Agnes Denes’s Wheatfield (1982/2015): Fantasy, Critique, Speculation
Lecture by Kirsten Swenson organized by Noit Banai, Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Universität Wien, Sabeth Buchmann (IKW) and Marina Grzinic, Post Conceptual Study Program (IBK).
Wheatfield – A Confrontation: Battery Park Landfill, Downtown Manhattan
© Agnes Denes 1982
In 1982, the artist Agnes Denes cultivated two acres of wheat at the edge of New York’s Financial District, briefly occupying a landfill formed during the construction of the World Trade Center and slated for development into Battery Park City later that year. In 2015, Wheatfield was restaged in Milan, underwritten by a private developer as part of the renewal of the Porta Nuova district. This talk explores the spatial politics Wheatfield, both historical and recent, and questions raised by replanting an ephemeral installation conceived in specific reference to site and history.
CV: Kirsten Swenson is Assistant Professor of Art History Contemporary Art and Aesthetics, University of Massachusetts, Lowell. Kirsten Swenson is the author of Irrational Judgments: Eva Hesse, Sol LeWitt, and 1960 New York (Yale University Press, 2015) and co-editor of Critical Landscapes: Art, Space, Politics (University of California Press, 2015). Her writings on contemporary art have appeared in the Art Journal, Art in America, and American Art, among other journals. She was recipient of the 2011 Art Journal Award for her edited forum of essays on "Land Use in Contemporary Art." Swenson will assume the post of Reviews Editor for the Art Journal in 2016.
Lecture supported by Kunsthistorische Gesellschaft, Institut für Kunstgeschichte der Universität Wien.