Cover Artist: Agnes Denes
Agnes Denes, a Hungarian born artist/scholar with a PhD n Fine Art, is one of the originators of Conceptual art and also a pioneer of the environmental art movement. Her work engages ecological, cultural and social issues, and are often monumental in scale. In 1996 Denes completed “Tree Mountain — A Living Time Capsule” in Finland. This massive earthwork and reclamation project involved the construction of a “mountain” on the site of an old gravel quarry and the planting, by volunteers from different countries, of 11,000 Finnish Pine trees in an intricate pattern. The volunteers were each given inheritable certificates (valid for 400 years) which granted them stewardship of one of the trees. In l998 she planted a forest of endangered species in Australia and a cropland in the heart of Caracas, Venezuela. She has had over 300 solo and group
exhibitions on four continents and is the author of four books.
Our cover image and the images throughout are from Denes’s “Wheatfield—A Confrontation” © Agnes Denes : 2 acres of wheat planted & harvested by the artist on the Battery Park landfill, Manhattan summer l982. Commissioned by Public Art Fund, New York City.
After months of preparations, in May l982, a 2-acre wheat field was planted on a landfill in lower Manhattan, two blocks from Wall Street and the World Trade Center, facing the Statue of Liberty. Two hundred truckloads of dirt were brought in and 285 furrows were dug by hand cleared of rocks and garbage. The seeds were sown by hand and the furrows covered with soil. The field was maintained for four months, cleared of wheat smut, weeded, fertilized and sprayed against mildew fungus, and an irrigation system set up. The crop was harvested on August 16 and yielded over 1000 pounds of healthy, golden wheat.
Planting and harvesting a field of wheat on land worth $4.5 billion created a powerful paradox. Wheatfield was a symbol, a universal concept, it represented food, energy, commerce, world trade, economics. It referred to mismanagement, waste, world hunger and ecological concerns. It called attention to our misplaced priorities. The harvested grain traveled to twenty-eight cities around the world in an exhibition called ‘The International Art Show for the End of World Hunger”, organized by the Minnesota Museum of Art (l987-90). The seeds were carried away by people who planted them in many parts of the globe.
The above text written in 1982 has now added poignancy and relevance after 9/11/01. © Agnes Denes
Images from “Agnes Denes: Projects for Public Spaces,” curated by Dan Mills and organized by the Samek Art Gallery, Bucknell University.