Section 11: Cancelled Crop

Section 11: Cancelled Crop

Land art; Earth art; Earthworks; Environmental art; Conceptual art; Process art; Site-specific art; Agricultural intervention; Mapping; Documentation photography; Anti-form; Exchange and transference; Large-scale environmental projects; Post-minimalism

A double-sided printed sheet documenting proposals and descriptions for large-scale environmental art projects that intervene in the landscape outside traditional gallery settings. The recto side features "Cancelled Crop," Dennis Oppenheim's 1969 executed earthwork in Finsterwolde, Holland, where a farmer seeded a 154 by 267 meter wheat field following a scaled-down route (reduced by factor of six) between the field and the nearest grain storage silo in Nieuweschans. When mature, the wheat was harvested in a giant X configuration, a symbol Oppenheim frequently employed, and withheld from processing, thereby removing it from both agricultural function and exchange value to exist purely as art. Additional texts include "Forest Project" and "Notes on Ecologic Projects" by Oppenheim, which elaborate his theoretical approach to environmental interventions. The verso side presents Robert Morris's "Los Angeles Project," another large-scale environmental proposal. These works exemplify the land art movement's rejection of traditional museum and gallery contexts, using the earth itself as medium and canvas while documenting ephemeral interventions through photography, maps, and descriptive text that become the permanent record of temporary actions performed in real time and actual space.

Oppenheim, Dennis, 1938-2011 (Primary artist/author); Morris, Robert, 1931-2018 (Contributing artist)

Roaring Fork Pres (New York, N.Y.)

Fall-Winter 1970-1971

Graham, Dan, 1942-2022 (Editor); Maciunas, George, 1931-1978 (Designer); Johnson, Phyllis, 1926-2001 (Publisher); Waalken, Albert (Farmer who executed Oppenheim's Cancelled Crop)

Is part of Aspen Magazine No. 8 (Fall-Winter 1970-1971); Part of land art movement alongside Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty (1970), Michael Heizer, Walter de Maria; Connected to Oppenheim's other earthworks: Annual Rings (1968), Land Slide (1968), Salt Flat, Branded Mountain (1969); Related to Morris's earthworks: Earth Project (1968, Illinois), Observatory Project (1971, Netherlands), Johnson Pit #30 (1979, Washington); Contemporaneous with "Earthworks" exhibition themes; Associated with Process art and Anti-form movements

Double-sided printed sheet; Photographs; Maps; Text descriptions; Mixed media documentation

English

Artist's documentation; Project proposals; Photographic documentation; Descriptive text; Earthwork documentation; Conceptual art proposal

Temporal: 1965-1971 Spatial: New York, N.Y. Aspen, CO.