Walter De Maria
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Walter Joseph De Maria
Roberta Smith Roberta Smith (born 1948) is co-chief art critic of ''The New York Times'' and a lecturer on contemporary art. She is the first woman to hold that position at the Times. Education and early life Born in 1948 in New York City and raised in Lawre ...
(July 26, 2013)
Walter De Maria, Artist on Grand Scale, Dies at 77
''
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''.
(October 1, 1935July 25, 2013) was an American artist, sculptor, illustrator and composer, who lived and worked in New York City. Walter de Maria's artistic practice is connected with
minimal art Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or conc ...
, conceptual art, and
land art Land art, variously known as Earth art, environmental art, and Earthworks, is an art movement that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, largely associated with Great Britain and the United StatesArt in the modern era: A guide to styles, schools, & mo ...
of the 1960s. LACMA director Michael Govan said, "I think he's one of the greatest artists of our time." Govan, who worked with De Maria for a number of years, found De Maria's work "singular, sublime and direct".


Life and career

De Maria was born in 1935 in
Albany, California Albany ( ) is a city on the east shore of San Francisco Bay in northwestern Alameda County, California, United States. The population was 20,271 at the 2020 United States census. History In 1908, a group of local women protested the dumping ...
. His parents were the proprietors of a local restaurant in Albany and were socially very active, while their son was mostly concentrated on music. Walter De Maria's first academic interest was music—first piano, then percussion. He also took to sports and cars, of which he made drawings. By 1946 he had joined a musicians' union. De Maria studied history and art at the
University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...
from 1953 to 1959. Trained as a painter, he soon turned to sculpture and began using other media. In 1960, De Maria and his friends, the avant-garde composers
La Monte Young La Monte Thornton Young (born October 14, 1935) is an American composer, musician, and performance artist recognized as one of the first American minimalist composers and a central figure in Fluxus and post-war avant-garde music. He is best k ...
and
Terry Riley Terrence Mitchell Riley (born June 24, 1935) is an American composer and performing musician best known as a pioneer of the minimalist music, minimalist school of composition. Influenced by jazz and Indian classical music, his work became notab ...
, participated in
happening A happening is a performance, event, or situation art, usually as performance art. The term was first used by Allan Kaprow in 1959 to describe a range of art-related events. History Origins Allan Kaprow first coined the term "happening" i ...
s and theatrical productions in the San Francisco area. From his exposure to the work of La Monte Young and dancer
Simone Forti Simone Forti (born March 25, 1935) is an American postmodern artist, dancer, choreographer, and writer. Since the 1950s, she has exhibited, performed, and taught workshops all over the world. Her innovations in Postmodern dance, including her se ...
, among others, De Maria developed an interest in task-oriented, game-like projects that resulted in viewer-interactive sculptures. For example, his ''Boxes for Meaningless Work'' (1961) is inscribed with the instructions, "Transfer things from one box to the next box back and forth, back and forth, etc. Be aware that what you are doing is meaningless." In 1960, De Maria moved to
New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
where he married his wife Susanne Wilson (later Susanna) one year later. His early sculptures from the 1960s were influenced by
Dada Dada () or Dadaism was an anti-establishment art movement that developed in 1915 in the context of the Great War and the earlier anti-art movement. Early centers for dadaism included Zürich and Berlin. Within a few years, the movement had s ...
,
suprematism Suprematism () is an early 20th-century art movement focused on the fundamentals of geometry (circles, squares, rectangles), painted in a limited range of colors. The term ''suprematism'' refers to an abstract art based upon "the supremacy of p ...
and
constructivism Constructivism may refer to: Art and architecture * Constructivism (art), an early 20th-century artistic movement that extols art as a practice for social purposes * Constructivist architecture, an architectural movement in the Soviet Union in t ...
. This influence led De Maria into using simple geometric shapes and industrially manufactured materials such as
stainless steel Stainless steel, also known as inox, corrosion-resistant steel (CRES), or rustless steel, is an iron-based alloy that contains chromium, making it resistant to rust and corrosion. Stainless steel's resistance to corrosion comes from its chromi ...
and
