AGNES DENES THE LIVING PYRAMID 2015 COVER
AGNES DENES THE LIVING PYRAMID
Socrates Sculpture Park P.O. Box 6259, 32-01 Vernon Boulevard Long Island City, NY 11106 USA socratessculpturepark.org Socrates Publishing 2015
CONTENTS
06 Introduction John Hatfield 14 Writings by Agnes Denes: For Socrates Park, The Living Pyramid A Short History of The Pyramids The Beginning of The Pyramids 36 About The Living Pyramid 52 A Pyramid for Queens Kirsten Swenson 64 Forever Elissa Goldstone 66 Production 78 Manifesto Agnes Denes 84 About 90 Support & Thanks
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INTRODUCTION JOHN HATFIELD
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Visionary is the only appropriate description for Agnes Denes. While the appelation may be overused, any reading, conversation, or experience of her work reveals that few artists match Agnes Denes in breadth of ideas, ambition, outrageousness and perseverance. Denes’s endeavors and efforts have spanned more than five decades and have been expressed in the form of manifestos, drawings, sculptures, large-scale earthworks, and diagrammatic visions of our world. Her work is the product of a fiercely intellectual and distinctive study of semiotics, epistemology, mathematics, history, and ecology, grounded in philosophical inquiry and social observation. Neither pessimist nor optimist, Denes creates visual and textual challenges to the status quo, poetically weaving complex and seemingly contradictory ideas into a tapestry of possibilities. Denes writes, “The issues touched on in my work range between individual creation and social consciousness. . . Making art today is synonymous with assuming responsibilities for our fellow humans.” The Living Pyramid at Socrates Sculpture Park is the most significant public art project Denes has created in New York since her Wheatfield - A Confrontation in 1982, arguably one of the most influential conceptual earthworks of the late 20th century along with Robert Smithsons’ Spiral Jetty, Walter de Maria’s Lightning Field, Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels, James Turrell’s Roden Crater,
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Mel Chin’s Revival Field, and Michael Heizer’s City. Unlike her counterparts - primarily male and working in rural America - Denes’s earthwork quixotically took on New York City’s landscape by exposing the priorities of our decisions about our urban environment. Wheatfield - A Confrontation was an intervention amidst America’s financial beast of commerce created in the shadows of the newly built World Trade Center towers. The shock of a golden wheat field with its natural cycle of growth and regeneration was incongruously sited along the waterfront landfill expansion of what would become the home of the World Financial Center in Lower Manhattan. The cultivated and harvested 2 acres of wheat sought to reveal our disconnection from the land in its by contrast of cultivated nature with other monetary ideals of growth, towering glass skyscrapers. Her stated purpose with the public project was “... to call people’s attention to having to rethink their priorities.” Although the project was temporal, the “confrontation” continues as we address the priorities of our urban landscape with climate change accelerating the consequences of our choices. Socrates Sculpture Park, also built on waterfront landfill, has inherently and purposely had a politics of place. Born from the indomitable artistic spirit of the park’s founder Mark di Suvero, Socrates has been a model of urban reclamation for 30 years, making a strong argument for
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the power of contemporary art to influence the direction and priorities of our city and embrace the broadest spectrum of humanity. These ideals are a reality at Socrates Sculpture Park and Agnes Denes’s The Living Pyramid is the embodiment of our collective aspirations. Since 1965 Denes has participated in more than 500 solo and group exhibitions. She has lectured frequently, participated in global conferences devoted to art and ecology, and is the recipient of numerous awards and accolades. We are honored to present The Living Pyramid and are grateful to Agnes Denes for allowing us to be a part of her vision. Conceiving of such a work is extraordinary and creating it was truly a collaborative effort. We are indebted to all those who have participated in making it a reality, especially our supporters: the David Rockefeller Fund, with special thanks to Michael Quattrone and Lukas Haynes, for providing major support to honor founder David Rockefeller on the occasion of his 100th birthday, as well as the Charina Foundation, Mark di Suvero, Sidney E. Frank Foundation, Agnes Gund, Lambent Foundation, Ronay and Richard Menschel, Ivana Mestrovic, Plant Specialists, Shelley and Donald Rubin, and Mr. and Mrs. Thomas W. Smith. Herculean (or Sisyphusian, depending on your perspective) thanks go to the staff of Socrates Sculpture Park and, in particular, Elissa Goldstone, Director
