Resumo de Sacred Art Of The Earth

Korp takes as her starting point two works from a gallery
exhibition in Quebec, but her concern in Sacred art of the Earth is
with works of art which are site-specific and which can not (with rare
exceptions) be exhibited in a gallery. Ancient or contemporary, such earthworks
share common features as sacred places, and the religious and aesthetic
concerns of contemporary artists can provide insight into those of their
ancient counterparts. Korp''s goal is not, however, theological or artistic: she
is interested in universal, trans-cultural responses to sacred sites, as
places.

She begins with a study of the photography of Jennifer Dickson. Dying from
lung damage incurred printmaking, Dickson shifted from prints of nudes to
photographs of the gardens on old European estates. Korp analyses several of
these in detail, using the methods of traditional art criticism, but her
primary concern is with Dickson''s experience of the gardens as sacred,
set-apart sites.

The next chapter jumps across the Atlantic and backwards in time to the
ancient landscape makers of the New World.
Korp is cautious about generalizations, but she suggests some commonalities in
Amerindian built forms. She sets these in the context of more general beliefs
about the earth and of links to religion, cosmology, and language.

The central chapter of Sacred Art of the Earth presents a formal
typology of sacred places.

Any sacred place is an organized space. As an organized space,
the responds to it in particular autonomic ways. That affect is one
of the recognition of power, sacred power (kratophany), a power particular to
place, which may or may not be intermingled with the recognition of that power
as a sacred being (theophany).

Korp uses ideas drawn from Christian Norberg-Schulz, Mircea
Eliade, Kees Bolle, Tadehiko Higuchi, and John Dixon to analyze the spatial organization
of such sacred places, using terms such as boundary, entrance, path, horizon,
and domain.

A sacred place is enclosed, set-aside or set-apart space. It
has a boundary. A correct point of entry obtains. The path to this place
requires a separation of oneself from one kind of space to another, a space
more animated, more intensified, more focused, and centered. There is something
we apprehend about that place that requires our attention.

We may or may not recognize it by name as a god, an
experience of the sacred personified in a theophany. ... The place is not like
other places, and in that way we experience it as a localized, site-specific
kratophany.

This is illustrated from the experiences of theologian Belden Lane, writer Maragaret Dyment (a visit to a
medicine wheel), and Korp herself (observation of a lava flow on Oahu). Site-specific kratophany is related to, but
distinguishable from, both religious experience (whether theophany or primitive
animism) and aesthetic response.

Starting with a curatorial statement from a 1969 Earth Art conference, Korp
considers the failure of traditional art history and art criticism to deal
adequately with earthworks. She then considers a categorization of earthworks
by Mark Rosenthal, in which two kinds of earthwork ? modest gestures in the
landscape and idealized landscapes ? are site-specific. This, combined with the
typology of sacred sites developed in the previous chapter, is used to analyze
six prominent contemporary North American earthworks: Nancy Holt''s Sun Tunnels,
Walter De Maria''s Lightning Field, Michael Heizer''s Complex One/City, Robert
Smithson''s Spiral Jetty, Charles Ross'' Star Axis, and James Turrell''s Roden
Crater.

The final chapter looks at the power of geo-metaphors, ways of seeing the
earth on a larger scale. The two Korp considers are the representation of the
earth seen from space and the proposal for a Buffalo Commons stretching across
a dozen states and provinces of the United States
and Canada.

I approachedhe Earth with some uncertainty, since I
find much art criticism sterile, divorced from broader concerns and prone to
cleverness for its own sake. While Korp is obviously comfortable with
traditional analytic criticism, however, she ranges far across the expanses of
religion and anthropology. And the only possible traces of pure cleverness lie
in the occasional decorative connection (such as an attempt to link the Old
World gardens in chapter two with the New World earthworks in chapter three).

Sacred Art of the Earth is clear, to the point, and elegantly and
succinctly argued. (It is also attractively illustrated, with sixteen pages of
high quality black and white photographs.) I found it both a pleasure to read
and a tremendous source of ideas. It has helped me understand my own
experiences of kratophany (on the peak
of Semeru or at Yosemite),
introduced me to some extraordinary contemporary earthworks, and provided me
with a powerful framework for approaching historical and ethnographic accounts
of sacred places. A heady mix of art, religion, and anthropology, Sacred
Art of the Earth deserves a large audience.

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