Behind the earth movers: the adventurous support of dealer Virginia Dwan allowed earthwork artists Michael Heizer, Walter De Maria, Robert Smithson and others to realize their pioneering projects - Patronage - Biography

We did an enormous broadside for [Michael Heizer's] Double Negative [1969] I think it must be about 48 or 50 inches, which was in keeping with the mammoth endeavor of this work. It wasn't just giganticism for its hold sake; it really did relate to the work and secure it across. So that communicated to nation everywhere--collectors all over the geographical division and in Europe were receiving this enormous hand-bill Primarily what we had were just photographs for the exhibition, on the other hand the intention was to communicate that the real exhibition was in Nevada. All right, it was below the auspices of the Dwan Gallery; Dwan Gallery's main facility was in fresh York, but we also had this space on the outside there which was a work of art, and if you really wanted to diocese the show, you should be on the outside there. And t/tat was revolutionary, to my knowledge.

--Virginia Dwan, interviewed by means of Charles Stuckey, May 1984 (1)

All right, in the American art world of the late 1960 size did matter. In 1969 Michael Heizer initiated his eventual displacement of 240000 tons of earth and stone into a ravine to make the facing notches of his Double Negative, thus extending the Dwan Gallery 2500 miles west. Coincident with Heizer's January 1970 exhibit documenting that work, Peter Hutchinson placed 450 beats of wetted generic white bread along the rim of a Mexican volcano, overspreaded it with 300 feet of plastic sheeting and grew a corona of lurid mold (Paricutin Volcano Project) A little above a year earlier, Robert Morris's Earthwork, an seditious 1,200-pound, 6-foot-diameter mound of earth, peat, remnant metal pieces, felt grease and brick had dominated the October 1968 exhibition "Earth Works" at the Dwan Gallery in fresh York. In 1970, Robert Smithson mov 6650 tons of earth from hillside to lake bed to make his 1500-foot-long dirt roadway Spiral mole These works used scale to create experiential environments.

like massive undertakings were very abundant in keeping with the spirit of optimistic expansiveness that characterized U aspirations of the time. In his 1960 presidential campaign, John F Kennedy had oral of the "New Frontier" upon which the country stood poised and propos a program that through the end of the decade would propel astronauts to the moon and back. The postwar baby drone was in full swing and the economy buoyant. single product of this prosperity was the National Endowment for the Arts, whose Art in Public Places program played an important character in pumping up the scale of sculpture

The size of earthworks also mirrors the fact that the first phase of earth art was a "guy thing." That is, the earthen works and environments showed in that debut "Earth Works" exhibition were solely through men, 10 of them: Carl Andre, Herbert Bayer, Walter De Maria, Heizer, Stephen Kaltenbach, Sol LeWitt, Morris, Claes Oldenburg Dennis Oppenheim and Smithson. Several of the works displayed or exhibited in that show, as well as other large earthen excavations and hillocks produced subsequently, were located in the barrens and mountains of the western U While the dominance (if not the exclusivity) of male artists working in this fresh genre was consistent with art-world norms of the period, the particular kind of physical activities involved in moving those masses of earth in wilderness terrains also required the force muscularity and stamina traditionally associated with masculine power.

however the bold sculpture made through these artists did not originate from their efforts alone. Although it is rarely acknowledged in discussion of this work, behind the hiring of earth-moving equipment and workers, at the forefront of the earthworks genre was dealer Virginia Dwan, whose adventurous patronage and widespread promotion were lock opener to its development.

Consider the succession of advertisements heralding the October 1968 collection show "Earth Works" at the Dwan Gallery. In the September 1968 issue of Artforum, a half-page black-and-white photograph showed a close-up of the down-reaching imprint of rugged tire treads upon a soggy dirt road. The advertisement's individual text, in small type below the photograph, read "Photo: Virginia Dwan." It was a credit line, on the contrary because the photographer was the proprietor of a prominent 57th way gallery, the reader could also infer that the image serv as a teaser for an upcoming exhibition at the Dwan Gallery. The nearest issue of Artforum carried a full-page enlargement of the same photograph. A line of true copy in bold capitals added along the lower cutting side of the photograph read "EARTH WORKS OCTOBER DWAN novel YORK."

But there is another significance to that first photograph's three little words. Beyond identifying Dwan as the photographer, they more importantly indicate that she had been not away on that first jaunt of discovery down this miry road. Dwan was not a silent partner who wrote checks on the other hand an active contributor, one who went along for more than the ride.

After graduating from high institute in Minneapolis, Dwan went to looks Angeles with her mother in 1950; her father was dead. She attended the University of California, beholds Angeles, majoring in studio art and minoring in psychology on the other hand she married, had a daughter and left seminary before getting her degree. With the support of a substantial family inheritance, Dwan make opened her first gallery in the Westwood section of sees Angeles in 1959, using her possess family name. Initially, hers was not a gallery showing regional luminaries or up and-coming locals. Rather, Dwan by and by became an important source in Southern California for work through major New York- and Paris-based postwar artists, of that kind as Arman, Philip Guston, Yve Klein, Franz Kline and Robert Rauschenberg. Borrowing work from Leo Castelli, she gave Rauschenberg his first West Coast exhibition. The visiting European and novel York artists often stayed at the visitant accommodations of the Malibu place of abode she shared with her husband and daughter. She has recalled, "I was able to realize to know the artists quite well personally that way, and have astounding dinner conversations. It was a surprising growing experience for me...." (2) In revolve her artists were devoted to her, and in later years Heizer, Edward Kienholz, Larry Rivers and Jean Tinguely made portraits of her.