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of Exhibitions who nurtured the project with Agnes, assuaged anxieties all around, and championed the effort; Katie Denny Horowitz, for finding the support and articulating the project’s essential ethos; Lars Fisk, Studio Manager, whose undaunted enthusiasm carried the project to its fruition; Chris Zirbes, who ensured the project’s continued success throughout the exhibition; and Shaun Leonardo, Director of Public Programs and Community Affairs, who furthered an intimacy between the artwork and public through workshops, tours, and public programs. The team of assistants of Mark di Suvero’s studio, Spacetime C.C., especially Kent Johnson, Matteo Martignoni, and Daniel Roberts, were also instrumental in overcoming challenges and dedicating their expertise, along with Michael Narcisco of Dun-Rite, who donated a few heavy machines to the task. Luz Fleming, Andrew Brehm, Zaq Landsberg, Zachary Concepcion, Sean Ryan, and James Payne, artists themselves, assisted in the construction with their splintered, dirt-stained hands and we are grateful for their work. Agnes Denes has adherents to her uncompromising vision and I would especially like to thank Leslie Tonkonow and Tyler Auwater at Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects. Leslie’s support, counsel, and fortitude were invaluable. The project would not have begun, or been possible, without her.
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Socrates Sculpture Park is dedicated to artists and therefore adapts to their ideas. While we grow and continue to enhance our educational and communitybuilding programs, we also strive to manifest the ideas of artists, whatever they may be, in whatever form. This constant revolution of what Socrates presents is not a strategy, but rather an attitude of flexibility and adventurousness. With The Living Pyramid, Agnes Denes has provided an extraordinary vision and challenge that we have been most grateful to pursue with her.
John Hatfield Executive Director, Socrates Sculpture Park
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INTRODUCTION
THE LIVING PYRAMID FOR SOCRATES SCULPTURE PARK, NEW YORK AGNES DENES 2015
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Three writings on the Pyramids, three perspectives, three different times looking at them: 1985, 2000, for the millennium, and for The Living Pyramid in 2015. A view every 15 years. Not that years matter in the scheme of things because they are timeless. They give you chips and pieces of what the pyramids mean weaving in and out of my work. They were created to form a new language of visual philosophy, a new language in art.
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THE LIVING PYRAMID
IN THE REALM OF PYRAMIDS AGNES DENES 2015
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The Pyramids appear in my work in a variety of forms from the Snail Pyramid, Egg and Fish Pyramid for the Future Cities, to Pyramids of thought processes, mathematics, and major forests. These forms have little to do with their ancestor pyramids of Egypt, rather they represent social structures in the form of Visual Philosophy with the purpose of answering humanity’s problems and issues of concern, and seeking benign solutions. They warn of societies who have also tried to interfere with their own evolution and collapsed. The pyramid is an edifice representative of an ancient culture, solidity, impenetrability—here they introduce a fresh look into old concepts, forcing people to think, not just to accept, copy, and follow. They represent the past and the future, stretching the imagination. This new work of The Living Pyramid is planted material, yet a new meaning. Transformed into blossom, The Pyramid renews itself as evolution does to our species. The rigid angle becomes an arc to reach above to what it wishes and needs to reach. The Living Pyramid is bringing mathematics and plantlife into wondrous harmony: engineering accuracy and
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IN THE REALM
stability mixed with the daily changes of growth and survival. It touches on world hunger and the threat of outgrowing our resources without better planning — or planting. Again, my obsession with blending nature and the human intellect at play, visualizing opposite forces to play in harmony, creating the powerful paradox that governs this art form and gives it its strength. It is not just planting, but sowing the paradox—a structured edifice of soil and grain, not on a farm or field but in the heart of a busy mega-city of millions. It is sowing the seed into soil and minds.
