Earth Art Exhbition 1969
John Sturgeon: The Cornell years (1968-70)
As a n MFA graduate student at Cornell University, Sturgeon along with fellow MFA
students, including Gordon Matta-Clark from Architecture, assisted the
exhibition’s artists in preparations and installation for Cornell’s Andrew Dickson White
Museum’s landmark The Earth Art Exhibition (1969). The exhibition featured works by
many of the seminal earth artists. Notably, Sturgeon had the formative experience of
assisting Robert Smithson on his site/non-site piece “Cayuga Salt Mine Project”, for
that exhibition. These experiences lead to him to abandon painting and begin working
in an installation or an environmental event f ormat before subsequently focusing on
video art.
The Earth Art Exhibition:
Prior to the Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University the campus museum was housed in a stately Victorian Gothic mansion - the Andrew Dickson White Museum. It was there at the A. D. White Museum in the fall of 1968 and spring of 1969 that the activities and exhibition of The Earth Art Exhibition took place.
Conceived by Willoughby Sharp (1936 –2008), an independent curator, publisher and
artist, the exhibition presented site-specific installations by nine artists: Jan Dibbets
from the Netherlands, Hans Haacke and Günther Uecker from Germany, Richard Long
from Great Britain, David Medalla from the Philippines, and Neil Jenny, Robert Morris,
Dennis Oppenheim, and Robert Smithson from the United States. Initially twelve artists were invited: Michael Heizer and Walter de Maria briefly exhibited in the show but were not mentioned in the catalogue, which was published a year later. Carl Andre was also invited but ultimately declined to participate . (Johnson Museum statement)
Above: Neil Jenney, Dennis Oppenheim, Günther Uecker, Jan Dibbets, Richard Long, and Robert Smithson (seated, left to right) with Thomas W. Leavitt (1930–2010), Director, A. D. White Museum of Art, Cornell University (standing), at the Earth Art Symposium, February 4, 1969. Below: Unidentified photograph made at the time of the Earth Art installations. Photographs courtesy the Cornell University Library, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections.
Comments: as Robert Smithson’s assistant
What’s absent from the more formal statements above are my impressions of
the man and the degree to which our brief contact had on my own trajectory as
an artist and further to my sense of self. In retrospect the experience was
pivotal to my creative path, and provided points learned that I endeavored to
bring forward in later years to my teaching.
I was 23 when I assisted Smithson. So, the profound impact of our interaction
was decidedly one sided. My opinion then as now is that Smithson seemed a
pensive person, perhaps shy, yet seriously focused on getting his work done
right. He was a quiet force among the group of earth artists in the exhibition
and clearly had everyone’s respect and ear.
Smithson’s “Cayuga Salt Mine” piece was particularly well situated within the
exhibition in what may have been the largest room of the A. D. White Museum
of Art, centrally located at the back of the first floor. The gallery lighting he
adjusted to flood the space adding a fortuitous shimmer to the rock salt and
mirror composition that enhanced the overall aesthetic.
As I recall his working process, Smithson took considerable care deliberating
the placement of each element. Yet once a decision was made, in almost
performative fashion, he poured, piled and scattered the rock salt amid his
mirror placements with only minor subsequent adjustments. Eventually he
covered virtually the entire gallery floor with piles of rock salt inset with
embedded mirrors, even utilizing the walls for propping mirror into heaps of
rock salt. Even though the juxtaposition of material might be seen as somewhat
disparate, the whole of the “non-site” installation gave an impression of natural
coherence.
As his grad assistant, I served primarily as Smithson’s driver & gofer for the
project. While chauffeuring him to the various sites including the Cayuga Salt
Mine, our conversations were few, however they were relaxed and non-
hierarchal. I felt he treated me with respect. Our ages were only eight years
apart and I must have seen him not only as an exciting artist, but perhaps
something of an older brother figure.
I understood then that he had and perhaps still has - a reputation for being
dark and somewhat inscrutable. Yet, I found him to be kind with an open and
generous willingness to have a serious conversation with a younger artist. The
last time we were together before the exhibition's opening, he took me to a
local restaurant and we shared tea together. We talked for some length, not
only about his concepts and process, but he took the time to ask about what I
as doing. He was very supportive of my new direction (leaving painting behind)
and moving towards environmental events - installations. Even though my own
work rapidly moved on to video art after graduation, the lasting effect of
involvement with The Earth Art Exhibition has engendered periodic involvement
with ecological or environmental issues particularly in installation and
performance work.
