Page 58 - Studio International - December 1973

Four/Lucy Lippard opposition. Smithson, and others, sculpture of Long, and some of
have said 'any discussion of nature
Oppenheim and Heizer. The latter
and art is bound to be shot through has defended the fact that his earth
Trying to figure out : What are the tempered by the fact that the photo with moral implications'. When art drawings are available primarily
different responses to nature represents an experience once first began to be made out of doors through photographs by saying :
experienced directly, nature removed into another time and as a common occurrence, about seven 'Whether confronted directly or
photographed, nature painted or place. It is part fantasy, part reality. years ago (and I'm talking about art through a photograph, a planar
sculpted, nature referred to A photograph does not age like a made for or of a natural setting, not drawing conforms to the surface and
indirectly by abstract art, nature painting. While a painting also oversized indoor sculpture plunked remains flat.' However, a large
described in writing ? A hackneyed tends gradually to lose its specificity down in a garden or plaza), there drawing on the earth, due to its scale,
question perhaps, but one that must as place and become more fantastic, were protests from those who felt is seen very differently from the
be answered before one can get very unlike the photograph its strongest that it was a violation of nature to ground and from an aerial viewpoint,
far beneath the surfaces of what those progression is toward object-status. clutter it up with art. One part of me so it shares its photographic fate
experiences mean. At least I won't A painting becomes with age more tends to agree. Another part enjoys with sculpture.
ask myself (because I couldn't self-referential, less tied to its past the prospect of a rapprochement, of Another sideline to which 'low
answer it) 'What is Nature ?', having (despite art history and increasing coming upon quiet, naturally- profile' works easily lend themselves
already dismissed 'What is Art?' as a financial value). A photograph oriented art in the course of a long is the book. Long and Hamish Fulton,
waste of time ; the energy spent on becomes more mysterious as it gets walk, and of art getting out of its among others, have found it possible
such distinctions would seem better older because we continue to pretty white cell and going a little to make sculpture that does not exist
spent on more specific examples. believe that its references lie wild. (It has been pointed out to me or might not be noticed on site and is
Maybe I should refer to 'nature' elsewhere, in another world. It by a friend that nature is everything — best conveyed by a book, that is,
like that, in quotation marks, to absorbs memory, nostalgia, and all life — both city and country.) pictorialized. One of Long's books
keep myself aware that I am talking, suggests death. Its capacity to Several artists, among them (Along a Riverbank, 1971) is more of
finally, about a conception as freeze a moment, to make a picture Dennis Oppenheim, have preferred a naturalist's record than anything
artificial as art. out of reality is stronger than that of a 'the negative process of excavating' else, but his walking sculptures,
Nature experienced directly is painting which is a picture to the creation of a 'high profile' or conveyed by a map and photographs,
unreproduceable, so much so that twice-removed from reality. built form. 'Archaeological' artists or the book which is 'the sculpture
this factor itself often intrudes on our Though personal vision in a like Richard Long change little, made for Martin and Mia Visser'
consciousness of particularly photograph can obviously be as accent or rearrange nature gently (1969) are more sculptural than some
spectacular natural experiences— great as that in a painting, a painting with the paths or patterns of man, three-dimensional works because of
sunsets and other grandiose sky or or drawing is more universally add no materials. Ephemeral art like their physical breadth or range.