aluminium Aluminium (or aluminum in North American English) is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol Al and atomic number 13. It has a density lower than that of other common metals, about one-third that of steel. Aluminium has ...
– materials which are also characteristic of
Minimal art Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or conc ...
. With the support of collector Ethel Scull, De Maria started making pieces in metal in 1965. Also in the mid-1960s, he became involved in various artistic activities. His piece, ''Cage'', for
John Cage John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and Extended technique, non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one ...
, was included in the seminal 1966 '' Primary Structures'' exhibit at the Jewish Museum in New York. He appeared in
happenings A happening is a performance, event, or situation art, usually as performance art. The term was first used by Allan Kaprow in 1959 to describe a range of art-related events. History Origins Allan Kaprow first coined the term "happening" in t ...
, composed two musical works (''Cricket Music'', 1964; ''Ocean Music'', 1968), and produced two films (''Three Circles and Two Lines in the Desert''; ''Hardcore'', both 1969). De Maria briefly ran a gallery on
Great Jones Street Great Jones Street is a street in New York City's NoHo district in Manhattan, essentially another name for 3rd Street between Broadway and the Bowery. The street was named for Samuel Jones, a lawyer who became known as "The Father of The ...
in lower Manhattan with his wife Susanna, showing
Joseph Cornell Joseph Cornell (December 24, 1903 – December 29, 1972) was an American visual artist and filmmaker, one of the pioneers and most celebrated exponents of assemblage. Influenced by the Surrealists, he was also an avant-garde experimental filmma ...
's collection of rare films,
Robert Whitman Robert Whitman (May 23, 1935 – January 19, 2024) was an American artist best known for his seminal theater pieces of the early 1960s combining visual and sound images, actors, film, slides, and evocative props in environments of his own makin ...
's Happenings (he was then married to and created with dancer/artist
Simone Forti Simone Forti (born March 25, 1935) is an American postmodern artist, dancer, choreographer, and writer. Since the 1950s, she has exhibited, performed, and taught workshops all over the world. Her innovations in Postmodern dance, including her se ...
), and exhibiting De Maria's Minimalist sculptures made of wood. In 1965 De Maria became the drummer in the New York-based rock group the Primitives and an artist/musician collaborative group called The Druds. The Primitives included
Lou Reed Lewis Allan Reed (March 2, 1942October 27, 2013) was an American musician and songwriter. He was the guitarist, singer, and principal songwriter for the rock band the Velvet Underground and had a solo career that spanned five decades. Althoug ...
and
John Cale John Davies Cale (born 9 March 1942) is a Welsh musician, composer, and record producer who was a founding member of the American rock band the Velvet Underground. Over his six-decade career, Cale has worked in various styles across rock, dr ...
and was a precursor to
The Velvet Underground The Velvet Underground were an American Rock music, rock band formed in New York City in 1964. Its classic lineup consisted of singer and guitarist Lou Reed, Welsh multi-instrumentalist John Cale, guitarist Sterling Morrison, and percussionis ...
. In 1980, De Maria bought a four-story, 16,400-square-foot
Con Edison Consolidated Edison, Inc., commonly known as Con Edison (stylized as conEdison) or ConEd, is one of the largest investor-owned energy companies in the United States, with approximately $12 billion in annual revenues as of 2017, and over $62 ...
substation at 421 East Sixth Street, and an adjacent lot at No. 419, between First Avenue and Avenue A. In February 2014, this property was selling for $25 million. Businessman and art collector
Peter Brant Peter Mark Brant Sr. (born March 1, 1947) is an American industrialist and art collector. He is married to model Stephanie Seymour. He was also a magazine publisher until 2018 and a film producer. Early life and education Brant was raised i ...
purchased De Maria's studio for $27 million. Brant's plans for the space were unknown. The building was developed into the "Brant Art Center," part of the
Peter Brant Peter Mark Brant Sr. (born March 1, 1947) is an American industrialist and art collector. He is married to model Stephanie Seymour. He was also a magazine publisher until 2018 and a film producer. Early life and education Brant was raised i ...
collection. https://www.brantfoundation.org/visit/ De Maria went to California in May 2013 to celebrate his mother's 100th birthday and had a stroke there a few days later. He remained there for treatment. He died in Los Angeles on July 25, 2013, at the age of 77. He was survived by his mother, Christine De Maria; his brother, Terry; four nieces; four nephews; and four grandnieces and two great-grandnieces.