The teaching moment gleaned from my brief contacts with Smithson was: that
over the years I began to realize how important, even vital, for older &/or more
experienced artists to acknowledge younger artists with respect, in whatever
ways the situation offers. Endeavor to instill by those interactions an
acknowledgement that both share this journey as artists - albeit from varying
perspectives - and from different points in time along the road. I have
attempted to do the same when I had interactions with younger artists who may
have been working with me on a project, as I also did with my grad assistants -
share a coffee when the chance comes, or invite them out for a meal and
conversation - thanks in part to the lesson learned from Robert Smithson.
My involvement with that seminal group of earth artists, the exhibition process
and the tangible sense that this was ground zero for a sea change in
international art – certainly changed me. It gave volition and direction towardsfinding forms that fit appropriately my desire to create in an arena more
unbounded by history, than what painting had become for me.
Comments: as Gordon Matta-Clark’s contemporary
Gordon Matta-Clark and I were contemporaries in Graduate School at Cornell
during the time of The Earth Art Exhibition at Andrew Dickson White Museum.
Gordon was in architecture (his 5th yr. of that 5-year program) while I was in
the first year of the MFA program in Fine Arts. The two schools were like most
grad schools, wrapped up in their own worlds, though the Fine Arts Bldg.
(Franklin Hall) was right next to the Architecture Bldg. (Sibley Hall). Gordon and
I were acquaintances, with mutual friends. However, that changed as our
interactions gained enthusiasm with the escalating involvement assisting the
artists of The Earth Art Exhibition .
At the time, the main student hangout for both Architecture and Fine Arts’
students was the Green Dragon Cafe located in the basement of Sibley Hall
(College of Architecture). Gordon and I would occasionally have coffee together
at the Dragon. As the exhibition activities intensified, our impromptu dialogues
did likewise and they became more focused on the exciting creative concepts
spawned by the exhibition. During this Earth Art period, our camaraderie
developed – sitting in the Dragon, heads close together, as if involved in some
kind of clandestine art affair, smoking too many cigarettes, drinking too many
cups of coffee and gabbing on, attempting to decode what we thought was
going on.
Gordon had a unique and intense personality - certainly an impressive being
even then. I do believe there was shared a level of mutual respect - a sense that
we were serious players in the art scene on campus... at a rather exhilarating
moment. Participation in the activities surrounding The Earth Art Exhibition was
like attending a second grad program simultaneously with the one we were
enrolled. These intense exhibition activities on campus came to usurp
everything... sucked up all our time, so much so that I would be hard pressed to
recall being in classes during this period. Though my involvement was
considerable, this was true even more so for Gordon. His appetite for
involvement was insatiable. Although Gordon had been assigned to assist
Dennis Oppenheim on his ice-cut of frozen Beebe Lake (there is a great photo
of Gordon wielding a chain saw over frozen Beebe Lake, forecasting his later -
building cuts ) Gordon’s involvement extended further to as many of the artists
as possible.
Gordon finished his 5-year architecture program in 1969 and left Cornell for
NYC. I still had a year to go. The last time we saw each other was in New York,
during the two days of wedding festivities for a mutual friend Robert Leibel
(former MFA from Cornell). I kept track of Gordon’s activities and his
involvement with his restaurant “Food” and the beginnings of his deconstructedbuildings. But soon after my MFA was over - I headed for Los Angeles... and gradually lost track of Gordon except in the art journals, until I heard of his untimely death at age 35. Years later, I was approached by Gwendolyn Owens to provide firsthand context and research background for her catalogue section on his Cornell Years for the Whitney Museum’s retrospective* of Gordon Matta- Clark’s work - “You Are the Measure”.
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*2006 (June-December) I served as a Research Reference for: Gordon Matta-Clark: You
Are the Measure (exhibition catalogue) Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Yale University Press, 2007, chapter of the catalogue: "Lessons Learned Well - the
Education of Gordon Matta-Clark" by Gwendolyn Owens; reference for Matta-Clark’s
Cornell years, particularly the first "Earth Art" exhibition of earth works (land art) at
Andrew Dickson White Museum, Cornell University (Feb. 11- Mar. 16, 1969); specifically,
referenced also in the catalog were my interactions with sculptor Robert Smithson on his
work "Cayuga Salt Mine Project", 1968-69.