Spiral Jetta: A Road Trip through the Land Art of the American West (Culture Trails: Adventures in Travel) [Hardcover]

Erin Hogan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 30, 2008 | Series: Culture Trails: Adventures in Travel

Erin Hogan hit the road in her Volkswagen Jetta and headed west from Chicago in search of the monuments of American land art: a salty coil of rocks, four hundred stainless steel poles, a gash in a mesa, four concrete tubes, and military sheds filled with cubes. Her journey took her through the states of Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas. It also took her through the states of anxiety, drunkenness, disorientation, and heat exhaustion. Spiral Jetta is a chronicle of this journey.

 

A lapsed art historian and devoted urbanite, Hogan initially sought firsthand experience of the monumental earthworks of the 1970s and the 1980s—Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels, Walter De Maria’s Lightning Field, James Turrell’s Roden Crater, Michael Heizer’s Double Negative, and the contemporary art mecca of Marfa, Texas. Armed with spotty directions, no compass, and less-than-desert-appropriate clothing, she found most of what she was looking for and then some.

 

“I was never quite sure what Hogan was looking for when she set out . . . or indeed whether she found it. But I loved the ride. In Spiral Jetta, an unashamedly honest, slyly uproarious, ever-probing book, art doesn’t magically have the power to change lives, but it can, perhaps no less powerfully, change ways of seeing.”—Tom Vanderbilt, New York Times Book Review

 

“The reader emerges enlightened and even delighted. . . . Casually scrutinizing the artistic works . . . while gamely playing up her fish-out-of-water status, Hogan delivers an ingeniously engaging travelogue-cum-art history.”—Atlantic

 

“Smart and unexpectedly hilarious.”—Kevin Nance, Chicago Sun-Times

 

“One of the funniest and most entertaining road trips to be published in quite some time.”—June Sawyers, Chicago Tribune

 

“Hogan ruminates on how the work affects our sense of time, space, size, and scale. She is at her best when she reexamines the precepts of modernism in the changing light of New Mexico, and shows how the human body is meant to be a participant in these grand constructions.”—New Yorker

 

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Hogan, director of public affairs at the Art Institute of Chicago and a recovering art historian with decidedly urban sensibilities, set out on a road trip to visit the most significant works of land art in the American West and to make an experimental assault on her fear of solitude. Hogan's journey in her Volkswagen Jetta began with Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty by the Great Salt Lake; in eight more chapters she documents her visits to Michael Heizer's Double Negative in Nevada, Walter De Maria's Lightning Field in New Mexico, failed attempts to find Nancy Holt's Sun Tunnels and James Turrell's Roden Crater, along with stops in Moab, Utah; Juárez, Mexico; and Marfa, Tex., the contemporary art pilgrim's mecca. Hogan's pilgrimage, sparsely illustrated, is part well-informed art historical travelogue and part light foray into self-discovery; her prose is lucid, energetic and expressive, and she is an affable guide. But this narrative does not convincingly convey the depth of her interior journey or the aesthetic insight that Hogan sought to experience. 26 b&w photos, 1 map. (June)
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From The New Yorker

Facing a midlife crisis of sorts, Hogan, a "recovering art historian," took a three-week trek in search of the American Sublime. Her destinations were "monuments of American land art," including Robert Smithson’s "Spiral Jetty," a coil of earth and rock built in the Great Salt Lake in 1970. Short on personal information—we never learn much about Hogan, or about Todd, her eventual companion—this travel memoir nonetheless offers a soft lens on some hard ideas. Standing in Walter De Maria’s "Lightning Field," in the high desert, amid four hundred stainless-steel poles, Hogan ruminates on how the work affects our sense of time, space, size, and scale. She is at her best when she reëxamines the precepts of modernism in the changing light of New Mexico, and shows how the human body is meant to be a participant in these grand constructions.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 190 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1st ed edition (June 30, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226348458
• ISBN-13: 978-0226348452
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #894,144 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #21 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Earth Sciences > Geology > Geomorphology

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great book about the so-called "Dia" trail of earthworks, June 15, 2008

By 

Harriet Nethery "Reads everything" (Houston, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Spiral Jetta: A Road Trip through the Land Art of the American West (Culture Trails: Adventures in Travel) (Hardcover)

Many art historians have written about the great modern earthworks of the American West and Southwest, but this is the first travel book to do so. What sets this book apart from others of its kind is the quality of the writing and the personality of the author, Erin Hogan. Hogan, an avowed urbanista from Chicago, writes with real comedic flair about the road trip she took in her trusty VW Jetta to visit the legendary Spiral Jetty, Lightning Field, Double Negative, Rodencrater, and Donald Judd's Chinati Foundation in Marfa (almost all of them funded by the Dia Foundation). Writing in a picaresque mode, along the way she encounters some pretty hairy and scary characters straight out of the old Wild West, but gone wrong, terribly wron. While her discussions of the formidable works of Judd, Smithson et al are excellent and accessible for general readers, the account of her accidental discovery of a folk-art site known as Hole 'n' the Rock is absolutely transcendent, right up there on a par with Perelman, Benchley, Woody Allen. A fabulous read. I hope we'll be seeing more from this talented writer--and soon.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Abysmal travel narrative, OK art history info, October 10, 2010

By 

Lost Asia "lostasia" (San Luis Obispo, CA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Spiral Jetta: A Road Trip through the Land Art of the American West (Culture Trails: Adventures in Travel) (Hardcover)

I'm an avid reader of first-person travel narratives who has curiosity and interest in art history. I live out West and I'm from Chicago. A friend thought this would be the perfect book for me. It's an atrocious, annoying read and a failure as a book.

While the author's description of monumental earthworks in the West is interesting, it's primarily a rehash of what other critics have thought, written in the style of a museum curatorial card or worse, an undergrad term paper. She doesn't even manage to visit all of the sites on her list, mostly due to her own bad planning (no GPS, not asking for directions, not having 4WD).

What's more awful about this book is the ignorance and condescension of the author to anything outside her privileged purview. A self-professed urbanite who puts the words "local experience" in scare quotes, she sees the threat of rape in every small town bar and country backroad she encounters. To her, staying in a Motel 6 by herself is a dangerous adventure. She spends dozens of pages talking about her anxiety issues, her dependence on her AAA guidebook and her inability to stake a tent. Her attitudes are insulting across the board -- to locals who live in the West and to women writers who travel.

This book deserves a 1-star rating, unless you're also a pretentious art historian without any grasp of the real world and the way it works, just like the author. Do yourself a favor and don't buy this book, which is little more than 8 long-winded blog entries. Instead read up on these monumental earthworks online, where you'll gain greater insight than you ever would from this vapid book.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Makes the abstract accessible, September 10, 2009

By 

EHN (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Spiral Jetta: A Road Trip through the Land Art of the American West (Culture Trails: Adventures in Travel) (Hardcover)

Ironically, it seemed to me that the most compelling chapter was the one covering Juarez, Mexico. The description had an edge that was absent in most other parts of the book except the accounts of her bar visit. I enjoyed reading the book and hope to visit some of the places described. Overall the Spiral Jetta is well written although I caught a a couple repetitions that a good editor should have flagged. The questions Ms. Hogan raises about the market, high/hip modernism, and money are worth considering in greater depth. On a personal level I was surprised by the appearance of the boyfriend halfway through after the trip had been billed as chance for her to learn to be alone. I wanted to know why that idea was put aside. This sounds like a negative review but it shouldn't be. The author's voice was honest and the topic is intriguing. I imagine it would also be useful to anyone planning a trip to the Lightning Field or the other places she covers. They all seemed exceptionally hard to find.