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 DwanHad opened a gallery I already had strong connections with New York, because I was taking work on consignment from New York dealers. So I already knew a great many of the dealers and the artists here. It wasn't cold for me.
Virginia DwanQuite honestly, even as a woman dealer, I really wasn't interested in masculinity or femininity as such. What was important to me was the value of the work itself. If a woman had come along, somebody like Lee Bontecou or Louise Nevelson, and said, "I'm working on the land," I would have gone to see it.
Virginia DwanI think the four land artists I showed all worked within a few years of each other. And they were standard bearers, I suppose, for land art. They each did very separate things. Apparently, later in California, a lot of artists started working in that medium and there was something of a rush of earthworks. But I wasn't involved with that.
Virginia Dwan