Page 54 - Studio International - November 1973

THREE/LUCY LIPPARD simply another eighteenth and cairns of the American Indian,
nineteenth-century fiction. God
Japanese bon-seki, neolithic
knows the art world is still not free 'drawings', etc. Anyone coming upon
Maybe this is a book review. Maybe landscape as it exists'. His attitude of the noble savage syndrome. them a day after they were created
it's a continuation of last month's toward the land was, in contrast to We have now turned our longing would have no way of setting them in
notes on Smithson. Maybe it's this that of most of his 'earthworking' further back in time than Gothic time. Thus within certain limitations,
month's anticipation of next month's colleagues, not at all romantic. As a arches, Chinoiseries, and Greco- they become timeless ; within the
notes on nature which could be confessed land-romantic I found African savages to include new span of the earth's life, or of man's,
clearer. The books are Paul being in nature with him disorienting. knowledge of primitive and they exist in the same small parcel of
Shepard's Man in the Landscape What he saw was not the grand vista, prehistoric remains which stimulate time as the gigantic Nasca earth
(Smithson recommended it to us) the pretty colours, the 'atmosphere', the imagination particularly because drawings in Peru, as Stonehenge, or
and David Leveson's A Sense of the but its substance, what it was made of, we have no complete picture of them. as Thingvalla. The time sense
Earth. The first is a comprehensive how long it had been there, how and Just as reading a book can so often implied here also affects its audience,
lyrico- historical survey of man's if it could and would be used. He was be more satisfying than seeing even a which is, of necessity, a small and
relationship to nature ; the second is a fondest of sites already in ruin, good film rendition because one's accidental one, straggling by over
geologist's credo, written for the devastated by time, the kind of site own pictures, associations, sensory long periods of time and totally
layman but, one suspects, also the land-romantic finds barren and data can be indulged untrammelled, so opposed to the forward-rushing time
written to keep the author himself unevocative. This 'unnatural' love of this art of suggestion, depending sense of today's art-making and art-
down to earth. Neither book jumps nature's underside— death, decay, unashamedly upon its environment, viewing (though it is only fair to
too energetically on the ecological disintegration —was, however, the entices the viewer into tactile note that Long succumbs to this too
bandwagon, though Leveson says basis of a healthy anti-idealism tinged sensations of the earth. (Perhaps for by a Smithsonian imposition of
the geologist's duty is to 'interpret by a healthy optimism. Shepard says the artist as well it is more like digging outdoors on indoors for
the earth to society'. The way he the alternative to a chaotic world is not out an image than imposing one— institutional situations). Lawrence
describes today's geology makes it necessarily a disciplined one. He Michelangelo ?) This is not Weiner's crater in Mill Valley,
sound like contemporary art — 'a talks about 'the swamp, the fertile improvement of the land by art so California, in 1960 and other
descriptive past is giving way to an muck' and its 'uroboric nature', about much as a perceptual nudge to look at sculptures made in the wilderness
exciting era of broad hypothesis and the necessity to preserve all of the land. while he was bumming through
unifying generalization', and the way nature, not just 'good' and 'pretty' America are also traces, as is
he describes the geologist's parts attractive to and controllable Smithson's time range was Simonds' miniature civilization
responsibility to 'bridge the gap by man ;'Nature changes as soon as geologic rather than homocentric. migrating through New York City,
between pattern and process' makes part of it is isolated' (Art's problem His and others' interest in where the birth and death of each
it sound like contemporary art too). Leveson says 'Perhaps any abandoned industrial sites, in landscape and building or ritual site
criticism. Some artists still hanker attempt to force nature into a mould 'dearchitecturization' (as in his are telescoped into a few hours or
after nature while other artists have likeable or even comprehensible to prophetic partly buried woodshed days; during this span of time they are
overschematized nature and blocked man is bound to failure'. He favours at Kent State), combines the built.... into ruins, and the little
the way back into the maternal spirals as conceptual configurations, picturesqueness of nature with the people have moved on. Shepard
embraces of naturalism. Suddenly the mistrusting cycles because they are picturesqueness of industry, another says archaeology brings new 'site
artificiality of art is particularly grating among the patterns for which man American art syndrome first prevalent value' to a landscape. A similar
and nature is particularly ingratiating. searches to 'support his hope and in the 20s and 30s (Charles Sheeler phenomenon is achieved by
If the pictorialization of nature now allay his fears'. (Asimov says man et al.; Sheeler was, significantly, also photographic documentation of a
seems impossible, nature can still be can't face the idea of infinity for the a still photographer), and then in the place or series of places, or of events
summoned obliquely through the same reasons). Cycles 'embody the 60s with Minimalism, from which the 'taking place' somewhere. An
materials themselves, or through excitement of motion together with earthworks emerged. One nineteenth- expanse is defined by the X on it,
traces left like ritual worshipping the security of going nowhere'. century view of mountains was as and by its name. Shepard says
sites on the earth herself— through Smithson, whose favourite form was ruins of the earth's crust, thereby 'Territorial establishment and
earthworks, through using earth, the spiral, says 'Nature does not reincorporating geological time into maintenance is closely related to
sticks, stones, feathers, etc., outdoors proceed in a straight line, it is rather a safer historical perspectives. Leveson, sexuality and to the other socializing
or indoors, in ephemeral or more spiralling development. Nature is deploring Mount Rushmore, into processes. Love of one another is
conventional situations. never finished'. When Leveson talks which are sculpted the portrait linked to love of place ...
