Undermining a Wild Ride Through Land Use Politics and Art in the Changing West
Undermining: A Wild Ride Through Land Use, Politics, and Art in the Changing Due west
Packed full both figuratively and literally. The format is too small. The footnotes and captions are mushed together, for the sake of visual format, at the expense of the reader. Too much. The book is a cute petty thing with fine examples and photos. But overwhelming. I came abroad with an overall sense of loss and an alarming conviction that we are destroying our lands. Perversely, at that place is often dazzler in these other worldly interventions. Perhaps this is what draws artists to certificate these desecrated landscapes.
lippard uses art photographs to talk nigh capitalist exploitation of the land, resources, air, water, copse, people, minerals of (mostly) western united states of america. she quotes dorothea lange pg 168:"A camera is a tool for learning how to see without a camera." and she looks at subhankar banerjee arctic photos, he says he is an activist first, artist second http://www.climatestorytellers.org/ she uses her essays along with these powerful (a bit also pocket-size format though for me, you to may need a magnifier) photographs, using hundreds of photos from dozens and dozens of artists/activists, to run through many many many examples of fat cats taking what they want, from wherever, in however a destructive non sustainable manner, for their profit. a must add for public libraries, i'd say, and super interesting and eclectic for the engaged reader. has endnotes and biblio, but no index, needs maps too.
Lucy R. Lippard sheds low-cal on many of the complex issues both globally and locally concerning the use of public land. Throughout the book she uses photographs and pertinent history of the land in the Due west and its people.
Lucy Lippard is a well-known voice in the area of land and site-specific fine art. Undermining repositions this voice to country activism situated particularly in the American west, where she has repositioned herself. Using a mixture of photography and writing, information technology tells a story of gravel, adobe, uranium, fracking and water, considering what happens in the subterranean realm. Lippard ppresents strong (and worrying) points most state apply and land constabulary, but never really finalises her points. She makes a couple of howlers, spending a long time discussing Western land artists and then paying lip service to native art (which seems more important in this context), or suggesting "truth" in pre-Photoshop photography. The volume is also very American-centric, and despite her statement that the local represents the global, her arguments practice not concord from a global perspective if yous are familiar with fine art or activism outside of the Usa. Despite these problems, there are wonderful poetic moments that contrast erection of buildings with digging holes, and the writing benefits from Lippard'south ironic sense of humour and well-judged framing from one section to the adjacent, and in the cease is an interesting if flawed exploration of the undermined earth.
Slim, portable art + history + all-politics-is-local book. You can read the captions and pics and feel every bit though yous are moving through the rooms of a cool state art exhibition. Mineral extraction is a major theme. 400 photos and nary a human. File on the same shelf with a DVD of Koyaanisqatsi and Robert Smith Spiral Jetty artbooks. The cover motion picture is illustrative of the overlapping resonance in a lot of her curated photos: Are these kivas? Are they coke ovens? (Turns out they are the latter.) Lucy R. Lippard: "This book is more concerned with land utilize than with mural, more focused on what nosotros learn from living in identify than what we run across when we await out the windows. Land use is a more realistic replacement for the too easily romanticize notion of 'land' and 'earth'."
Should be required reading for those of us living the Southwest. Lots of ideas beautifully woven together.
"The nigh powerful images present not just what we see; they are also haunted by what we don't run into."
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May 21, 2021Uranium manufacture. Pit mines. Fracking. Earthwork arts. Subterranean economy.
I think the author needs more practise or slam poetry sessions but she doesn't brand me want to accept another drink. Targeted information, neat photos and proper attribution.
Lippard provides slap-up detail on capitalist exploitation of land, peculiarly the American Southwest—the links made between land and human civilization were center-opening and informative. Lippard'southward approach was more focused on socio-political happenings, corporate business organisation dealings, and the activist movements in opposition, only in that location was an overall lack of word when information technology came to the art. There were footnotes and images that accompanied the text, but the writer rarely mentions them, nor does she make more than a general statement near artists working with the field of study of country utilise every so oft (aside from multiple mentions of CLUI). The book has a substantial corporeality of informative content, only it is severely defective in arts content for existence written by such an esteemed arts writer and curator.
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Source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15824223-undermining