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IN THE REALM
A SHORT HISTORY OF THE PYRAMIDS AGNES DENES 2000
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The Pyramids weave in and out of my work from the very beginning in diverse forms dealing with a great variety of issues important to humanity. Each form and concept represents an enigma, something to which we must respond. These forms are visual philosophy that convey ecological, social and cultural issues in a multitude of shapes. Every pyramid and every form seeks a purpose, poses a question and seeks an answer for humanity. They all deal with the present and the future. I created the first pyramid as a visual philosophical concept in 1967-69, in Dialectic Triangulation—A Visual Philosophy, together with the triangular matrix of the Human Argument. These were followed by the pyramid of Dictionary of Strength that was eleven years in the making; the pyramid of thought processes, Matrix of Knowledge; and pyramids of human remains Human Dust. The Predicament represents our society with thousands of tiny people who sit in protected isolation without privacy, believing in the illusions of freedom without having any. They represent alienation in togetherness and uniqueness in uniformity, There are real pyramids and exotic ones, imaginary and philosophical, they represent logical structures, architectural innovations and society building. They represent the past and the possible future we will invent.
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A SHORT HISTORY
Some pyramids are not exactly pyramid shaped and their meaning spans all of human existence. They may depict a society in the process of tampering with its destiny, with comparisons made to the rise and fall of previous advanced societies that have interfered with their evolution. The Restless Pyramids work with the Masterbuilders to create Self-Supporting City Dwellings that can sustain their inhabitants, Space Stations, and other pyramids of the future for space travel with flexible, self-regenerating, easy to repair units. This is the birth of giant Fish Pyramids for creating underwater habitats, or pyramids in the shape of an egg or a teardrop. They are created for a different world in which the inhabitants will live in space, hovering above Earth, or else live on Earth in self-contained, self-supporting environments. These structures are not science fiction, they are the product of high technology, yet another “perfection�, that of the flexibility of natural systems. They have a look of freshness and vulnerability. They are the future and the future is always vulnerable and unused. Some pyramids form matrices that embrace logical symbols, permutations working out human theoretical concepts, and there are those that represent irony or beauty like the Crystal Pyramid, a massive edifice with its millions of reflections.
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Snail Pyramid - Study for Environmental Sculpture, a Future Habitat, 1988 Metallic and india ink on film grid, 40” x 57”
The materials of the pyramids are diverse as well, they can be stone, etched glass, plantings and even silk. They can be invisible as thought processes, logic and mathematics; or trees when they form a forest; conceptual, shaped like a nautilus when a future city; motion when they seem to awaken; birds when they fly; history when they probe the ancients. Some pyramids contrast civilizations, others tackle linguistics, some seek origins, the power of nature’s innocence and of true beginnings.
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Some depict the human predicament, and the glory of accomplishments, traditions and overcoming them. Some are made of tiny individuals who perform brilliant tasks, contrasting the magnificence of their collective accomplishments with the insignificance of the individual components. These are the Masterbilders who build the City of Fools. They map human parameters within the changing aspects of reality and their mathematics represent our striving for perfection, and what’s most endearingly human, our weaknesses and flaws. Some pyramids float in apparent weightlessness, while others are made of the weight of conscience. But what they all convey is the human drama, our hopes and dreams against great odds. They represent the paradoxes of existence and like grand mandalas, define our destiny.