about the fascination of rock shops he heads of several American relationships between men and
I think of Jackie Winsor's bound sounds like he is describing presidents, laments, 'Why can't a women partly determine how
saplings rearranged into sculpture Smithson's non-sites :'The siderite mountain remain a mountain ?' Once people use their environment'.
but remaining in their own forest from Roxbury, the geode from the 'outdoor art' departs from natural or Leveson says 'Land that is not
environment; of Charles Simonds' Yucatan, the fluorite from Cornwall ... 'found' materials it becomes more mapped is not possessed. Expert
microcosmic clay brick buildings on trigger chains of associations. There questionable, at least in terms of tracing of contours is not unlike
hilly landscapes tucked into the city's is an intimacy in their presence, a naturalism. In the early love-making'. Smithson says 'the
macrocosmic clay brick towers. link with the past, other places and nineteenth-century, Frederick farmer's, miner's or artist's treatment
I think of Smithson's, Richard people that is overwhelming and Cozzens suggested that the New of the land depends on how aware he
Long's, Jan Dibbets', Dennis undeniable'. Jersey Palisades be painted white. is of himself as nature; after all, sex
Oppenheim's transferrals of earth I wrote a few years ago that much of I was once quite taken with a piece I isn't all a series of rapes'. He also
and rock to the institutional interior, the art made outdoors seemed saw only in slides — a white square says 'When one looks at the Indian
their alterations of the landscape in archaeological in effect. It had to do painted by artist Randy Sims on a cliff dwellings in Mesa Verde, one
the exterior, of Poppy Johnson's or with the idea especially prevalent at mountain face which had been cannot separate art from nature'.
Don Sunseri's bark and branch and that time (1969) that 'the world is full photographed from various I wonder about calling the Mesa
colour totems, of Laura Grisi's stone of objects' (Heubler), that artists distances—with the idea of coming Verde dwellings art. It is calling them
and sand-grain counting, or Hans should take away rather than add to upon this formalist imposition in the art which separates them most
Haacke's natural systems which the junk in the world (Heizer), with great Western wilderness. The decisively from nature, but they were
correspond to Shepard's appreciation the concepts of accent and overlay. ramifications, however, are harder to in fact part of nature, in that all
of nature 'not as copying art, not as Subtractive activity results in 'traces' swallow. I never could swallow the 'natural' architecture (i.e.
image, but as ecological system'. rather than in confrontation, focus pollutive aspects of Christo's gigantic architecture free from art, bound to
These are attempts to relate to rather than form. It's a different kind wrapping of the South Australian life) is part of the organism
nature without imitating, satirizing, of experience. It is, perhaps, a coastline, which was photographed humankind's relationship to its
historicizing or photographing (about literary experience, since the and then whipped into shreds and environment. In the introduction to
which more in the next couple of suggestion of previous occupation, into the sea by the wind. Richard Leveson's book René Dubos says
months.) Shepard says cities, by of mysterious function, is far more Long, on the other hand, moves alone 'The geologist can't escape
their very polarity to the landscape, evocative than restoration, around the world searching out dedication to history, and this makes
create nature lovers. Smithson is recreation, or most creation. The 'sublime' and awesomely isolated him the epitome of Western man
talking about urban and rural land picturesque is a submerged mode, sites at which to leave traces of his whose tragic sense of life comes
when he says that 'a consciousness of leaning more heavily on the own art—stones, tracks, and other from his awareness that he is not
mud and the realms of sedimentation imagination than on perception. low-profile changes of the land's absolute and is going towards
is necessary in order to understand the Smithson says that 'Nature' was surface which recall the blazes or somewhere'.
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