Nancy Holt (April 5, 1938 – February 8, 2014) was an American artist most known for her public sculpture, installation art, concrete poetry, and land art. Throughout her career, Holt also produced works in other media, including film and photography. Since 2018, her legacy has been cared for by Holt/Smithson Foundation.
Biography Nancy Holt was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1938. An only child, she spent a great deal of her childhood in New Jersey,Van Wagner, Judy Collischan. Long Island Estate Gardens (Greenvale New York: Hillwood Art Gallery, May 22-June 21, 1985), 42. where her father worked as a chemical engineer and her mother was a homemaker.Randy Kennedy (February 12, 2014), Nancy Holt, Outdoor Artist, Dies at 75 New York Times. She studied biology at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. Nancy graduated in 1960 and went on a trip to Europe with her friends. Three years after graduating, she married fellow land art artist Robert Smithson in 1963. In 1968, Holt along with Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer visited the American West for the first time, which culminated in her photographic series Western Graveyards which focused on the cemeteries of Virginia City, Nevada and Lone Pine, California. This trip was a catalyst in formalizing her artistic language and location-based works.
Holt began her artistic career as a photographer and as a video artist. In 1974, she collaborated with fellow artist Richard Serra on Boomerang, in which he videotaped her listening to her own voice echoing back into a pair of headphones after a time lag, as she described the disorienting experience.
Her involvement with photography and camera optics are thought to have influenced her later earthworks, which are "literally seeing devices, fixed points for tracking the positions of the sun, earth and stars."Arnason, H.H. History of Modern Art. 5th ed. (Upper Sadlle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc., 2004). Today Holt is most widely known for her large-scale environmental works, Sun Tunnels and Dark Star Park. However, she created site and time-specific environmental works in public places all over the world. Holt contributed to various publications, which have featured both her written articles and photographs. She also authored several books. Holt received five National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, New York Creative Artist Fellowships, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Holt along with Beverly Pepper was a recipient of the International Sculpture Center's 2013 Lifetime Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award. From 1995 to 2013, she worked and resided in Galisteo, New Mexico.Grosenick, Uta, ed. Women Artists in the 20th and 21st Century, (London: Taschen, 2005).
In 2008 Holt helped rally opposition to a plan for exploratory drilling near the site of Smithson's Spiral Jetty at the Great Salt Lake in rural Utah.Helen Stoilas (October 23, 2008), Land Art: here today, gone tomorrow? The Art Newspaper. After Smithson's death, Holt never remarried. Holt died in New York City on February 8, 2014, at the age of 75.
Artistic style The land art tradition Holt is associated with earthworks or land art. Land art emerged in the 1960s, coinciding with a growing ecology movement in the United States, which asked people to become more aware of the negative impact they can have on the natural environment. Land art changed the way people thought of art; it took art out of the gallery or museum and into the natural landscape, the product of which were huge works engaging elements of the environment. Unlike much of the commercialized art during this time period, land art could not be bought or sold on the art market. Thus, it shifted the perspective of how people all over the world viewed art.
Land art was typically created in remote, uninhabited regions of the country, particularly the Southwest. Some attribute this popular location for land art to artists’ need to escape the turmoil in the United States during the 1960s and 70s by turning to the open, uncorrupted land of the West. Holt believed this artistic movement came about in the United States due to the vastness of the American landscape.Brown, Jeffrey. “Online NewsHour: Robert Smithson’s ‘Spiral Jetty' Celebrates its 30th Anniversary.” PBS Online, May 6, 2005. As a result of earthworks not being easily accessible to the public, documentation in photographs, videos, drawings became imperative to their being seen. The first exhibit of contemporary land art was at the Virginia Dwan Gallery in New York in 1968.Doss, Erika. "Twentieth-Century American Art." (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). Other earth artists who emerged during this period include Robert Smithson, James Turrell, Walter De Maria, Michael Heizer, Dennis Oppenheim and Peter Hutchinson.
Perception of time and space Holt's works of art often deal with issues of how people perceive time and space. The various monumental works she created blend with and complement their environment. Works such as Hydra’s Head do not merely sit in their environments, but are made of the land, stand on it and are created to be harmonious with the land. The pools in this work are at the top of concrete tubes imbedded in the ground. The land already at the site surrounds these pools. They reflect the natural landscape, while not disturbing it. Holt thought about human scale in relation to the works she created.Saad-Cook, Janet, Charles Ross, Nancy Holt, James Turrell. "Touching the Sky: Artworks Using Natural Phenomena, Earth, Sky and Connections to Astronomy" Leonardo 21, no. 2 (1988): 123. People can interact with the works and become more aware of space, of their own visual perception, and of the order of the universe. Holt's works incorporate the passage of time and also function to keep time. For example, Annual Ring functions so that when sunlight falls through the hole in the dome and fits perfectly into a ring on the ground, it is solar noon on the summer solstice. At different times, the sun falls differently on the work and other holes in the dome align with celestial occurrences. Holt has said that she is concerned with making art that not only makes an impact visually, but is also functional and necessary in society,Arlington County Department of Parks, Recreation and Community. Nancy Holt: Dark Star Park, . as seen in works like Sky Mound, which serves a dual function as a sculpture and park and it also generates alternative energy.
