‘Color helps to define form.’ (Sketch Note from John McCracken, 1965)
This note and my memorized images of New Mexico’s landscapes, McCracken’s current residence, have opened my eyes to his work. This work is for me the total abstraction of the direct experience of nature. Counterpointing what I saw as the incomprehensible order of this vast and colorful desert landscape, his work is the physical translation of the nature’s essence condensed to pure color and shape; he crystalizes the hidden harmony and beauty that one can sense, without direct understanding.
At the same time McCracken has stories, absolutely unusual within the circle of the minimalist movement he his mainly identified with. His somewhat awkward tales of space aliens and time travel give a good idea of the independent and radiant quality of his work. I try not to link his work too much many of those more dogmatic minimalist artists (perhaps the reason that ‘Dia:’ still has not included his work in their collection). Also, regarding minimalism: McCracken would probably be the last remaining working artist.
‘By the way, one of the things that interests me about aliens is that they seem to operate in more than one dimension of reality comparatively, we operate in one, but they travel in time, and do weird things with space and matter. They do stuff I like. Think, as a mild example, how it would be to see somebody in a spread of time.
I think “minimalism” work is not always so minimalist, especially when you really see it and think about it - or, say, try to accurately describe it. But my tendency was to make my works more sensuous than most, and more what I thought of as beautiful. I felt that if something was beautiful, one could enjoy looking at it and therefore stand to apprehend the form in a full way - intellectually, emotionally, and experientially.’ (from “Interview/ John McCracken and Matthew Higgs” 2005)
Being afraid of the possibility that his sculptures would simply look like objects of fetish within the context of a white-box gallery, I thought I would prefer to see his work outdoors .
I first ‘discovered’ McCracken’s work about 10 years ago, a nearly invisible reflective stainless steel column called “Teton” in the sculpture garden of the Caldic Collection, Netherlands. It emerged out of absolutely nowhere, visible just as a vertical distortion in space. This year at ArtBasel40 a similar column, called “Liftoff” was placed, elevated on a pedestal on the main plaza, but since it was extremely crowded I experienced it more like a space-hole among the steadily moving mass of people. Unfortunately, at that time I think hardly anybody noticed the piece. Right now, David Zwirner Gallery is showing a similar sized bronze column in the controlled environment of his gallery. Its simple presence feels eery.
‘My works are minimal and reduced, but also maximal. I try to make them concise, clear statements in three-dimensional form, and also to take them to a breathtaking level of beauty’. (2000)
The “planks”, are probably the most iconic work which started his 40 year career; they connect two worlds: the physical and the mental. The reflective, monochromatic (rarely ‘multi-colored’), rectangular plank of approximately human size, stands on the ground that we walk on, but leans against the wall, that we look at.
‘The plank is ‘out’ of the world (or on the edge of it), the column or block-form more ‘in’ the world’, McCracken explains.
‘California culture did of itself offer some inspiration for art, too. (..) I wasn’t into surfboards - despite what some people have thought - as much as cars. Not that many of them had great finishes - but the light in Los Angeles does something, too (..)’.
During his early years in Los Angeles McCracken developed his iconic reduced shapes and a technic that allowed him to achieve their perfectly smooth skin. The multiple layers of color and resin over fiberglass covered plywood give the objects their character of weightlessness and reflectiveness that keeps the observer in a distance. Different from minimalist and conceptual artists who handed out their work for fabrication, he sticked to making his work with his own hands, simply to have the final control over the outcome of color and shape, the quality that probably pulls the observer again into his work.
‘My time-travel experience involved two times and places. First, (..) in Northern California near Mt. Shasta. I’d gotten off the school bus for the last time and was spending a while standing at the edge of the highway gazing around and thinking(..). As I looked toward the sunset over the western mountains, a feeling came over me. I felt I was being watched by someone or something behind me, in the sky. I turned around and looked in that direction. Nothing notable seemed to be there except a few clouds, but the feeling was still there and persisted for some time. It was a strong experience, but, well, that was that.
The about fifteen years later, in 1966-67, in my studio in Venice California, I was thinking and musing one evening, and I happened to remember my earlier experience of being watched. I wondered what it might mean. I visualized that earlier scene. I saw myself standing on the road, I saw the sunset, and so on, and I felt again the odd feeling that I was being watched from the sky.