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This page: Probability Pyramid as Seen Through the Eye of a Scallop, 1978 Ink and watercolor on vellum, 36.5” x 27.5” Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Nathaniel Bickford Opposite page: Pascal’s Perfect Probability Pyramid & The People Paradox - The Predicament (detail), 1980 India ink of silk vellum 32” x 43”
THE BEGINNING OF THE PYRAMIDS
AGNES DENES 1985
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The fact that the works came out in the shape of pyramids is a totally other matter. Their mathematical perfection allowed me to investigate, and became that other language I was looking for. The perfect pyramids were social philosophy, the underpinnings of our thinking and everything in our existence, from living on the planet in a thin strip, coating it like bacteria coats a Petri dish to our reactions to things. I wrote books and one, Book of Dust, actually investigated processes of our existence and everything important to man. The research for it took 16 years. Another project, Dictionary of Strength, a dictionary that investigated linguistics, took eleven years, while Morse Code Message, the investigation of belief systems, religion and the Bible, took over seven years. I would begin with a perfectly feasible concept not realizing it would take so many years out of me to realize it. By the time I would become aware of the necessary sacrifice, it was usually too late and much too deep into the project to stop, even if I had wanted to. Thus the pyramids became universal principles, social commentators dealing with human lives and beliefs in their formal expressions and physicality. This concept was a Promethean bold move to create a new language with which to create form and to create form in order to visualize action and belief systems and behavior. While the pyramids are based on mathematics and thus achieve THE
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a kind of perfection, they contain all the imperfections they are dealing with or are representing and visualizing. When the Pyramid Awakens and becomes organic form, they unglue their units (built by the Masterbuilders (us)) and thus freed from inaction and rigid form they come alive and become somewhat inaccurate, as anything that is somewhat alive must be. Yet they are still perfect, and their perfection allows them to become vehicles through which analytical propositions can be visualized. Their “perfection� is the language of logic and mathematics that communicate ideal measures of principles and values with complex simplicity or clarity, and clear the path to new associations and insights. To say that my pyramids create a utopian realm is not altogether accurate, nor inaccurate. What was utopia when the word came into existence is not the abused word of the utopia it is today. The fact that Utopian means visionary and impractical remains true for the word, but only in part for my pyramids. They are very practical structures, created for a new world, they are buildable and utilitarian, though they may carry visionary ideas and perhaps even a utopian vision. Often new words need to be invented and get used to, worn in so to speak, to understand new concepts and old and worn ones abandoned to clear the palette.
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Above: When the Pyramid Awakens - Study for Environmental Sculpture, 1983 Pencil on vellum, 36” x 45” Below: Human Dust, 1969 Calcerous human remains from Study of Dust (an investigation involving the philosophy of change) Photo: Agnes Denes THE
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These pyramids are timeless and although they represent civilization, they are beyond representing one or another civilization or even civilization itself. They are images, words, sentences in a new language, that represent us as the ancient Egyptian pyramids represented the Egyptians. They represent a civilization and belief systems, fighting the brevity of human existence and therefore wanting to create something eternal, a place for the spirit of the Pharaohs or anyone to transcend death, the most horrible failing of everything that lives that it must die and therefore handing the torch of thought, concepts, ideas to the next and next again, to further it or diminish it. Thus it is the most democratic thing we know, it disperses knowledge and waters it down as one brilliant life achievement is diminished by time and made banal perhaps by someone else’s mediocrity, or just by time passing and beliefs changing through time. Death makes us all equal, as rain makes everything equally wet and snow covers the terrain white and even. All mountains become hills in the distance and all strife and struggle diminish with distance and perspective.
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Above: Probability Pyramid in Perspective - Bird’s-Eye-View, Study for Crystal Pyramid, 1982; Silver-blue ink on silk vellum, 36” x 39”
ABOUT THE LIVING PYRAMID The Living Pyramid at Socrates Sculpture Park is both a monumental sculpture and an environmental intervention by the pioneering artist and activist, Agnes Denes. The work unites Denes’s powerful public landworks with her ongoing exploration of pyramid structures - a form that has been central to the artist’s practice throughout her extensive career. For nearly five decades Denes has produced drawings, prints, and philosophical texts that study the structure, mathematics, and concepts of pyramid forms. As Denes’s first large-scale pyramid, The Living Pyramid employs public art to confront the status quo and inspire new possibilities. Sited along the East River in Long Island City, the pyramid pulses colorfully against the rigid built environment of the Manhattan skyline, evolving throughout its public exhibition as the plant life grows. Activated by social and cultural programs that encourage awareness and custodianship of the environment, The Living Pyramid is a beacon to activism. These interactions increase the potential of social engagement and ecological improvement.
