Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

As a woman who also took a road trip (well, OK, it was in a converted bus with my husband, pets, 200 pairs of shoes - and I still had to be dragged kicking and screaming), and lived to write about it, I had high expectations for this book. I was not disappointed. Even though I've never been that interested in "land art," Hogan nevertheless manages to bring it to life with humor and grace. I could also relate to her many misadventures as well as her growth during the trip, and I'm certain other readers will love going along for this ride.

For most of the book I wanted to reach through the pages and slap Ms. Erin Hogan. So maybe that statement is a little harsh, but her condescending nature is not funny, its just sad. I will give her credit for at least taking the chance on adventure, but was still amazed at how narrowly minded her commentary was of the world outside of her known Chicago.

Overall, the play by play recount of a trip was well described, but not the journey I was hoping for. A journey invokes some idea of personal change throughout the experience of travel, which she seemed to provide in a minimal manner.

I gave it two stars since there was some redeeming art history notation that were worthy of the read. Could have done without the direct quotations from other historians, but in a way it added to how dry of a person must be if she needs to add in others incite instead of coming up with her own.

I am glad I decided to check out this book from the library (which had 4 copies on the shelf) instead of purchasing it and since finishing the book, I understand why all 4 copies were on the shelf.

Land art was a controversial movement that came out of the 1960's and 1970's. Artists like Robert Smithson, Nancy Holt and Walter DeMaria tore apart the concept of art being individual works displayed in a gallery or sculpture garden independent of surroundings and time. They went to the most remote corners of the American west and southwest and created huge installations that are wedded to the landscape with an expectation that time and elements, as well as the viewers' physical perspective, can change their work and statement.

A generation later, an urbanite armed with a doctorate in art history, who was well read on the debate about land art realized that since its entire point is about where it is, she ought to go out and see these icons for herself. Erin Hogan may have been intellectually equipped, but going to land art is nothing like donning heels and a black dress and going to a gallery opening in Chicago. Thus her book is an amalgam of art history, art criticism and a frequently funny travelogue of an innocent who had never traveled solo before. The title of the book incorporates this range: the first earthwork she visits is Smithson's "Spiral Jetty" on Salt Lake, and the car she drives to remote, off-road locations requiring high-riding all-wheel drive vehicles is a VW Jetta.

This book works on many accounts: Hogan is a natural storyteller and she is an accessible interpreter of art history and criticism. Due to very poor directions, not to mention a scary evening in a bar called the Saddle Sore, she does not find Holt's "Sun Tunnels" and later, a conversation with a Navajo ranger convinces her that it would be foolhardy in gun country to seek James Turrell's "Roden Crater." Although that's disappointing, she achieves some major experiences, especially a transformative overnight at De Maria's "Lightening Field." However inauspicious their start on the trip, she and the Jetta survive, and she provides revised travel directions for those who would like to make their own pilgrimages without the slapstick.

This is a cross-over book: a mixture of a small amount of art history, with a bit of travel writing and with a nod towards Kerouac's On the Road. The latter is hard to avoid I guess given the genre--the road trip to various desert sites.

I've always wanted to go to the art sites she visits or tries to visit. It's rather disappointing and unfortunate that the author doesn't find Nancy Holt's Sun Tunnels and she doesn't see Roden Crater, so two of the chapters are about these failures. At the back of the book are directions to most of the sites, perhaps assembling this information before the trip would have been a better idea. There's a rather laboured discussion threaded through the book about the author's efforts to be spontaneous that explain this peculiar lack of preparation.

She does manage to visit Spiral Jetty, Lightening Field, Double Negative and the Chinati Foundation in Marfa and her accounts of these visits is engaging and enjoyable. On the whole, the book is a very easy read, but a bit less biography and more engagement with the sites would have suited my taste better.

Although Spiral Jetta is classified by both the Library of Congress and Dewey Decimal System as a book about art, I'm afraid I have to disagree. Art is an important part of Spiral Jetta, but the road trip is more important by far. Without the road trip, this would have been an art criticism book read only by those with an interest in "land art."

Instead, it's a travel narrative and a memoir, something between a coming of age story and a mid-life crisis, as well as a book about the earth sculptures of the 1970s and 1980s. As someone who knows nothing about modern art, I can assure you that it is not necessary to be knowledgeable about or even interested in "American monumental minimalism" to enjoy this book.

Erin Hogan, a self-described recovering art historian, undertakes a trip in her Volkswagen Jetta from Chicago to the Great Southwest to see monumental works of land art. The book takes its name from the most famous of the works, Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty in the salt flats of Utah. Hogan, in her early thirties, has never traveled on her own before, has barely ever been alone at all, so a trip through the vast expanses of Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico will be an entirely new experience for her and she has qualms.

She has prepared by buying new camping equipment and a supply of power bars. The camping equipment comes in handy a few times, but she finds that the power bars tend to melt in the desert heat. Unfortunately, she has neglected to bring a compass, but she has downloaded plenty of (often conflicting) directions to her destinations. She gets lost, she finds her way back again. She stops to see most of the art works she set out to see, and is surprised that she finds the natural landscapes more impressive than man-made sculptures.

Hogan tells us about a place near Moab, Utah called Hole N"The Rock, a home blasted into the side of a huge rock in the middle of nowhere that was the home of an eccentric couple in the 1950s. She seems as fascinated by this distinctly non-art structure as she is by the "true" art. And why not? As she says, "I saw that peculiar American insanity that holds that anything goes as long as you don't hurt anybody." The land art may have spoken to her in mysterious tones, but The Hole N"The Rock talked to her like an old friend.

It isn't all quirky characters and awe-inspiring vistas. A quick trip from El Paso across the border to Juarez with an old friend she meets up with for the final leg of the trip is a depressing and revealing look at the poverty that exists so close to home.

There's something especially American about this kind of road trip. It's almost a rite of passage for young Americans to take their first car and make some kind of cross-country trip, with a friend or friends, or alone, but not with their parents. Not long after the car was invented, the cross-country road trip followed. Spiral Jetta puts a slightly different spin on this old favorite, with great success.