And then like a brick it hit me: I was seeing that scene from the same point in the sky where I had earlier felt I was being watched. I had spontaneously “come in” right there. It bowled me over. There had been someone watching me then, and it was me, from the future! To the accompaniment of something like bolts of lightning, I banged back forth between my two selves for awhile, seeing everything from one perspective, then the other. It was a very weird and interesting experience.
As to frontiers, that experience hints at one: inner reality. Physical reality is big, but inner reality, though slippery, is bigger - and it permits time travel, as does the mind.’ (quoted from “Interview / John McCracken and Matthew Higgs” 2005)
This summer John McCracken will have his first solo-show in the UK at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh, accompanied by a wonderful catalogue with sketches and notes of the artist.
John McCracken @ Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Inverleith House (August 6- October 11, 2009)
6 works, 6 rooms @ David Zwirner (June 27-August 14, 2009)
Please refer to the gallery for inquiries and prices.
David Zwirner
525 W 19th St, New York, NY 10011, Tel +1 212 727 2070
Many thanks to Jessica at David Zwirner for photographs and material.
Photographs: Portrait McCracken; “Teton” (1989), Rotterdam, NL; “Swift”(2007), documenta 12, Kassel; “Liftoff” (2009), Messeplatz at ArtI40I Basel; “Vision” (2004), David Zwirner, New York; “6 McCracken Columns” (2006), David Zwirner, New York; “Aurora” (2008), David Zwirner, New York
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After James Turrell bought the 400,000 year-old Roden Crater in 1979 , a 2 mile-wide volcanic crater on the edge of the Painted Desert in northern Arizona, he started to turn it into an observatory with several separate spaces, that will allow the visitor (probably in 2011) to follow celestial phenomena with their naked eye.
In his hour-glass-like crater, Turrell is working with that tiny fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum, called light, which comes in many shades.
‘I also want to say that the senses and gratification through the senses, while it can direct you toward the spiritual, is also something that will hold you from it fully. That’s the limits of art, and so I don’t think that art is terribly spiritual, but it’s something that can be along that way, be a gesture toward that,’ says Turrell about his art-work.
Since then this ring, called Pandora’s Tears has had a spell and caused a chain of bad-luck for all its owners. It cast its spell on Karl when he got his hands on the stones and again made a ring out of it, till he too passed it on as a gift to his book publisher. He too was not spared the curse and had to eventually auction it off in Mumbai to pay his medical bills. No one knows who owns it now…. But soon after, Karl won the long awaited, prestigious 
‘The King’s Ring: Once upon a time there was a powerful king, who owned everything his heart could desire. But this King was unsatisfied with his power and all his wealth. He was afflicted with a strange restlessness and unexplainably longed for something which would fulfill following conditions: It should sadden him, when he would be happy - and should placate him when he would be sad. (..) One day the wise men had found the answer, when they stepped in front of the king, he asked them for their efforts’ outcome. They handed him a ring. And this magic ring had following engraving: “This too, will pass”.
German “Zero”: Heinz Mack, Otto Piene and Gunther Uecker.
I guess not until the late 1960’s did color televisions start selling in large enough numbers to jump start the excessive quest for MORE of everything on a worldwide scale. Which turned into an ever increasing worldwide demand for minerals and energy, which had been up to that point contained within North America. What interests me about these pictures beyond their extreme coloration and the size of the machine-made negative landscapes, is their connecting tissue, which leaves similarly proportioned marks on other types of landscapes.
The opening of Australia’s largest open cut gold-mine located along Kalgoorlie Boulder, called ‘Fimiston Open Pit’, also knows as ‘Super Pit’, is still growing, eventually reaching 3.9 km (long) x 1.6 km (wide) with a depth of 500m. More than 1,550 tonnes of gold have been mined, which means around 15 million tonnes of rock, mostly waste is moved yearly.
In the 1960’s the discovery of rich iron deposits at Mt Whaleback, the resource boom of Western Australia had taken off. A privately-owned railway was built to connect to Port Hedland and Dampier, moving record braking amounts of ore, trains reaching the length of 4.5 miles (7.3 km).
The more I get into R. Buckminster Fuller’s work, the more the modern movement of 20th century European architects (like Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe) starts looking like a fraction of the radical modern concept envisioned and partially built by Fuller. The two words, ‘Synergy‘ and ‘Design Science‘ stand out, suggesting that there can be still individual feats of design even with the bewildering speed of technological advance which gives a limited shelf-life to even the finest manufactures. This is because scientific and technical development is continuous, and every single design must eventually vacate in favor of something cheaper and better, or become part of another composite element, incorporated into a greater whole.