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The Living Pyramid is a grand curving pyramid that soars 30 feet in the air and spans 30 feet at its base. The highly mathematical structure utilizes 340 wooden planter boxes of varying dimensions to create an interlocking form with more than 50 tiers. This planted structure contains approximately 25,000 pounds of soil, and features flowers and grasses, including Sweet Alyssum, Marigolds, Zinnias, Impatiens, and Geraniums with Buffalo grass, Annual rye grass, and Sudangrass. The tapering geometric earthwork comes to life from the simplest of natural elements; sunlight, soil, seed, and water.
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THE LIVING PYRAMID
A PYRAMID FOR QUEENS KIRSTEN SWENSON
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Salt air from the East River wafted over Socrates Sculpture Park as a crowd gathered to celebrate the unveiling of Agnes Denes’s The Living Pyramid one afternoon in early May. Grasses and garden flowers (Geraniums, Marigolds, Petunias) were growing from soil-filled planters stacked in a 30-foot pyramid. Ephemeral as the passing seasons, the terraced earthwork will live from spring through the fall, the duration of the annuals taking root. Visitors on that May afternoon were handed a spade and invited to plant a potted flower on the structure. Many in the crowd were from the surrounding Long Island City neighborhoods. A woman with a small child thanked Denes, who was present: “The sculpture combines two of my daughter’s passions, gardening and art!” Denes, too, was savoring the outdoors and the festive mood at Socrates that day. “I am so pleased people are enjoying the pyramid.” She paused. “Smell the river.” The river smelled of the ocean. The Living Pyramid, like most of Denes’s major works, was an event, integrated within community, a time and place. People were at Socrates to enjoy the sculpture, the park, the salt breeze, a sense of community, and simply the chance to handle dirt and plant flowers, a novelty for many New Yorkers. The Living Pyramid engaged the senses and enlivened the environment, both social and natural. At the same time, the pyramid is a philosophical meditation on the histories of landscape and civilization, A
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the future of humanity, and how complex social and economic systems come to bear on a single patch of dirt. The smell of the river—saline, heavy with aquatic life and the life of the city that it flows through—lingers in my memory of that inaugural event. Why does a river smell of salt? I’d never noticed this before, though I’d lived three blocks from its banks for many years. Denes’s work reveals the inexorable presence of the earth’s systems in the most urban of environments. It turns out that the East River is not a river, but a salt water tidal strait that flows from the Long Island Sound past the Bronx, Queens, and Manhattan’s east side, to meet the Hudson River and fill New York Harbor at the southern tip of Manhattan, rejoining the Atlantic. Tracing the East River’s flow through the city summons Denes’s only other environmental work in New York City, Wheatfield - A Confrontation, which occupied another waterfront during the summer of 1982: the Battery Park landfill just below Wall Street, a shoreline formed of debris displaced in the construction of the World Trade Center in the late 1960s. Denes, her assistants, and volunteers grew and harvested two acres of wheat—a significant feat that involved clearing the plot of rubble and trash (“garbage, tires, and old overcoats”), the delivery of two hundred truckloads of fresh topsoil to southern Manhattan, digging furrows, planting, irrigating, and tending to the wheat. In August of 1982, their efforts
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yielded a 1000-pound harvest. The golden grains were distributed in packets to attendees of the 28-city touring exhibition International Art Show for the End of World Hunger (1987-1990), to be planted and to generate new wheat around the world. Wheatfield was informed by the politics of the Cold War—by 1982, the Carter administration’s 1980 grain embargo against the Soviet Union had backfired, causing a sharp drop in wheat prices and an estimated $22 billion in losses to the U.S. economy. Wheat, in 1982,
Wheatfield - A Confrontation, Battery Park Landfill, downtown Manhattan, 1.8 Acres of wheat planted and harvested, Summer 1982. Photo: John McGrail A
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was a symbol of geopolitical maneuvering; hunger and human suffering were leverage in a game of political brinkmanship. Denes’s “urban waves of grain” planted at the foot of Wall Street staged a poetic and polemical situation that raised urgent, prescient questions of economic and environmental justice at the outset of the Reagan administration. “It referred to mismanagement, waste, world hunger, and ecological concerns,” Denes wrote of Wheatfield. As with The Living Pyramid, Wheatfield engaged the complex contemporary situation and was, at the same time, an experience of community, of “lunch hour visits in three-piece suits,” tourists and commuters on their way to the Staten Island Ferry, office workers and construction workers, economists and artists. All were drawn to a transplanted “hot summer afternoon in the country, peace, forgotten values, simple pleasures.” One or two volunteers assisted Denes daily with weeding and irrigation and pest control. “The absurdity of it all, the risks we took and the hardships we endured were all part of the basic concept. Digging deep is what art is all about,” Denes wrote. Her concepts come into focus through participation—getting dirt under one’s fingernails, meeting one’s neighbors. The Living Pyramid is an idyllic experience of gardening and art on a Sunday afternoon (less grueling than the efforts of Wheatfield), while also “a message to the world,” in Denes’s words.
