Saturday, September 14, 2013

Walter De Maria "The New York Earth Room,"

I realize that by posting images of this work I am in some way defying the wishes and the intent of the artist.  Not as an act of open defiance but rather as active engagement, complicating and questioning, I wonder how I can NOT use and think about such framing devices as photographic machinery (especially when it frames my view each and every day from my front pant pocket toward the world), such proliferation of images beyond artworks themselves, and, how one single image, the one that I saw upon first learning of this work as an undergraduate in 1992, is to be understood as the only one to shape my view and understanding of this work well in advance of my ever beholding it? Such a preconceived image has not disenfranchised my viewing experience of the "real" thing, however limited my view actually is even on site.  What you see here are vantages that are possible from the main (only?) viewing platform; it occurs to me in writing this that there might be additional views from neighboring buildings, but none were suggested nor offered.  

Aside from my disclaimer above, I am also compelled to share how lucky I felt to have seen Walter De Maria's "Earth Room," freshly groomed for a new season. Outside of that, I have very little left to say. This work is heavy, important, and has stayed close to my thinking as myth through a single image for more than two decades and now as memory from the ones below.






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