M40 Agnes Denes
A Manifesto (1969)
The American conceptual artist Agnes Denes (b. 1931) is one of the pioneers of the ecological and environmental art movement. Having worked in poetry and fine art, she proceeded to abandon painting for an ecologically conscious form of art in the late 1960s, having realized that humanity was in trouble. ‘I left the ivory tower of my studio and entered the world of global concerns,’ as she succinctly put it. While the practice of the land art movement became increasingly invasive, bulldozing estuaries and digging up parking lots, Denes forged a solitary path, working with scientists and creating art that confronted the coming reality of global warming; as a result, her work can be seen as a forerunner to the current research-based investigations of Marko Peljhan (M92). Denes came to worldwide prominence in 1982 when she planted a wheatfield in a four-acre wasteland near Wall Street, in New York. The photograph of Denes, holding a staff, surrounded by waving golden wheat, in an invaluable patch of real-estate overlooked by the Manhattan skyline, has become a defining image of environmental art. Other works have included the planting of 6,000 trees of an endangered species in Melbourne, Australia to alleviate erosion.
In 1969, Denes wrote herself a philosophical manifesto which she intends to live by.
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Working with a paradox
defining the elusive
visualizing the invisible
communicating the incommunicable
not accepting the limitations society has accepted
living for a fraction of a second and penetrating light years
measuring time in the extreme distances –
long before and beyond living existence
using intellect and instinct to achieve intuition
striving to surpass human limitations by searching the mysteries
and probing the silent universe, alive with hidden creativity
achieving total self-consciousness and self-awareness
probing to locate the center of things –
the true inner core of inherent but not yet understood meaning –
and expose it to be analyzed
being creatively obsessive
questioning, reasoning, analyzing, dissecting and re-examining
understanding that everything has further meaning,
that order has been created out of chaos.
but order, when it reaches a certain totality must be shattered by new disorder
and by new inquiries and developments
finding new concepts, recognizing new patterns
understanding the finitude of human existence and still striving to create beauty
and provocative reasoning
recognizing and interpreting the relationship of creative elements to each other:
people to people,
people to god,
people to nature,
nature to nature,
thought to thought,
art to art
seeing reality and still being able to dream
desiring to know the importance or insignificance of existence
persisting in the eternal search