Art wasn't for selling. Actually, we once did have an offer on Double Negative. Things could be sold actually - everything could be for sale. But we had very few buyers. I think it was Michael Heizer who said that the point was to have a bigger canvas, and I've used that expression quite a bit. But I was thinking today that a canvas has boundaries; it has limit to it. And for earthwork, it was the very openness and feeling that there were no boundaries that made it so exciting.
Virginia DwanI myself had lived in the San Fernando Valley many years ago, when it was a much wilder place, and we used to go walking in the wild areas. So that early experience had a lot of similarities for me to the places that Double Negative was being done.
Virginia DwanI remember very vividly. I was here in New York. Nancy Holt called me and - I feel unhappy thinking about it - she said that Bob Smithson had died. I said, "Oh, Nancy, what will we do without Bob?" He was a very good friend.
Virginia DwanThere's a definite connection in terms of objects at hand - dealing with objects or material at hand. Pop art was very much enamored with popular imagery, and popular imagery was of course available and at hand. And land art was also using what was at hand.
Virginia DwanI opened with Edward Kienholz's The Beanery, and that's such a controversial piece that I think that brought people right away. It was a room-size work that one walked into. It was a bar with Kienholz-type figures sitting and drinking and talking - all life-size characters in a life-size setting. The exhibition was covered in Time, Newsweek, and Life, so it had huge recognition right away.
Virginia Dwan