Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974:
Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974
Published: June 2012Publisher: Prestel
A young Ed Ruscha appears on the cover of Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974 (Prestel), pointing at the dirt on the side of the road that stretches beyond him to distant, sun-baked hills. The volume was published in conjunction with the recently opened exhibition at LA MOCA, set to travel this fall to Haus der Kunst in Münich. The grainy, black-and-white photograph is from Royal Road Test (1967), an artist’s book done in collaboration with Patrick Blackwell and Mason Williams that documents the destruction of a Royal typewriter tossed from the window of a car speeding along Highway 91 in the southern California desert. By bringing works such as Royal Road Test to their discussion of Land art (aka Earthworks or Earth art), the exhibition’s organizers, Philipp Kaiser and Miwon Kwon, aim to broaden the historical view of a movement now primarily associated with large-scale, remotely located projects in the American West that required heavy equipment to construct and tend to resist commodification. Read more…
