A mailman from Transilvania had me a sweet time this morning listening to stories and the history of Eastern Europe, Spain, Germany, USA and the usual conspiracy theories about this country, in an impossible accent that made me completely unavailable for understanding. Something about the FBI plotting to bomb Oklahoma City and Romanian crooks in Madrid. It was amusing and extra weird. Like he would say, "vateva" (whatever)- the fact is he delivered in my hands a craved, eager and long-awaited book, the ultimate experience in Earthworks reading: "Land and Environmental Art", from the Phaidon Series (25 dollars, original price is 75, with stamps from the Hennepin County Library, Minnesota, that will forever remind me the good time I spent living there). I managed to get this best bargain ever for the best book ever to be gathered- all the earthworks you can imagine, wonderful photos, insight short texts on each of the works presented, essays from the past and present, a nice modern-yet-oldie design and type. From Herbert Bayer to Cai Guo Qiang, they are all here, classics and cutting-edge, forgotten and in-the-spot. A multifaceted, varied and very complete pleasure; a magnificent learning. An instantly definitive and necessary classic.
What I want to recall here is the mind-blowing effect that I fell on upon encountering in the first pages, just opening the book, a poster-size photo of Robert Smithson taking a photo of Michael Heizer in Mono Lake, California. Both looking like young, casual cowboys, dressing alike, in those restless and brutal desertic environments where you can almost feel the ruthless hot melting your hands while peeking at the rugged heroes on the book. I have read about their trips together to the desert of the American West, but this is the first image I've ever seen of those travels. And it's good to remember, so vividly and freshly, that there was a time, not long ago, when Mike and Bob, Bob and Mike (and Nancy, too) were all good friends exploring the desert and making art with dirt.
Specially moving is, in this sense, the fair and sense-making inclusion of Nancy Holt's "Buried Poem Number 4 for Michael Heizer", a private artwork that Nancy dedicated to him, as well as to Carl Andre, Robert Smithson and other friends. The liricism and heart-touchingness of Nancy Holt's art, spirit and persona can be understately experienced here, in just a hand-marked topographic map that leads to a present hidden in a remote spot of the desert, specially created for that specific friend.
Thirty four years later, Michael Heizer had that "something" on the brain that made him revolt, incrompehensibly and unnecessarily, against his old good friend long-time-dead Robert Smithson. Nancy Holt, though, does talk with no hard feelings whatsoever about Michael Heizer. Noblesse Oblige. After reading the story on the New York Times and writing about Heizer's mental fragility, these fragments of true friendship from the past put together in "Land and Environmental Art" are a treasure greatly appreciated. They were good buddies.