sea exhibits being the prime understood to record the experience Hans Haacke's string of icicles Some of the most impressive
examples. ('If someone painted this, of one person. It is thus, paradoxically, poised across a waterfall in a landscapes painted or photographed
no-one would believe it'.) However, less intimate than the photo, or at northern winter, borrows from but have been the most regional, the
even in this primary stage of digesting least less voyeuristic. While 'fine art' does not defile nature. By degrees most localized and tangible. When
nature we receive our sensory data can, ideally, be generalized to the the activity can become more overt nature is dealt with abstractly this
editorialized. We see through the point of affecting a great many and the moral issue more aspect can be sadly lacking. The
eyes of our culture, like it or not. people of infinitely varied knowledge noticeable. George Sawchuk stuck picture floats between the specificity
The quality of light has a great deal and background, it is so culturally thin poles through the trunks of trees of itself as an object and the
to do with any natural experience associated with the hand of an forming a grove of crosses (it didn't vagueness of itself as an experience of
and it profoundly affects the space. individual that it seems less real than kill the trees). Others add materials or something outside of that object
We can get similar stimuli when that of a photograph which still has objects which are inherently foreign (nature). While associations allow
'enveloped' by films or large an anonymous quality that adds to its to and incoherent in their people to feel more at home with
projected slides. But smell, texture, mystery and, oddly enough, to its surroundings. Others dig or build on a unfamiliar art styles, and
underfoot sensations, body or credibility. A written description, on huge scale, usually so far off the consequently most abstract
kinetic space and distance cannot the other hand, bereft as it is of visual beaten track that the art audience paintings are frequently seen as
be reproduced and here too previous information, can be more evocative experiences their high profile art 'nature' and even explained thus by
experience plays a large part. than any of the visual media if the solely via photography, though one their makers, abstraction (I'm
Memory is triggered by visual writer's power of suggestion is of them, Smithson, has said that thinking mostly of paintings and
suggestion, but that suggestion will intense enough and, of course, if the 'photographs steal away the spirit of coloured photographs) seem to water
act quite differently on someone who reader's imagination is up to the the work'. This brings up several down rather than to distil the
has no memories of such a place to challenge. ('I can just picture it.') interesting questions involving the clarity of real experience by
be triggered, and on someone who Nature sculpted : This means nature of a photograph as surrogate sacrificing some of their own identity.
does. At this point, writing comes as either a pictorialization of nature in for sculpture (not to mention for At the other pole, people love to treat
close to recreating natural experience three dimensions, necessarily nature), the seriality of photographs of nature itself as an abstraction and
as any medium. And at this point we involving drastic miniaturization, or work altered by weather or time, and pictorialize or anthropomorphize
enter the realm of fantasy. Landscape nature itself literally chiselled or so forth. In particular it brings up the land forms into smaller scale, more
in grand or microscopic scale has accented into art as in 'earthworks'. question of whether or not an familiar shapes and scenes.
always been the great arena for (Or it could mean nature abstracted abstract sculpture is representational Probably the two-dimensional is
fantastic art. via transferral of her own materials when it is made of the landscape always easier to deal with than the
If direct experience of nature often indoors, but I won't get into that and is a concrete part of it. three-dimensional ; it's all there to be
remains in the memory as a picture, a here.) In the first instance, the Whether a work is an incident or seen at once and contains no
photograph, once seen, can replace sculpture is inevitably a 'tableau', an icon is reflected in the way it physical threat. So taking a picture or
that picture and become the much realer than any picture in the relates to photographic even painting one is an act of taming
memory. A photograph is accepted tactile sense, and if one can shrink documentation. Still photography the wilderness. Flattening out,
as a record because it is real. Even oneself to its scale and enter it, but (especially black and white, which is diminishing in scale, pictorializing,
though the place depicted may have less real in the sense that it demands more unreal) provides a poignant are all devices man has discovered to
looked very different in reality, even total credibility to believe it at all. record of low profile work by control his fears of nature (Mother
though there is a lack of information In the second instance, the prime freezing it into an evocative 'other Earth ; he has tried, less successfully,
in most photographs that totally question is 'how does the art relate time' which is already implicit in such to do the same to women). Art and
distorts reality, seeing is believing ; to the nature?' in an almost work and is therefore doubled by nature are, however, separated by an
and a camera is an eye that we tend to hierarchical manner. Simply as a documentation. The photograph of enormous void in this matter of
believe as much as our own eyes parasite ? Does it take more from its high profile work tends to intensify control. Art is by nature formal and the
despite endless evidence to the natural setting than it gives back? its specificity, or 'this time', its most wildly 'intuitive' or 'anti-formal'
contrary. A photograph also implies Is it in tune with nature or attempting monumentality. An artifact is tied to a art can escape neither form nor
time past. So its picturesqueness is to dominate it ? The answers often 'realistic' time and place. And then, conception. Nature has its own
expanded by nostalgia. Its very seem to depend solely on whether on the other hand .... maybe there is order but it is not a formal one.
reality pins it to a specific past at the one likes or does not like the work; more mystery in the photograph of a Afterthought : Does everything
specific moment when it projects there is also the question of high profile sculpture because so above apply as well to depictions of
itself into our own present. Our own allegiances — ecology, the wilderness much more of it and its environment are not-nature as to nature?
immediate consciousness, in turn, is etc. vs. esthetics in not such a neat hidden than in the 'traces' of drawing Lucy R. Lippard
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