Dennis Oppenheim

Photo courtesy Dennis Oppenheim Studio

Dennis Oppenheim, "Garden for the Accused" (2006)

Photo courtesy Dennis Oppenheim Studio

Dennis Oppenheim, "Reading Position for Second Degree Burn" (1970)

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Oppenheim first came to public attention in the late 1960s when he was a principal figure in the Earth Art movement. Pieces such as Annual Rings (1968), where, using a shovel, he created tree rings in the snow on the U.S./Canadian border; and Cancelled Crop (1969), which involved transforming a gallery into a storage room for grain, were key works for a generation who were testing the very limits of what serious art might beand who were choosing to divorce their activities from the gallery system that many of them thought corrupt.

In the early 1970s, he turned to Body Art and produced such seminal works as Reading Position for Second Degree Burn, where he sunbathed for five hours with an open book covering his bare chest (an exercise in painting the body). In Rocked Hand, he used a video camera to record one of his hands covering the other with rocks.

By the mid-70s, he was experimenting with surrogate performers (puppets) and began making elaborate machine works meant as metaphors for the creative process. He has continued to innovate over the last 30 years, and his work is now in the permanent collection of most of the worlds major museums.

One of Oppenheims latest efforts is a temporary public art commission from the City of New Yorks Department of Parks and Recreation. Alternative Landscape Components: A New Land Art features highly artificial landscapes of trees, hedges, rocks and flowers made from such material as milk crates, trash cans and steel mesh. 

The project, on view through Nov. 8, has three locations. Downtown, in Foley Square, there is Garden for the Accused, named for the nearby courts and jails; in Central Park, Landscape Installation for Central Park can be found near the Arsenal at 64th Street. Inside Central Parks Arsenal Gallery is a small exhibition of Oppenheims proposals for other landscape installations.

Dennis, I wonder if we might begin by thinking back to your original work as a land artist almost 40 years ago now. That early work seems utterly different to what youre doing now.

Yes. I was terribly affected by doing land art in the late 60s. It was almost an addiction to working in areas that were remote from what we had known as the museum and gallery support system. But I knew it would come to an end, simply because I was pushing so hard intellectually at the parameters of art to find where its faults lay.

As an artist, unlike some of your contemporaries, you have rarely repeated yourself. You have always seemed unwilling to do the same thing twice, which explains, I suppose, why youve been such an influential figure in so many different artistic movements.

Often, after my work has been executed, it doesnt want to be executed again. By existing, it truncates the reasons for doing it. Thats why Ive jumped around a lot in my career. Ive often wondered how these serial artists can do it! How can Sol [LeWitt] sit down on another day and do another one of those drawings? My God!

I think its a basic psychological characteristic. Some people can make something many times, and some people cant. And the ones like me who cant will find many reasons not to.

But wasnt another reason for constantly shifting your artistic tack because you wanted your art to be provocative? Like making your land art pieces out in the middle of nowhere and then just showing photographs of it in the gallery?

Certainly land art was uncompromising in its lack of concern for the audience. I got a lot of criticism when I was doing it because people would say, We only have photographs here. Are you a photographer or a sculptor? And I would say, Well Im not a photographer, and theyd say, Well why are you doing photographs? There was a lot of bickering.

There was a lot of bickering among the artists as well. Everyone wanted their own unique position.

There was a lot of caustic feeling underlining everything. All of the earth artists hated each other. Body artists wanted everybody else who was doing that work to die!

Was part of your motivation for making that work a contempt for the commercialism of galleries?