The Very Large Array

Though obviously not a work of contemporary art, the "Very Large Array" antennae installation has an undeniable visual/spatial connection with works such as A-Z Regeneration Field (Zittel) and Lightning Field (De Maria). You may even drive passed it on your way to see the later. The Very Large Array, one of the world's premier astronomical radio observatories, consists of 27 radio antennas in a Y-shaped configuration on the Plains of San Agustin fifty miles west of Socorro, New Mexico.

Each antenna is 25 meters (82 feet) in diameter. The data from the antennas is combined electronically to give the resolution of an antenna 36km (22 miles) across, with the sensitivity of a dish 130 meters (422 feet) in diameter. The array is currently in the "D configuration." For more information or details on guided tours see http://www.vla.nrao.edu/

Enlightening Field: Andrea Zittel in the Mohave Desert

*Article originally published by Terry Miles, Tate Magazine, Issue 4, 2002. The article on this post has been truncated. See for full details.

Artist Andrea Zittel is best -known for making sculptural 'living units' in New York and Europe. For the latest installment of her 'A- Z' series she has swapped urban life for the Mojave Desert. Terry Myers visited her.

Photographed at night using a 60-minute exposure, with the lights of Joshua Tree in the background.(Photography by Dan Holdsworth)
Myers: After making the celebrated drive from Los Angeles to 'the desert' to see Andrea Zittel's new digs, I am convinced that her decision to go bicoastal is one of the best things she has ever done for her art or her life. To borrow a phrase from daytime television, this move 'completes' her work, and to my amateurpsychologist yet professional-art-critic eye it doesn't look like adding a major change of venue has hurt her life one bit.

Of course with Zittel we are reminded in everything that she does that, for her, it has always been art and life, or art as life, or vice versa. All her art-making activities embody and ultimately extend the well-known philosophy of Rauschenberg, who suggested that since neither art nor life can be made, one always works in the space between them.

By transforming a 1940s homesteader's cabin, on the outskirts of the Mojave Desert town of Joshua Tree, into a second home and headquarters a couple of years ago, and calling it 'A-Z West' to complement her well-established 'A-Z East' in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Zittel has given herself both the physical space and the conceptual framework to diversify her practice, literally and symbolically. Having made a name for herself in the early 1990s with a project in the window of New York's New Museum of Contemporary Art that involved building a structure for the breeding and conditioning of chickens, and continuing to attract well-deserved international attention with an increasingly ambitious array of homebuilt, customised multi-purpose 'living units' (from furniture to mobile trailers to a man-made island that she lived on for a month off the coast of Denmark), it now looks like her part-time move back west (Zittel was born in California) has enabled her to stake out new territory for her work. More concretely, she now has a lot of real space in which to make it. It might be going too far to suggest that her situation mirrors a common myth about the Los Angeles/New York axis of the art world (in the west everything revolves around production; in the east, distribution), but it isn't wrong at all to suggest that for her overall practice such a bifurcation has not only opened up the range of possibilities in that space between art and life, but also given it a stable home.

Zittel's desert cabin is much more than a metaphorical 'west side' that bookends an 'east side' with no consideration for anything in between (more on that below). Andrea Zittel's homestead on the edge of the Mojave Desert, California By incorporating elements of the desert into the processes and techniques of making her most recent works, Zittel has given the nomadic and portable nature of her projects (see NOTES, on page 44) just the kind of literal grounding that will entice many to travel from far and wide to see where they are made. The A-Z Regenerating Field (detail, 2002)

Twenty-five stainless-steel trays hold sculptural panels, made from paper pulp, which dry in the desert sun. The A-Z Regenerating Field directly acknowledges in its title and in its configuration Walter De Maria's 1977 Lightning Field that is permanently installed in New Mexico. There are, however, significant differences. De Maria's Field is huge: 400 stainless steel poles with solid pointed tips that are precisely positioned in a one mile by one kilometre grid. Zittel's Field fits into what can be called her front yard: a grid of 25 steel trays on short poles that cascade down a hill. Both fields take advantage of the energy that is abundant in their natural surroundings, but to very different ends: the former encourages the display of lightning strikes that from all firsthand accounts are visually amazing (I haven't been yet), while the latter at first glance just seems to sit there and do nothing. Appearances are deceiving: Zittel's trays harness energy that is less dramatic yet no less productive, for her at least.

Continuing her interest in developing new building materials for her projects, Zittel began to experiment with paper pulp compacted into plastic moulds and set into the steel trays to harden. From there the desert sun takes over, like ions to De Maria's lightening poles, transforming much of her waste paper into panels that take on the appearance of fibreglass, concrete or even travertine stone. (Artist Matej A Vogrinic also harnessed sunlight in his work Rainforest for an Australian Desert, a field of 1800 half-filled watering cans placed in the desert until the heat had evaporated them dry.) For the moment, these panels have primarily a cosmetic or decorative application: 'something that could camouflage bad walls and add softness and texture to a room'. But Zittel is continuing her experiments in order to make this material strong enough, and durable enough, to build actual structures with it.

