So when I found Erin Hogan's book, Spiral Jetta, I immediately picked it up. All of the above artworks were created in the American Southwest, and this book chronicled the author's pilgrimage in search of them. Like me, she went into the search with high hopes of communing not only with art but with nature, and maybe even finding that the two became one in these sites.
I enjoyed the book; it was fun, arty, and fortunately not preachy or presumptuous of its readers. Someone who didn't know anything about landscape art would have understood and appreciated this book as much as I did (although it needed more pictures, and the pictures needed captions--says a newspaper editor). Especially for someone who'd been contemplating going out to see these works, it was a book that had to be read.
However, from a storytelling background, I felt that an introduction would have been key to understanding and appreciating the author's decision to make this art pilgrimage. Wanting to see them is one thing--I want to, as well--but actually making the drive through the most uninhabited regions of the US is quite another thing. Do the costs and risks outweigh the potential benefits, and how does a city-girl decide this is so? Beneath the "I want to see them," there has to be a deeper why--why want to at all? Instead of giving this background information, Hogan jumps straight into her quest, with the first chapter dedicated to Spiral Jetty (the book is called Spiral Jetta because of the type of car she drove there in) and every chapter after revolves around a different work or place she visited.
Disappointingly, although Hogan included a chapter about her quest for the Sun Tunnels, she couldn't find them. Which made me wonder if I'd fare any better driving through vast deserts in a tiny car.
The elusive Sun Tunnels. The tunnels align to the sunrise and sunset of the summer and winter solstices, while the holes in the sides of the tunnels replicate constellations when sunlight passes through them.
It also made me wonder, more than a little, about the reasoning of the artists who did this in the first place. Why make art where no one will see it? What kind of thought process goes into choosing which part of a vast empty landscape to place four cement tunnels in?
It's hard to believe that the artists wanted their works to be easily found or accessed--even Spiral Jetty, which is arguably the best known and is, for crying out loud, in one of the Salt Lakes, has been described as way off the beaten path, while Roden Crater, according to Hogan, is only open by arrangement with the artist. She couldn't get there, either. Another famous piece, Walter de Maria's Lightning Field, is only accessible by being driven to it by a guide, staying in an on-site cabin overnight, and then being driven back out. And supposedly it hardly ever gets struck by lightning.
All of these works are difficult, arduous, or impossible to get to, and didn't the artists think of that when they made them? Well, consider this quote by Nancy Holt:
"It is a very desolate area, but it is totally accessible, and it can be easily visited, making Sun Tunnels more accessible really than art in museums . . . A work like Sun Tunnels is always accessible . . . Eventually, as many people will see Sun Tunnels as would see many works in a city - in a museum anyway."
More accessible than art in museums! When I read that I stopped and thought about it. In a way, yes, and in another way, no. More accessible, perhaps, in the sense that if you were out in the wilds of New Mexico or Utah you could maybe happen to stumble across them, while it takes intent to go to a museum, pay admission, and find what you're looking for. For someone who lives in Portland, Oregon, these works are not accessible in the least and if I, like Hogan, happened to be bold enough to spend the money to drive down there and try to find them, it seems my chances would be slimmer than successfully maneuvering through the Portland Art Museum without a map.
Certainly, landscape works had to be a part of the earth. They had to be somewhere there weren't people, buses, fast food drive-thrus, if they were going to be what they aspired to be. So there is that factor to keep in mind. But after reading that quote by Holt a second time, it felt like these works were a direct commentary on museum art. Distant, inscrutable, inaccessible, remote, and exclusionary are the sorts of words used to describe contemporary museum art, and can't these words, in a different sense, describe landscape art? Even if I did make the pilgrimage, and I did find the Sun Tunnels, they are at such a far remove from the rest of the world that you can't really stay and appreciate them for that long--nor can I just drive over and see them on my day off from work.
I really do want to see these pieces someday, though. It would be an amazing opportunity, if I could afford it ... And, seeing as I'm still working on a paper about Noguchi, I feel like I could find interesting affinities between the way these different artistic approaches integrate landscape and art. Although I doubt Noguchi's work gets struck by lightning very often, either.
So if you are interested in landscape art and would like to know a bit more about it, this book is a great and helpful read. Fortunately, Hogan is honest and down to earth about her experiences, rather than waxing poetic at every moment she's not driving. It takes a lot of guts to admit you drove hundreds of miles to look at some rocks, or cement, or metal poles, and then didn't even like them as much as you wanted to, and for that, I commend and recommend this book.
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