Amazon.com Review
Throughout time artists have been making art about the landscape. In
Midsummer Snowballs, Scottish artist Andy Goldsworthy makes art
from the landscape and dramatically unleashes it upon the city. Over the winter months in Scotland, Goldsworthy assembled 13 enormous one-ton snowballs and placed them in cold storage. One summer night, he released them onto the streets of London's financial district. Londoners awoke to startling winter sculptures on their sunny sidewalks. The snowballs were filled with a variety of elements, from feathers, seeds, and pinecones to rusted metal. The element of surprise continued as the warm summer air melted the sculptures and slowly revealed their insides to the passing public. Goldsworthy, whose career has been focused on making art in nature, creates beautiful and meaningful moments with these snow pieces. The sculptures highlight each viewer's relationship to public art, from hostility to wonder, as well as the connection between the city and the countryside. The book includes a straightforward, diary-like essay on the workings of the entire project, setbacks and all. With 280 full color photographs, it is a truly lovely and inspiring book.
--J.P. Cohen
From Library Journal
Famous for transforming the natural world into the canvas for his surprising and colorful work, Goldsworthy expands upon his fascination with snowballs in the urban melting action documented here. Imagine walking through your city on a hot summer day and discovering a large snowball melting on the sidewalk. This is just what Londoners experienced when on the night of June 21, 2000, Goldsworthy, working the Barbican Arts Centre in London with many helpers, placed 13 huge snowballs throughout the city. For the next six days he watched and recorded as each ball (weighing about a ton) was sculpted by the city environment, people's touch, and temperature. Though three of the snowballs were destroyed by an angry viewer, most succumbed to the wind and the warm summer air, slowly revealing the objects packed within them: barbed wire, feathers, stones, branches, wool, and more. The resulting shifts in shape, color, and texture comment gently, and with humor, on the transience of time, the beauty of change, and the steady force of nature. The many color photographs included here document the melting balls as well as Londoners' reactions. Goldsworthy's daily comments, from the first snowfall to the last drip, and the Tate Gallery's Judith Collins's perfectly friendly and accessible introduction make this playful but complex work a pleasure to explore. Recommended for all contemporary and environmental art collections. Rebecca Miller, "Library Journal"
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
