere amidst the nauseating stuff. And all the copiers of O'Keefe, of dead Impressionists, of dead Abstract Expressionists, of Western Artists like Remington and Russell and of all the copiers of Indian artists.
Realism is boring, O'Keefe said, what's
interesting is what an artist emphasizes, points out to you.
New Mexico was the home of a land art collective show this
summer, and we'd missed most of it by this fall trip, but went inside the Fine Art Museum of New Mexico to see a more traditionally placed exhibition on the land idea.
The show was based on an old photo show at the George Eastman House, called New Topographics, something about: in today's world what does man do to the land, how does man live in it that makes land relevant to us human folk today. The show is called: ManMade: Notions of Landscape.
Well, it sustains us, said my
companion. We are of the earth, not really of the city structure although so
many artists today feel city is their environment. Cityscapes are veiled, I think. And we Westerners are lucky to still see the unveiled thing, and feel something about it.
Last night we were in
Ojo Caliente, soaking in hot water that people here have been soaking in for
centuries (longer than people were saying USA) and when we get out, we and everyone around us, were
wearing the same robes like in a sci fi movie set in the future.
About the show: ManMade: it is mostly photography. And a reenactment of a Robert Smithson, . Without that piece, called Atlantis, there
was nothing physical about land included in this show. All were snaps of it. Artificial 2-Ds of landscapes, just as Smithson's is a make-believe landscape.
A museum guards told us they
brought in 4 tons of glass and broke it in the gallery - wearing safety glasses
and respirators. He
also observed a couple, in their twenties, who had no idea what Atlantis
was. They, he said, were going to
go to Africa and visit it someday.
Sarah Pickering - landscapes
of England - pastoral countryside. Photographs of explosions of a land mine, a
fuel explosion and artillery.
An-My Le was included with a good B&W photo of rockets; some accidental images are better than others and just
because Famous-Artist makes them doesn't make them beautiful or even
interesting. A little curatorial integrity would have been appreciated. I'm feeling skeptically sarcastic as I ask: Is violence necessary to be relevant today? And is it okay to intersperse images of landscape?
Smithson's piece was particularly violent. I imagined impaling myself on it,
throwing myself on it, and it was frightening, a better rush of chill than any
viewing of horror film or homicidal newscast.
Roni Horn is included with a series of photos of the
Thames River. Pretty images. Horn concentrated interest because there were 20 or 39
footnotes on each one, but in this relevant age, we ignore footnotes. How many
of us want to know what's in the footnote? And I am bothered by the paper
curling and the quality of the print being so poor. If it's about water close
ups being pretty, then make them pretty, bad craftsmanship should have a point.
The culminating LAND/ART book, titled “LAND/ART New Mexico”, will feature documentation of projects and exhibitions as well as an introduction by Bill Gilbert and Kathleen Shields and essays by Lucy Lippard, William L. Fox, Nancy Marie Mithlo and MaLin Wilson-Powell. The book will be published by Radius Books in partnership with 516 ARTS, the Albuquerque Museum and the University of New Mexico Art Museum. It will be available at bookstores and participating venues starting December 2009.Bill Gilbert, Lannan Chair in Land Arts of the American West in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of New Mexico, provides an introduction to Land Art, addressing the history of the genre and the ways in which it has expanded since the term was coined in the mid-1970s. The introduction is co-authored by Kathleen Shields, an independent arts writer and curator.MaLin Wilson-Powell, a curator, art critic and educator, provides an overview of the projects and exhibitions in LAND/ART, placing them in the hdi certification context of art history and the history of the genre.William L. Fox, director of the Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art, writes on “Art of the Anthropocene.” He explores ways in which the history of land in art has evolved in tandem with how science has sought to provide a picture of the world. Among other themes, he discusses how nascent environmental sciences in the early to mid-twentieth century informed artists from Grant Wood to Georgia O’Keeffe, and how an environmental ethics of “leave no trace” may be seen to parallel contemporary art practices of performance and installation