Walter De Maria - Trilogies - 2011

The American artist Walter De Maria is associated with minimalist, conceptual, installation, and land art. He is best known for The Lightning Field, from 1977, a long‑term installation in western New Mexico consisting of four hundred pointed stainless steel poles arranged in a grid over an area of one mile by one kilometer. Despite the role he has played in contemporary art over the last fifty years, only a few books have been devoted to the artist. With new paintings and sculptural works and unreleased texts, this volume explores in detail the works presented in the artist’s first major museum show in the United States: “Walter De Maria: Trilogies” at the Menil Collection.

In his new monumental work, the Bel Air Trilogy, 2000–2011, De Maria combines precise geometry with the altogether unexpected element of three two-tone 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air hardtops, impeccably restored. Each vehicle is pierced by a stainless steel rod three and a half meters long, shaped as a circle, square, or triangle, that passes through the front and rear windshields. Alongside the Bel Air Trilogy stand De Maria’s austere tripartite sculptures with moving spheres, the Channel Series, 1972, and the Statement Series, 1968/2011. Starting from his large 1968 canvas, The Color Men Choose When They Attack The Earth, for the Statement Series the artist created two additional monochrome paintings with incised stainless steel plates that complete the original work. The works in this volume bear witness to De Maria’s ongoing exploration of the conceptual, the dramatic, the monumental, the minimal, and the real. Together, these three trilogies challenge and expand our understanding of the artist’s work.

The volume is in overall excellent condition. Dust jacket with light signs of wear. Cover well preserved. Binding perfectly tight. Interior pages clean, with no creases or stains. An excellent collectible copy.