The Menil Assortment is celebrating its historic relationship with the late artist Walter De Maria with a significant exhibition of his work, comprising hardly ever proven and beforehand unseen items from its assortment. Though De Maria is greatest identified for his ground-breaking earthworks, the brand new present, known as Containers for Meaningless Work and spanning 5 a long time, goals to broaden scholarship on De Maria’s prolific profession in addition to give an perception into his radical experimentation throughout numerous mediums.
De Maria was born in California in 1935 and studied historical past and artwork on the College of California, Berkeley, earlier than he relocated to New York, the place within the mid-Sixties he turned a drummer for the band that preceded The Velvet Underground, generally known as The Primitives, alongside John Cale and Lou Reed. He deserted the enterprise to focus totally on sculpture, recalling in a 1972 interview that he was “an artist, not a musician”.
He briefly operated a gallery in downtown New York with the artist Robert Whitman, the place he exhibited minimalist plywood sculptures that have been typically inscribed with instructions encouraging viewers to undertake duties with no productive final result—or what he aptly described as “meaningless work”. For instance, Ball Drop (1961-64) asks viewers to drop a ball by way of the sq. opening of a tall plywood field to create a sound, whereas the monumental set up The Arch (1964) immerses the viewer inside tall picket columns, creating an inexplicably transcendental surroundings by way of easy geometric stacks.
Walter De Maria, The Arch (1964). The Menil Assortment, Houston. © The Property of Walter De Maria. Picture: Paul Hester.
Early in his profession, De Maria was supported by Heiner Friedrich, the German artwork supplier who based the Dia Artwork Basis in 1974 alongside his spouse Philippa de Menil, the daughter of the philanthropists and Menil Assortment founders John and Dominique de Menil. Dia funded and continues to protect a few of the artist’s most formidable and well-known initiatives, such because the seminal earthworks The Lightning Discipline in New Mexico and The New York Earth Room (each 1977). The latter, put in in New York’s Soho neighbourhood, is at the moment present process meticulous conservation alongside along with his close by set up, The Damaged Kilometer (1979).
“Everyone knows De Maria due to his earthworks; it’s how I initially understood his work, so the concept of this exhibition is to point out a extra nuanced presentation of his observe throughout media with larger depth and complexity than what has been executed prior to now,” says the co-curator Michelle White, who organised the present with the Menil’s former chief conservator, Brad Epley. “We’re intent on exhibiting the myriad of sides and supplies he used, and in establishing a transparent throughline that connects the items.”
Walter De Maria’s Put One Field on High of One other Field, Wait One Minute, Then Place the High Field on the Ground (1961) The Menil Assortment, Houston
The exhibition contains numerous drawings and a number of other examples of De Maria’s early sound and video works, a lesser-known however paramount juncture in his profession. The movie Hardcore (1968) exhibits De Maria and the artist Michael Heizer capturing rifles towards the distant backdrop of the Nevada desert. That very same 12 months, De Maria realised one in every of his first Land artwork items, Mile Lengthy Drawing, comprising chalked parallel strains within the Mojave Desert in California, which took his minimalist method outside. One other spotlight is Ocean Mattress (1969), a piece that has been replicated for the exhibition, during which viewers are invited to recline on a mattress whereas listening to the ambient sounds of the ocean.
The Menil holds the biggest assortment of works by the artist, spanning round 700 items, most of that are on paper. Thirty of the works within the exhibition have by no means been exhibited earlier than. De Maria’s first main solo museum exhibition within the US was additionally held on the Menil in 2011 and featured a few of the final works he created earlier than his dying in 2013, a few of that are included on this exhibition too. Amongst these are the yellow portray, The Coloration Males Select When They Assault the Earth (1968), which has been joined by two work from 2011—one purple and one blue—every equally embedded with a brief anti-war phrase on a stainless-steel plate.
The exhibition goals to “showcase the Menil’s holdings of De Maria’s work with the intention to present a chance for students, curators and others to broaden their understanding and appreciation of the work”, White says. “There’s a lot that’s nonetheless unknown about De Maria and by opening the doorways to our assortment maybe new perception can emerge.”
The exhibition has been funded by the Eleanor and Frank Freed Basis and different donors, with analysis supported by the Terra Basis for American Artwork. Gagosian gallery has additionally not too long ago printed a 500-page monograph dedicated to the artist, together with essays by specialists within the area reminiscent of Donna De Salvo, Michael Govan and Elizabeth Childress and Michael Childress.
- Walter De Maria: Containers for Meaningless Work, The Menil Assortment, Houston, 29 October 2022-23 April 2023