Installations

From 1968 De Maria produced
Minimalist In visual arts, music, and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in the post-war era in western art. The movement is often interpreted as a reaction to abstract expressionism and modernism; it anticipated contemporary post-mi ...
sculptures and installations such as the
Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...
''Erdraum'' of 1968. He realized
Land art Land art, variously known as Earth art, environmental art, and Earthworks, is an art movement that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, largely associated with Great Britain and the United StatesArt in the modern era: A guide to styles, schools, & mo ...
projects in the deserts of the south-west US, with the aim of creating situations where the landscape and nature, light and weather would become an intense, physical and psychic experience. In his work, De Maria stressed that the work of art is intended to make the viewer think about the earth and its relationship to the universe. '' The Lightning Field'' (1977) is De Maria's best-known work. It consists of 400 stainless steel posts arranged in a calculated grid over an area of 1 mile × 1 km. The time of day and weather change the optical effects. It also lights up during thunder storms. The field is commissioned and maintained by
Dia Art Foundation Dia Art Foundation is a nonprofit organization that initiates, supports, presents, and preserves art projects. It was established in 1974 by Philippa de Menil, the daughter of Houston arts patron Dominique de Menil and an heiress to the Schlumbe ...
. It has been speculated that '' The Lightning Field'' influenced the imagery of author
Cormac McCarthy Cormac McCarthy (born Charles Joseph McCarthy Jr.; July 20, 1933 – June 13, 2023) was an American author who wrote twelve novels, two plays, five screenplays, and three short stories, spanning the Western, post-apocalyptic, and Southern Got ...
's epilogue in his 1985 novel, ''Blood Meridian''. In the 1960s and 1970s, De Maria created enduring urban works. As complementary pieces, '' Vertical Earth Kilometer'' (1977), and '' The Broken Kilometer'' (1979), address the idea of unseen or abstracted distance. ''Vertical Earth Kilometer'' is a one-kilometer-long brass rod, two inches in diameter, drilled into Friedrichsplatz Park in central Kassel, Germany. The rod's circular top, flush to the earth's surface, is framed by a two-meter square plate of red sandstone.Walter De Maria: Trilogies, September 16, 2011– January 8, 2012
Menil Collection The Menil Collection, located in Houston, Texas, refers either to a museum that houses the art collection of founders John de Menil and Dominique de Menil, or to the collection itself of paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, photographs a ...
, Houston.
In 1979, De Maria meticulously arranged five hundred brass rods for ''The Broken Kilometer'', a permanent installation at 393 West Broadway in New York. In contrast to the hard metal of both Kilometer pieces, the third of these urban works, ''The New York Earth Room'' (1977), is a 3,600-square-foot room filled to a depth of 22 inches with 250 cubic yards of earth (the New York work is a permanent iteration of ''Munich Earth Room'', 1968, a temporary installation in Munich). Also in 1977, the artist recreated the work at the Heiner Friedrich Gallery in New York, which was then permanently reinstalled in 1980 at 141 Wooster Street, New York. ''The Broken Kilometer'' is also part of De Maria's series of monumental sculptures using a horizontal format, which feature groupings of elements ordered according to precise calculations. This series includes ''360°/I-Ching'' (1981), ''A Computer Which Will Solve Every Problem in the World/3-12 Polygon'' (1984), ''13, 14, 15 Meter Rows'' (1985), ''Apollo's Ecstasy'' (1990), and ''The 2000 Sculpture'' (1992). In 1989 De Maria completed a sphere of polished granite for the Assemblée Nationale in Paris, followed in 2000 and 2004 by works for two museums on Naoshima Island in Japan, the Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum and the Chichu Art Museum. A comparable, 25-ton sculpture entitled ''Large Red Sphere'' (2002) was installed in the Türkentor, Munich, in 2010. ''One Sun/34 Moons'' (2002), conceived by the artist in collaboration with architect
Steven Holl Steven Holl (born December 9, 1947) is a New York–based American architect and watercolorist. His work includes the 2022 Rubenstein Commons at the Institute for Advanced Study; the 2020 Campus expansion of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston inc ...
, was opened 2007 at the
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is an art gallery, art museum in Kansas City, Missouri, Kansas City, Missouri, known for its encyclopedic collection of art from nearly every continent and culture, and especially for its extensive collection of A ...
, Kansas City. In 2010, ''The 2000 Sculpture'' (1992) was the first work of art to inaugurate the Resnick Pavilion at the
Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum). LACMA was founded in 1961 ...
.


