Nancy Holt

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Nancy Holt at the Up and Under in Nokia Finland

Nancy Holt ( April 5, 1938 in Worchester , Massachusetts - February 8, 2014 in New York City ) was an American land art , concept, and video artist .

life and work

Nancy Holt was born in Worchester in 1938, the only child of an engineer and a housewife, and grew up in New Jersey. She studied biology at Tufts University and received her bachelor's degree in 1960 . Holt's career began as an author of concrete poetry , she took photos, made video films and has always been fascinated by how perception works.

She moved to New York and made the acquaintance of the minimalists Carl Andre , Sol LeWitt , Eva Hesse , Joan Jonas and Richard Serra . In 1963, Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson (1938–1973) married. Holt belonged to the first generation of land art artists, as well as James Turrell , Walter De Maria , Michael Heizer , Dennis Oppenheim and Peter Hutchinson .

Nancy Holt often realized her Landart sculptures far away from human settlements, instead of in museums and galleries. So far, only a small group of people have made their way down deserted streets to see Nancy Holt's most important site-specific works in the original. The workpieces are precisely aligned with the incidence of sunlight, which allows viewers to sharpen their perception of time, space and their positioning in the universe.

The "Solar Rotary" project was created in collaboration with the archaeoastronomer Jack Robinson. Other projects were planned and realized together with architects, engineers, astrophysicists , surveyors and metal workers.

Works (selection)

  • 1976: "Sun Tunnels" in the Great Basin Desert in Utah
  • 1979–1984: "Dark Star Park", Rosslyn, Arlington, Virginia
  • 1988: "Sky Mound", a dump in the New Jersey Meadowlands
  • 1998: "Up and Under", a winding tunnel and berm construction near the city of Nokia in Finland
  • 2012: "Avingnon Locators"

Movies

Holt has made several films and videos since the late 1960s. Worth mentioning are Mono Lake (1968, with Michael Heizer), East Coast, West Coast (1969), Swamp (1971, with Robert Smithson) and Boomerang (1974, with Richard Serra). Points of View: Clocktower (1974) shows recordings of conversations between Lucy Lippard and Richard Serra, Liza Béar and Klaus Kertess, Carl Andre and Ruth Kligman and Bruce Brice and Tina Girouard . In 1978 she produced a 16mm color film that documents the work "Sun Tunnels".

Exhibitions (selection)

Nancy Holt's work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Exhibitions took place at the New Museum of Contemporary Art , Whitney Museum of American Art , Museum of Modern Art , Dia Art Foundation and MoMA PS1 in New York City. Also in the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden , Washington DC, in the Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris and in the Tate Modern in London. "Sightlines" was the name of the solo exhibition at the Badischer Kunstverein in Karlsruhe, 2011, curator was Alena J. Williams.

literature

  • Alena Williams: Nancy Holt: Sightlines. University of California Press, Berkeley, California 2011, ISBN 978-0-520-26856-2 (exhibition catalog).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Electronic arts intermix: Nancy Holt ( Memento from January 21, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) accessed on May 3, 2019 (English).
  2. ↑ Nancy Holt, Outdoor Artist, Dies at 75. The New York Times , accessed June 9, 2015.
  3. ↑ David Colker: Nancy Holt dies at 75; her art interacts with the land and sky. Los Angeles Times , accessed June 10, 2015.
  4. ↑ Greenmuseum Nancy Holt Skymound , accessed on June 10, 2015 (English)
  5. ^ Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt papers, 1905-1987, bulk 1952-1987. Retrieved June 10, 2015 from Archives of American Art.
  6. ^ Nancy Holt: "Sightlines". Accessed June 10, 2015 at the Badischer Kunstverein
personal data
SURNAME Holt, Nancy
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American land art, concept, and video artist
DATE OF BIRTH April 5, 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH Worchester , Massachusetts
DATE OF DEATH February 8, 2014
Place of death New York City