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Visitors to The Living Pyramid are drawn to Socrates Sculpture Park to enjoy community and the outdoors, on another landfill, “a scruffy patch of green reclaimed from the toxic ruins of a waterfront cement factory.� The grass is a bit overgrown and art in progress. Sculptures are to be touched and played on. A sprawling Costco borders the park to the south and, to the north, a chain link fence separates Socrates from a parking lot where food trucks sit idle on the weekend. The surrounding Long Island City neighborhood, formerly working class and industrial, now teems with new condominium de-
Denes planting The Living Pyramid at Socrates Sculpture Park on May 17th 2015
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velopments. The Living Pyramid temporarily occupies a plot of land that is emblematic of the modern history of Queens and Brooklyn waterfronts: industrial zones now valued as prime real estate, every square foot contested among developers, residents, and city planners. As a living monument of its age, the pyramid evokes this history as well as current land use politics and environmental crisis. Denes glossed the pyramid with a questionnaire distributed to visitors, posing questions such as “What, if any, environmental issues and practices interest of concern you? (ex. Use of land, global warming, coal extraction, hydro-fracking, global poverty, drought, food access, greenhouse effects, sea level rising, genetic engineering, etc.)” We are hence prompted to experience the Queens waterfront, to gaze at skyscrapers across the East River occupied by corporate and governmental perpetrators of environmental degradation, and, at the same time, smell the river air. The vast and interconnected networks of power and policy-making represented by the site are acknowledged in the questions Denes poses that move from specific to general. “What would you say the human purpose is?” and “What do you think the future of humanity is?” she asks. These questions place a kind of responsibility on the viewer to reckon with one’s surroundings and the implications of one’s choices.
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The Living Pyramid engages ethics and human nature, the questions of value and survival that Denes has articulated throughout her career. The pyramid stands for the history of civilization and human ambitions—the pyramids at Giza and the Manhattan skyline (with its monoliths and stepped-back “ziggurats”). The human drive to alter and exceed the natural environment, and the cataclysmic consequences of this ambition for all life, is the core confrontation of Denes’s major works. Questionnaire for the Living Pyram id Tim e Capsule This questionnaire is by artist Agnes Denes. It will be digitized and put into a time capsule to be revisited in one thousand years. Please use ink for your responses and as much space as you need. Please return your finished response, sign it or not, it’s up to you.
1. What do you like about this project?
5. How do you see yourself contributing to these problems and their solutions?
2. Do you think this project would work well in other places? If so, where?
6. Do you think you can help reduce the cause of climate change?
3. How do you feel about the current state of the environment?
7. Do you believe art can influence our thinking, re-think our priorities and values?
4. What, if any, environmental issues and practices interest or concern you? (ex., use of land, global warming, coal extraction, hydro-fracking, global poverty, drought, food access, green house effects, sea level rising, genetic engineering, etc.)
