F
or those wondering what James Crump — the former Cincinnati Art Museum chief curator and photography curator — has been doing since he resigned in 2013, the answer is being presented this week in both Los Angeles and New York.
On Sept. 29, the new documentary he produced and directed — Troublemakers: The Story of Land Art — had its first major public screening at The Theatre at the Ace Hotel in downtown L.A.; it was sponsored by L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA).
And this Thursday, Troublemakers has its official premiere at the 53rd New York Film Festival, where it also screens on Sunday. The film has a number of other museum-related domestic screenings lined up, including Dec. 10 at 21c Museum Hotel here, with Crump present, before going into theatrical release on Jan. 8. First Run Features, a distributor specializing in documentary, independent and foreign features, is opening it at New York’s IFC Film Center. Internationally, it screens at Milan’s Fondazione Prada on Oct. 10.
Crump’s new film chronicles the pivotal early years, 1968-1973, for Land (or Earth) Art, and looks at how such masterpieces as Robert Smithson’s “Spiral Jetty” in Utah, Walter De Maria’s “Lightning Field” in New Mexico and Michael Heizer’s “Double Negative” in Nevada, among others, were conceived and created.
Crump and his executive producer, Cincinnati native Ronnie Sassoon, financed the film through their production company, Summitridge Pictures, before starting to sell various domestic and international distribution rights. They are also a couple.
He’s been thinking about such a project since living in Santa Fe from 1994-2004 and visiting “Lightning Field,” which is in the remote high desert of western New Mexico and consists of 400 stainless-steel poles arranged in a rectangular grid.
“Time slows down,” Crump says of his experience at “Lightning Field.” “The isolation and quietude allow you to go to another place where everything becomes very sensorial and you’re picking up on the most subtle things happening before the sun goes down. It’s a very special place to experience something away from the madding crowd and away from all the noise of civilization. And you begin to negotiate your body with the cosmos.”
With time, he was able to visit “Spiral Jetty,” in a far corner of the Great Salt Lake (and sometimes submerged by water), and “Double Negative,” where Heizer dug two immensely deep trenches in an area so out of the way from anything else that few to this day have ever seen it.
“You realize at these places how insignificant you are, and you realize there’s this relationship between the earth, space and the cosmos,” Crump says. “The metaphysical elements of these sites should never be downplayed. They’re very much a part of it.”
The film, using new and archival footage and interviews, also teaches about some of the patrons and advocates of Land Art, like gallerist Virginia Dwan — who funded “Double Negative” and “Spiral Jetty” — and Willoughby Sharp, who curated a 1969 show called Earth Art at Cornell University and co-founded the magazine Avalanche, which was supportive of the movement.
In the film, Crump explores why Land Art happened when it did — the tumultuous 1960s — as well as why it has continued to fascinate. “The artists were responding to all those issues of the time,” Crump says. “There were the assassinations, the protests, Vietnam, space travel.
“But basically, if you look to just one thing, I’d look at the aesthetic element,” he continues. “Artists like Heizer and Smithson had a relatively negative view of museums. They were responding to what they thought was a worn-out way of making art. They felt a need to transcend that. I think the space and light and freedom of being out in these vast desert landscapes inspired them to no end.”
Crump earlier had made another art documentary, 2008’s Black White + Gray, about the relationship between Robert Mapplethorpe and Sam Wagstaff. (It’s available from the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County.)
Curiously, Heizer agreed to be interviewed for Crump’s earlier film because the late Wagstaff, when he was the contemporary art curator at Detroit Institute of Arts, commissioned Heizer in 1971 to create an earthwork by bulldozing the museum’s lawn. It caused an uproar. But Heizer wouldn’t participate in Troublemakers, as he’s working on his newest piece of Land Art, “City,” in Nevada. (De Maria and Smithson are deceased.)
Nonetheless, one of Troublemakers’ strongest elements is the photography of Heizer’s “Double Negative,” which now is owned by MOCA. In February 2014, Crump did a two-day shoot — from air and on land — of the site, and the results are engrossing.
“It was very challenging because there were unusually strong thunderstorms,” he says. “But the fortuitous part was we were able to make some amazing footage, very immersive and experiential, because of the unusual coloring of the desert. This created the opportunity to record the saturated rocks, and color is just popping out. I also worked with a steady cam inside ‘Double Negative’ and recorded the sounds of it.”
Crump believes his film could inspire today’s younger artists struggling to find meaning for their work in a capitalism-on-steroids contemporary-art market for easily collectible paintings and sculpture.
“I felt I wanted to make this film because of the nature of where we are today, where things are so hyper-speculative,” he says. “It would be real interesting to retrieve the spirit of these (Land Art) artists and hopefully create something that allows for a younger generation to rediscover them and what drove them. For me, that’s a kind of antidote to some of the things happening in today’s art market.”
For more information about TROUBLEMAKERS, visit troublemakersthefilm.com.
This article appears in Sep 30 – Oct 6, 2015.