Lippard - Undermining : a wild ride through land use, politics, and art in the changing West

Gravel Pit words and music by Robert Diggs, Lamont Hawkins, Dennis Coles, Clifford Smith, Paulisa Moorman, Kevin Kendrick, Larry Blackmon, Tomi Jenkins, Nathan Leftenant, and Antoine Duhamel 2000 BETTER DAYS MUSIC, SEEING EYE MUSIC, UNIVERSAL MUSICCAREERS, WU TANG PUBLISHING, INC., UNIVERSAL MUSICZ TUNES LLC, QUEEN OF NEW YORK PUBLISHING, ED. MUSICALES TUTTI INTERSONG SARL, COQUELICOT and WARNER CHAPPELL MUSIC FRANCE. All rights for BETTER DAYS MUSIC controlled and administered by UNIVERSALSONGS OF POLYGRAM INTERNATIONAL, INC. All rights for SEEING EYE MUSIC controlled and administered by UNIVERSALPOLYGRAM INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING, INC. All rights for WU TANG PUBLISHING, INC. controlled and administered by UNIVERSAL MUSICCAREERS. All rights for QUEEN OF NEW YORK PUBLISHING controlled and administered by UNIVERSAL MUSICZ TUNES LLC. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.

2014 by Lucy R. Lippard

All rights reserved.

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Published in the United States by The New Press, New York, 2013

Distributed by Perseus Distribution

Cover Photo Credit: Joan Myers 2013

ISBN 978-1-59558-933-0 (e-book)

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To my grandsons generation, hoping that they are learning some lessons we learned too late, and that they will pursue them with creative energies. And to New Mexico, one of the loves of my life.

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In memory of Andr Schiffrin, publisher extraordinaire, whose support over the years has meant so much to so many of us.

Members of El Consejo at camp protesting outside development of a traditional land grant, Tierra Amarilla, NM, 1988, following up the famous land grant battle of 1967, led by Reyes Tijerina.

Levi Romero, Descanso y Leeros, 2011. A roadside memorial in Espaola, NM, and trucks of firewood for sale, evoking the longstanding struggles in northern New Mexico over land use in the National Forests.

Check out my gravel pit/A mystery unraveling..../Dont go against the grain/If you cant handle it.

Wu-Tang Clan

Far from being a child of nature, the West was actually given birth by modern technology and bears all the scars of that fierce gestation, like a baby born of an addict.

Donald Worster

What I am saying does not mean that there will henceforth be no form in art. It only means that there will be a new form and that this form will be of such a type that it admits the chaos and does not try to say that the chaos is really something else.... To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now.

Samuel Beckett

Martin Stupich, Demolition of Lead Stock and Copper Stock, ASARCO, EL Paso Smelter, April 2013.

Contents

Above all, I am grateful to the photographers and artists who generously donated use of their images and to the good people at Creative Capital for their patience as they waited years for the results of a grant for creative non-fiction (never did figure out what that was) that allowed me to write this quirky book. To Jim Sloan for inadvertently inspiring the original lecture in 2000 by awakening my interest in gravel pits; Chris Taylor for suggesting I go ahead with the book after hearing a related lecture; Joan Myers for a fill-in photography trip around Galisteo; my local newspaper, the Santa Fe New Mexican, for consistent reporting on the politics of local land use, and High Country News for caring about the West. The following people offered crucial information and image leads: Kirk Bemis of Zuni Pueblo, Ann M. Wolfe of the Nevada Museum of Art, Mariel Nanasi of New Energy Economy, Ruth Hardinger, Simone Swan, Jan Willem Jansens, Jaune Quick To See Smith, Ethan Ryman, Katherine Wells, Rebecca Solnit, Jennifer Denetdale, Susana Torre, Phillip and Judy Tuwaletstiwa, the New Mexico Environmental Law Center, and, as usual, Jim Faris for enduring this endless process. And of course, The New Press, my stalwart publisher for twenty-five years: founder Andre Schiffrin, editor Marc Favreau, assistant editors Jed Bickman and Azzurra Cox, Managing Editor Maury Botton; Ebonie Ledbetter, Beth Long, and Cinqu Hicks of Bookbright Media.

Jacques Garnier, You Can Never Hold Back Spring, chromogenic print, 2005, from Second Chances, Twentynine Palms, CA.

John Willis, Mount Rushmore National Monument, 2007, in the sacred Paha Sapa (Black Hills), South Dakota. The grandeur of the land (stolen from the Sioux in the 1870s) puts into perspective the 60'-tall faces of four U.S. presidents carved by John Gutzon Borglum, 192641. The site, called Pilmaya (Six Grandfathers) by Lakota, is also sacred to Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Kiowa. (See Willis, Views from the Reservation. Chicago: The Center for American Places at Columbia College, 2010.)

I have occasionally plagiarized myself from previously published essays, lectures, and books, repeating some ideas that wont go away. Among them: Land Art in the Rear View Mirror, Art and the Landscape. Marfa, TX: Chinati Foundation, 1995; Gravel Pit: Cerrillos, New Mexico, New Observations, 2001; The Fall, Joan Ockman and Salomon Frausto, eds., Architourism: Authentic Escapist Exotic Spectacular. New York: Buell Center/Columbia School of Architecture, 2005; Peripheral Vision, Taylor and Gilbert, eds., Land Arts of the American West, 2009; Land Art in the New West, Land/Art New Mexico; Too Much: The Grand Canyon(s), Saunders, ed.,