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

by Erin Hogan (Author)
Key Phrases: artillery sheds, aluminum boxes, Spiral Jetty, Lightning Field, Double Negative (more...)

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; illustrated edition 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: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #210,831 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 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

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.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Vervy Mix of Art, Criticism and Surviving a Pilgrimage, August 25, 2008

By	C. Ebeling "ctlpareader" (PA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Fun, Informative Read, July 26, 2008

By	Doreen Orion MD "author, QUEEN OF THE ROAD" (on the road...) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.