Schwarz
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"From the beginning, Olmsted and Vaux strenuously opposed all attempts to introduce art into the park. In their Greensward Plan of 1858—the competition entry that won them the commission—they wrote that while it would be possible to build elegant buildings in the park, "we conceive that all such architectural structures should be confessedly subservient to the main idea, and that nothing artificial should be obtruded on the view." They considered art a similar distraction from the restorative purpose of the landscape and kept statues out of the park. The sole exceptions were Emma Stebbins's Angel of the Waters, atop the Bethesda Fountain, and a series of figures representing prominent Americans that were to adorn the Terrace, but were never erected due to a shortage of funds."
By not burying a thing the dirt enters into the concept, and little enough separates the dirt inside the excavation from that outside.
Claes Oldenburg
"This account of Earthworks, sculptures best known as enormous mounds and excavations in remote wilderness environments, begins by looking into a hole dug in New York City's Central Park. The very fact that on Sunday, October 1, 1967, an excavation as a work of art was produced by Claes Oldenburg, one who can not be considered an earthworker but who was an innovator in the realms of Happenings and Pop Art, suggests the status in the art world at that time of working with geological material. Exactly a year later, at the Dwan Gallery in New York City, documentation of this work and also other sculpture by Oldenburg would go on view among sculpture by nine other artists in the exhibition earth works, the debut of the genre. Dug a year before that show brought the movement to widespread public attention, Oldenburg's temporary trench epitomizes the multiple sources of Earthworks and the relation of these works to the "dirt" around them."
L.A. drunk tank, 1955
John Cage & Morton Feldman: A Conversation
I love this 3-hour conversation between Morton Feldman and John Cage recorded in 1967. An excerpt:
Morton Feldman: Well, this weekend I was on the beach.
John Cage: Yes.
MF: ... And on the beach these days are transistor radios.
JC: Yes.
MF: ... blaring out rock 'n' roll.
JC: Yes.
MF: All over.
JC: Yes. And you didn't enjoy it?
MF: Not particularly. I adjusted to it.
JC: How?
MF: By saying that... Well, I thought of the sun and the sea as a lesser evil.
JC: You know how I adjusted to that problem of the radio in the environment? Very much as the primitive people adjusted to the animals which frightened them, and which, probably as you say, were intrusions. They drew pictures of them on their caves. And so I simply made a piece using radios. Now, whenever I hear radios - even a single one, not just twelve at a time, as you must have heard on the beach, at least - I think, "Well, they're just playing my piece."
frank stella
west broadway, 1958
seward park, 1958
untitled, 1958