In her works, Holt created an intimate connection to nature and the stars, saying, "I feel that the need to look at the sky-at the moon and the stars-is very basic, and it is inside all of us. So when I say my work is an exteriorization of my own inner reality, I mean I am giving back to people through art what they already have in them."
Collaboration Collaboration with architects, engineers, construction crews and the like is an essential part of creating land art. Solar Rotary is a work located on the campus of the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida. The work, consists of . aluminum poles topped with a swirl of metal called a shadow caster, which casts a circle of light on a central seat when it is solar noon on the day of the summer solstice. On five days a year at different times, the shadow caster is designed to create a circle of light around plaques placed in the ground that mark important events in Florida's history. Thus, for Solar Rotary, Holt employed Dr. Jack Robinson, an archaeo-astronomer and professor to help her, among other things, to plot the sun's coordinates for the work. For almost all of Holt's works, she worked with a collaborator and or collaborators. For Dark Star Park, Holt coordinated with developer J.W. Kaempfer, Jr., of the Kaempfer Company, in integrating the design of his adjacent building, Park Place Office Building into her design for the park. She also worked in collaboration with an architect, landscape architect, engineers, and real estate developers on the work. For Rock Rings, Holt searched far and wide to find the right masons to work on the piece and also had local stone called schist, which was 250-million-years old, quarried by hand for the work. Despite all of the collaboration, Holt noted that she was always present for the construction of her artworks. in June 2012, she completed Avignon Locators, her first site-specific work made in France on the basis of the Missoula Ranch Locators: Vision Encompassed (1972). This work "Grading the Land" Observatoire du Land Art, 3 October 2012 involved a team of academics, teachers and students, an astrophysist, a surveyor, a metalworker and an architect.
Analysis of major works Sun Tunnels
Sun Tunnels is located in the Great Basin Desert outside of the ghost town of Lucin, Utah, at . The work is a product of Holt's interest in the great variation of intensity of the sun in the desert compared to the sun in the city. Holt searched for and found a site which was remote and empty. "It is a very desolate area, but it is totally accessible, and it can be easily visited, making Sun Tunnels more accessible really than art in museums ... A work like Sun Tunnels is always accessible ... Eventually, as many people will see Sun Tunnels as would see many works in a city - in a museum anyway."
The work consists of four large scale concrete tunnels ( long and in diameter), which are arranged in an “X” configuration to total a length of . Each tunnel is aligned with, variously, the sunrise or sunset, of the summer or winter solstice. Someone visiting the site would see the tunnels immediately with their contrast to the fairly undifferentiated desert landscape. Approaching the work, which can be seen up to away, the viewer's perception of space is questioned as the tunnels change views as a product of their landscape.Beebe, Mary Livingston. “Tell Me, Is It Flat or Is It Round?” Art Journal 41, no. 2 (1981): 169.
The tunnels not only provide a much-needed shelter from the sweltering desert sun, but once inside the effect of the play of light within the tunnels can be seen. The top of each tunnel has small holes, forming on each, the constellations of Draco, Perseus, Columba, and Capricorn, respectively. The diameters of the holes differ in relation to the magnitude of the stars represented. These holes cast spots of daylight in the dark interiors of the tunnels, which appear almost like stars. Holt said of the tunnels, "It’s an inversion of the sky/ground relationship-bringing the sky down to the earth." This is a common theme in Holt's work. She sometimes created this relationship with reflecting pools and shadow patterns marked on the ground, like in her work Star Crossed.
Dia Art Foundation acquired the work in March 2018. It is the first land art installation by a woman in Dia's collection. It is now considered one of Dia's 12 locations and sites they manage.
Dark Star Park Dark Star Park was commissioned by Arlington County, Virginia, in 1979, in conjunction with an urban-renewal project. Construction of the work began in 1984. Holt worked with an architect, landscape architect, engineers and real estate developers on the project. The artwork is at once a park and a sculpture. Built on of land where a run-down, old gas station and warehouse once stood, Holt transformed the space. The park consists of five spheres, two pools, four steel poles, a stairway, a large tunnel for passage, a smaller tunnel for viewing only and plantings of crown vetch, winter creeper, willow oak, and earth and grass.Marter, Joan. “Collaborations: Artists and Architects on Public Sites.” Art Journal 48, no. 4 Critical Issues in Public Art (1989): 316.