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Born
in Albany, California in 1933, De Maria studied at the
University of California at Berkeley, completing a B.A.
degree in history in 1957 and an M.A. degree in art in
1959. De Maria was instrumental in organizing early performance
art, known as happenings, in the San Francisco Bay area
in 1959 and 1960. In 1965 he moved to New York City and
became a drummer with the rock band Velvet Underground.
As a sculptor, he helped establish a form of art known
as earthworks
or land art, outdoor art on a vast scale that involves
manipulation of the landscape itself.
One of De Maria's earliest earthworks was Mile-Long Drawing
(1968), which consisted of two parallel chalk lines 12
feet apart that extended for two miles across the Mojave
Desert in California. Like many earthworks, this piece
had only a temporary physical presence; it exists primarily
as an idea documented in photographs, drawings, and writings.
De Maria created the first of three Earth Room installations
in 1968 at the Heiner Friedrich Gallery in Munich, Germany;
this installation was one of his best-known works.
One version, The
New York Earth Room, 1977, is permanently installed
in a second-floor loft in New York City, owned by the
Dia
Center for the Arts.
Visitors climb stairs to confront a Plexiglas barrier
holding back a gallery full of dirt 22 inches deep. They
can look at but not walk over an expanse of rich loamy
soil, moistened and picked clean of debris on a regular
basis. There is no art object separate from the experience
of viewing, and nothing to buy or sell, a circumstance
that is typical of much conceptual art of the late 1960s
and 1970s.
The
Lightning Field (1977), perhaps De Maria's most ambitious
and provocative piece, consists of 400 stainless steel
poles planted in a grid that is one mile by one kilometer
wide. Located on a high desert plateau in southwestern
New Mexico, the work was commissioned and is maintained
by the Dia
Center for the Arts. Visitors must make reservations
in advance to visit the site and agree to spend a specified
amount of time there, sleeping in a small cabin at the
site. In the summer months lightning storms often approach,
dancing spectacularly among the steel rods. Even when
lightning is not in the area, the immensity of the landscape,
beautifully framed by the pattern of the poles, inspires
awe.
De Maria's work was included in exhibitions of minimal
art and conceptual art starting in the mid-1960s; his
large-scale projects are considered icons of those movements.
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