Exhibitions

De Maria and
Robert Whitman Robert Whitman (May 23, 1935 – January 19, 2024) was an American artist best known for his seminal theater pieces of the early 1960s combining visual and sound images, actors, film, slides, and evocative props in environments of his own makin ...
opened the 9 Great Jones Street gallery in New York in 1963; the same year, De Maria's first solo show of sculpture was presented there. He had his first solo exhibition in a commercial gallery in 1965, at the Paula Johnson Gallery on New York's
Upper East Side The Upper East Side, sometimes abbreviated UES, is a neighborhood in the boroughs of New York City, borough of Manhattan in New York City. It is bounded approximately by 96th Street (Manhattan), 96th Street to the north, the East River to the e ...
. (Its owner soon became better known with the Paula Cooper Gallery) De Maria avoided participating in museum shows when he could, preferring to create his installations outdoors or at unconventional urban locations.David Ng (July 26, 2013)
Walter De Maria, celebrated sculptor, dies at 77
''
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''.
His work was more widely shown outside the United States, and he had major exhibitions in Japan and Europe. In 1968 and 1977, De Maria participated in
Documenta Documenta (often stylized documenta) is an Art exhibition, exhibition of contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany. Documenta was founded by artist, teacher and curator Arnold Bode in 1955 as part of the Bundesgarte ...
in Kassel; he installed his permanent public sculpture ''Vertical Earth Kilometer'' in the city's Friedrichsplatz Park. In 1977, a major exhibition of De Maria's sculpture was held at the
Kunstmuseum Basel The Kunstmuseum Basel houses the oldest public art collection in the world and is generally considered to be the most important museum of art in Switzerland. It is listed as a Swiss heritage site of national significance. Its lineage extends ba ...
in 1972. He has also since been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions organized by
Centre Georges Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the (), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English and colloquially as Beaubourg, is a building complex in Paris, France. It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of ...
in Paris (1981),
Museum Boymans-van Beuningen Municipal Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen () is an art museum in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The name of the museum is derived from its two most important donors, Frans Jacob Otto Boijmans and Daniël George van Beuningen. The museum is located a ...
in Rotterdam (1984), Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart (1987),
Moderna Museet Moderna Museet is a state museum for modern and contemporary art located on the island of Skeppsholmen in central Stockholm, opened in 1958. In 2009, the museum opened Moderna Museet Malmö in Malmö. History The museum opened in Stockh ...
in Stockholm (1988), Gemäldegalerie in Berlin (1998), and Chichu Art Museum in Naoshima (2000 and 2004). Organized by the
Menil Collection The Menil Collection, located in Houston, Texas, refers either to a museum that houses the art collection of founders John de Menil and Dominique de Menil, or to the collection itself of paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, photographs a ...
in 2011, "Walter De Maria: Trilogies" was the artist's first major museum exhibition in the United States.


Films

In 2015, filmmaker and art historian James Crump produced and directed ''Troublemakers: The Story of Land Art''. Set in the desolate desert spaces of the American southwest, this feature documentary film contains rare footage of De Maria and the artist's extant and non-extant works. ''Troublemakers'' was one of twelve documentary films selected by the 53rd New York Film Festival, September 25–October 11, 2015. The film released theatrically at IFC Center, New York, January 8, 2016.First Run Features, ''Troublemakers'' Opens January 8 in NY


Literature

* *''Walter De Maria: Trilogies'', edited by Josef Helfenstein and Clare Elliott. Houston: Menil Collection, 2011. * Jane McFadden, ''Walter De Maria: Meaningless Work''. London: Reaktion Books, 2016. * ''Artists on Walter De Maria'', edited by Katherine Atkins and Kelly Kivland. New York: Dia Art Foundation, 2017. * ''Walter De Maria: The Lightning Field'', edited by Stephen Hoban, Alexis Lowry, and Jessica Morgan, photographs by John Cliett. New York: Dia Art Foundation, 2017. * ''Interview with Paul Cummings'', by Walter De Maria, edited by Cerise Fontaine. Paris: Éditions Lutanie, 2019.


References


External links


Interview with Walter De Maria, October 4, 1972
Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution
Thirty Years of Eternity
Tate Etc. issue 12; Spring 2008
The Lightning Field
Dia Art Foundation


Walter De Maria at DASMAXIMUM KunstGegenwart

Walter De Maria Archives
{{DEFAULTSORT:De Maria, Walter 1935 births 2013 deaths People from Albany, California University of California, Berkeley American conceptual artists Land artists The Velvet Underground American rock percussionists American rock drummers American people of Italian descent Henry Flynt & the Insurrections members