This is where Zittel's enterprise departs dramatically from that of De Maria's or any of the other minimalist earthwork artists. Her 'regenerating' field is also an 'enlightening' field, one in which we are encouraged - as is the case in all her work - to take the results of her experimentation and come up with our own ideas about what to do with them.

Looking is not enough. Zittel has always taken a 'maximalist' position, giving us as viewers (and users) enough information to incorporate the practical and aesthetic aspects of our lives into her structures and living units (her 'personal programmes'). This spirit of inclusiveness was reinforced by the manner in which Zittel introduced her Field to the world: she facilitated a series of projects by others, located at what were named the 'High Desert Test Sites'. See Later Post.

The ultimate achievement here is that Zittel has found a novel way to add genuine accessibility to the idea of an art pilgrimage - even if the contribution of another participating Test Site artist, Chris Kaspar, directly poked fun at the drive out from Los Angeles and the substantial hiking required to see everything: a casually painted wooden sign, high up on Zittel's hill, that simply says 'I'M SORRY.'

Lightning Field

The American West has attracted “all manner of dreamers,” as Tom Vanderbilt, the acclaimed of author of Survival City and Traffic, so fittingly expresses: “from millenarian cultists to visionary artists to the advanced weapons scientists of the United States Air Force. They have all made their mark, tested something or another on America’s proving ground.” (Vanderbilt)

The desert is at once a ‘no man’s land’ and a ‘safe haven’ for the artist. It is a landscape of radical potential, existing just beyond the reaches of the institutional framework—an unadulterated space that shuns the sterile museum, the parasitic gallery and corporate venues—a region where impending destiny is revealed, where dreams can be “played out with a minimum of interference.” (Ibid)

Rauschenberg’s aphorism states that neither life nor art can be made; therefore one must always work in the space between them. In the theatre of the western landscape, art must be truly lived: experienced not just visually but physically, temporally, somatically and kinesthetically.

Working within the vast expanse of the desert elicits the creation of monumental environmental works, also known as Land Art, which by nature, would not be possible to fully realize within a traditional exhibition venue (as in a museum or gallery).

Walter De Maria’s “Lightning Field” (1977), which took nearly ten years to complete, is a work that dramatically exceeds conventional limitations. The project, sponsored by the Dia Foundation, is located in a remote area of the high desert of western New Mexico. It consists of a series of 400 stainless steel poles (2” in diameter, 20’x7” in height) installed in a grid pattern, covering the exactly 1 mile and 1 kilometer. Each pole is spaced exactly 220’ apart.

The Dia foundation describes the work as, “A sculpture to be walked in as well as viewed, The Lightning Field is intended to be experienced over an extended period of time. A full experience of The Lightning Field does not depend upon the occurrence of lightning, and visitors are encouraged to spend as much time as possible in the field, especially during sunset and sunrise.” (lightningfield.org)

Accessibility is one of the most significant criticisms of “Lightning Field.” It supports a very selective audience, and is maintained (or should I say guarded) by Dia as a highly restricted work. To visit the Field one must make considerable advance arrangements with Dia and be approved to visit the work, plus make the lengthy journey to its isolated location, which is nearly impossible to find without a Dia guide. Dia makes clear that Lightning Field is not a work to be experienced by curiosity seekers or passersby, it takes time and requires contemplation on the part of the viewer. This point is seen as both a strength of the work and a downfall. Lightning Field cost nearly half a million dollars to construct, and since its completion in 1977 fewer than a thousand visitors have experienced it.

Another less acknowledged criticism of the piece is that the steel rods do not successfully attract lightning. Supposedly, the site is the “best lightning observatory in the world,” as it is a plateau. However, the surrounding mountains are of a higher elevation, and as we all know, electricity follows the path of least resistance, i.e. lightning generally strikes the highest point. Therefore, actually lightning strikes the rods very infrequently. Was this a major oversight of De Maria and his sponsors, or was the piece more about the visual and physical experience of the field than the potential meteorological result?

Some accuse the work as being a pointless creation, serving no practical purpose. It has also been described as being cold, cerebral, a highbrow conceptual work only available to an exceedingly exclusive audience. Others describe the experience as mystifying, with or without lightning. Regardless, Lightning Field is one of the most significant pieces of art created in the 20th century.

Reference:

Tom Vanderbilt, “Desert of Dreams.” (ArtByte: The Magazine of Digital Culture, Jan/Feb. 2001)