8. What is it you think we could do better individually and by government action?
Questionnaire for The Living Pyramid, distributed at Socrates Sculpture Park
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If the pyramid represents, historically, a nihilistic will to power, The Living Pyramid is a meditation on the fragility of living things, marked by anti-monumentality: small plants and grasses compose the façade of a structure that is grand but impermanent, made of materials that will return to the earth or be recycled rather than built for the ages. Growing plants is Denes’s optimism. The tiny roots are the roots of ideas, and plants are a metaphor for all of life, each blade of grass representing a human presence. In Denes’s visionary architectural drawings, pyramids are fantastical human habitats, extra-terrestrial domains, perhaps imagining a time when Earth has become uninhabitable due to anthropogenic climate change or pollution. The pyramid is an ideal—the perfection of geometry and the eternal presence of concepts and ideas as long as there is human thought, even as bodies fail and blades of grass wither with the changing seasons, or as they succumb to toxic environments. The Living Pyramid is a call for human ambition directed toward reparation and care of Earth’s systems. It is a call to heed now, before the seasons change, and while the river still smells of the ocean.
Kirsten Swenson Art Historian and Critic
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FOREVER ELISSA GOLDSTONE “A pyramid is forever” So reads the bumper sticker affixed to a wall in Agnes Denes’s office. It is easy to miss. You have to look beyond the stacks of books, magazines, and newspapers that encircle the artist’s computer, which is itself only identifiable from the hum of hard drives fighting audibly to meet the demands of constant creation. Denes herself might rarely notice the sticker (a friend gave it to her years ago), yet it sits just above her shoulder when she works, speaking succinctly to ideas that have been germane to her practice for more than five decades. Pyramids are forever. Whether they are built from stone, like the tombs of ancient Egypt or from seeds like The Living Pyramid, the concepts housed within a pyramid - strength, geometry, mathematics, history, aesthetics - have an infinite potential for examination. For Denes, the pyramid provides a formal order to visually connects distinct disciplines and relay complex ideas for maximal impact and understanding.
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The pyramid, as a form and an idea, is the basis for what Denes terms her “visual philosophy,” which explores “meaning and implications of intellectual concepts through visual realizations…” If language is defined by the communication of ideas, then Denes’s visual philosophy, realized through pyramids, is the oral history, alphabet, and Rosetta Stone all in one.
The “intellectual concepts” in The Living Pyramid are varied and will continue to reveal their nuances and prescience over time. Subjects range from environmental science and mathematical sequencing to social hierarchies and contemporary value systems. But these ideas do not present themselves heavy-handedly; rather, Denes’s vision germinates within the artwork and the public that continues to view it, becoming a vehicle for further thought and inspiration and, in that sense, continuing indefinitely.
Elissa Goldstone Director of Exhibitions, Socrates Sculpture Park
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PRODUCTION Socrates Sculpture Park is open 365 days a year and is accessible to the public each and everyday. The result is a quotidian exposure to artworks in their various stages of existence from planning, fabrication, and installation to assembly and, eventually, disassembly. Access to the creative process is fundamental to the unique relationship among the artists, artworks, and the public at the park. This transparency creates an opportunity for engagement, ownership, and connection.
The Living Pyramid was conceived and built with vitality in mind and embodies a process of growth and regeneration. The life of The Living Pyramid truly began at the outset of production. Throughout the winter and early spring of 2015, the public was witness to all aspects of fabrication as the pyramid was constructed, assembled, and planted. The artwork evolved over time, as fabrication and installation led to the opening events when attendees were invited to plant seeds along the lower levels of the pyramid, physically contributing to life of the artwork. The impact of the pyramid will extend after the exhibition: soil and plant-life will be re-purposed into the park’s grounds, adding to its landscape and contributing to three decades of ongoing reclamation and growth.
