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Spiral Jetta: A Road Trip Through The Land Art Of The American West (2008)

by Erin Hogan(Favorite Author)

3.29 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0226348458 (ISBN13: 9780226348452)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

University Of Chicago Press

review 1: Ugh, don't bother. Read something by someone with some awareness about the American west or who's at least willing to do a bit of research and test their preconceptions. As a westerner, I was thrown off by her total lack of knowledge about rural places from the fourth page when she started musing about the geometric placement of hay bales in the fields and wonders if the farmers have an aesthetic preference similar to Donald Judd's minimalism, instead the more obvious conclusion that it's a choice of efficiency. There are little and larger moments like that throughout the book. Her sole research about western culture appears to have been reading Jon Krakaeur's Under the Banner of Heaven, so she's constantly on the look out for Mormon extremism. She's surprised that Moab ap... morepears hippy (and doesn't ask someone and therefore learn about its long counter culture history) and that she doesn't see sister wives anywhere in Utah. I groaned out loud when Hogan referred to Navajo teepees and pueblos (that would be hogans and lodges), and I still can't believe that got through her editor.Hogan is horrendously underprepared in terms of skills, knowledge, equipment, and general mental fortitude. At the beginning of the book, that does add an element of levity, but since she never turns a critical eye on herself or seems to learn, it just becomes tedious.Perhaps the worst part of the book is when she and a friend decide to visit Juarez. She manages to make the many problems that city faces all about her and her comfort as a tourist, which is just insensitive to the suffering that is faced there by residents every day. I wish she'd had the good sense to actually explore Juarez's problems in a constructive way or to not include the chapter at all.The pacing of the book is also tiresome. I feel like the only details we skip are her restroom breaks. I don't need a play by play of every single highway stop. I just need well-written details that shine through. Unfortunately, Hogan is just not a strong writer. She also missed an opportunity to explore the creators of this land art as characters. When she does engage with them on the page, they come off wooden and incomplete.When Hogan's actually visiting an art site, the descriptions of the piece are often confusing and she tends to dive into theory before we have a clear image of the piece. Between that and the low quality photos in my paperback edition, I consistently turned to Wikipedia to get a sense of the artwork, and really, I think that's a better source for information than this book is. The chapter on Lightning Field may be an exception, and I think it's the only artwork that this book made interesting on the page.Skip it. Read Wikipedia if you're interested in the art. Read a better writer (William Least Heat Moon, Robyn Davidson) if you're looking for a cool travel narrative.
review 2: The Public Affairs Director of the Art Institute of Chicago shares her travel diary of a car trip through Utah, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Her plan is to experience the monumental scale art created in the late twentieth century and to test herself against her fears of isolation, disorientation and spontaneity. Her account is frank and detailed. She gives the reader unfamiliar with the art works just enough background on the creators’ artistic visions and their history to balance her own personal response to them. For most of the trip she finds the works a bit anticlimactic. That is, until she walks through “Lightning Field,” Walter De Maria's grid of four hundred polished stainless steel poles in the New Mexico desert, at sunset. She describes the experience of the play of light on the poles as singing. "It was a chorus of soft hues—of pinks and reds and oranges, sunset colors distilled and embraced and refracted by the polished surfaces—punctuated by bursts of brilliance as the sun hit the poles at just the right angle. The regularity of the grid only heightened the effect…"Interestingly, the other work to which she enthusiastically praises is Donald Judd’s “100 Untitled Works in Mill Aluminum” displayed in two converted artillery sheds in Marfa, Texas. Once again, it is the interplay of the natural light and landscape with the careful regularity of the manufactured metal, the human artifacts in a natural environment that triggers her emotions and praise, an experience which was much milder when she visited the creations of earth and stone in the first part of the book. This small format book with its black and white photographs presents its land art subjects in the author’s words rather than relying on her snapshots. An excellent bibliography and some practical travel directions complete the book. less

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