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PRODUCTION
MANIFESTO AGNES DENES 1970
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working with a paradox defining the elusive visualizing the invisible communicating the incommunicable not accepting the limitations society has accepted seeing in new ways living for a fraction of a second and penetrating light years—measuring time in the extreme distances—long before and beyond living existence using intellect and instinct to achieve intuition striving to surpass human limitations by searching the mysteries and probing the silent universe, alive with hidden creativity achieving total self-consciousness and self-awareness probing to locate the center of things—the true inner core of inherent but not yet understood meaning—and expose it to be analyzed being creatively obsessive 81
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questioning, reasoning, analyzing, dissecting and re-examining understanding that everything has further meaning, that order has been created out of chaos, but order, when it reaches a certain totality must be shattered by new disorder and by new inquiries and developments finding new concepts, recognizing new patterns understanding the finitude of human existence and still striving to create beauty and provocative reasoning recognizing and interpreting the relationship of creative elements to each other: people to people, people to god, people to nature, nature to nature, thought to thought, art to art seeing reality and still being able to dream desiring to know the importance or insignificance of existence persisting in the eternal search
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ABOUT Agnes Denes (b. 1931 in Budapest, based in New York) is a leading figure in American conceptual art and a pioneer of environmental/ecological art who rose to international attention in the Sixties and Seventies. Over the course of a far-ranging career, she has employed a broad spectrum of languages and media to explore science, philosophy, linguistics, psychology, poetry, history, and music, in an artistic practice that weds aesthetics to social engagement. Her works, which are often on a monumental scale, bring together ecological, cultural and social concerns, forging an incredibly powerful dialogue between art, nature, and science. Denes has had over 500 exhibitions in international galleries and museums; she is the author of numerous publications and the recipient of prestigious awards, including a 2015 Fellowship by the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, four National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, and the Rome Prize, among others. Her work is in the collection of major museums, including National Gallery of Art and The Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
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ABOUT
Socrates Sculpture Park is the only site in the New York Metropolitan area specifically dedicated to providing artists with opportunities to create and exhibit large-scale sculpture and multi-media installations in a unique outdoor environment that encourages strong interaction between artists, artworks and the public. The park’s existence is based on the belief that reclamation, revitalization, and creative expression are essential to the survival, humanity, and improvement of our urban environment. Founded in 1986, Socrates is celebrating 29 years of exhibitions and programming. During this period, the park has been host to over 1,000 artists facilitating the production and exhibition of outdoor artworks and performances.
socratessculpturepark.org
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SUPPORT & THANKS
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The Living Pyramid was made possible, in part, with major support from the David Rockefeller Fund to honor founder David Rockefeller on the occasion of his 100th birthday. The park’s 2015 Exhibition Program is supported, in part, with generous funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, Charina Endowment Fund, Mark di Suvero, Sidney E. Frank Foundation, Maxine and Stuart Frankel Foundation for Art, Jerome Foundation, Agnes Gund, Lambent Foundation, Ronay and Richard Menschel, Ivana Mestrovic, The New York Community Trust, Plant Specialists, the David Rockefeller Fund, Shelley and Donald Rubin, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas W. Smith, Spacetime C. C., Leslie Tonkonow Artworks and Projects, and contributions from our Board of Directors. These programs are funded, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo, and the New York State Legislature and the NYC Dept of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council. Special thanks to the City of New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio, Queens Borough President Melinda Katz, City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan, Council Members Jimmy Van Bramer and Costa Constantinides, and the NYC Dept of Parks and Recreation, Commissioner Mitchell Silver.
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SUPPORT & THANKS
Socrates Sculpture Park is grateful for the support of its generous and dedicated Board of Directors and Staff: Board of Directors Mark di Suvero, Chairman Stuart Match Suna, President Ivana Mestrovic, Secretary and Treasurer Lisa K. Erf Maxine Frankel Richard Gluckman, FAIA Hugh Hardy, FAIA Brooke Kamin Rapaport Ursula von Rydingsvard Joel Shapiro Thomas W. Smith Kimberly Strong Mitchell Silver, Ex-Officio NYC Parks Commissioner Additional thanks for the materials and expertise donated by John M. Ameroso, Build it Green NYC, Dun-Rite Specialized Carriers, Materials for the Arts, R&R General Supply Co, and Robert Silman Associates.
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Staff John Hatfield, Executive Director Katie Denny Horowitz Lars Fisk Elissa Goldstone Shaun Leonardo Chris Zirbes Photography Images are provided by Agnes Denes, Nate Dorr, Dan Scofield, Michael Shorris, Leslie Tonkonow, and Socrates Sculpture Park.
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