"[An] engaging and sometimes hilarious account of a 'recovering art historian' facing an early midlife crisis. . . . Hogan eloquently discusses the sublime and the intimate . . . and she makes us feel as if we're right down in the trench with her."
Plain Dealer - Marc Vincent
Across this marvelously unexpected little road saga, the stud muffin cowboys of late twentieth century American art at long last meet their sly gamine match. Pretty much doing for Land Art what Geoff Dyer did for D. H. Lawrence, Ms. Hogan, an urban fish decidedly out of water, flopping about in the high desert parch, makes for marvelously endearing company. An at times harrowingly (albeit comically) unreliable navigator (who doesn't bring a compass along on solo treks across such vast empty expanses?), Hogan nevertheless then manages to deploy an expertly modulated prose, tracking the heaviest of subjects with the lightest of touches, melding gravitas and whimsy (vodka and tonic), in a narrative that in the end, like the art it surveys, manages to be about what it is to be an individual alone—pinprick-contingent, achingly vulnerable, gobsmacked enthralled—in the face of all that is.
"[An] engaging and sometimes hilarious account of a 'recovering art historian' facing an early midlife crisis. . . . Hogan eloquently discusses the sublime and the intimate . . . and she makes us feel as if we're right down in the trench with her."--Marc Vincent "Plain Dealer"
"The title's overly coy allusion to Robert Smithson's masterpiece doesn't detract from a smart and winning book. Hogan, the public-affairs director at the Art Institute of Chicago, does her best to arrange an unhappy marriage--a land-art tour 'through the states of Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas' and 'through the states of anxiety, drunkenness, disorientation, and heat exhaustion'--but the reader emerges enlightened and even delighted. After all, making critical theory fun is quite a feat. Casually scrutinizing the artistic works Sun Tunnels , Double Negative , Roden Crater , and Lightning Field while gamely playing up her fish-out-of-water status, Hogan delivers an ingeniously engaging travelogue-cum-art history."
-- "Atlantic"Spiral Jetty , Nancy Holt's Sun Tunnels , and Walter De Maria's Lightning Field . Her encounters and personal observations offer a view of twentieth-century American art at a critical moment, as well as a view of the landscape of the American West."-- "Public Art Review""Blending a humorous travelogue and serious musings, in Spiral Jetta she winds her car and the reader through the complexities of 1970s earthworks and contemporary aesthetics via a varied landscape of people, places, and art. . . She is great at keeping the reader's attention: two pages of art philosophy; ten pages of fun."
--Mary Parrish "Science"Spiral Jetta , an unashamedly honest, slyly uproarious, ever-probing book, art doesn't magically have the power to change lives, but it can, perhaps no less powerfully, change ways of seeing."--Tom Vanderbilt "New York Times"
The title’s overly coy allusion to Robert Smithson’s masterpiece doesn’t detract from a smart and winning book. Hogan, the public-affairs director at the Art Institute of Chicago, does her best to arrange an unhappy marriage—a land-art tour ‘through the states of Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas’ and ‘through the states of anxiety, drunkenness, disorientation, and heat exhaustion’—but the reader emerges enlightened and even delighted. After all, making critical theory fun is quite a feat. Casually scrutinizing the artistic works Sun Tunnels , Double Negative , Roden Crater , and Lightning Field while gamely playing up her fish-out-of-water status, Hogan delivers an ingeniously engaging travelogue-cum-art history.”
"Spiral Jetta is the perfect read for those who enjoy contemporary art but don't have an academic background in it, and it doubles as a fine Western road trip narrative. . . . A diverting, insightful look at the land art of the American West and the characters Hogan encountered along the way."
"Hogan is funny and intellectually stimulating in her amazing summer art journey."
"Hogan is a fine guide, evolking the dry, mostly desolate, Western landscape, while skilfully shaping her sensory experience of the artworks and her reactions to them into a nicely flowing narrative."
"Spiral Jetta is the perfect read for
I was never quite sure what Hogan was looking for when she set out—self-fulfillment or some new insights into what art is, or what it is for—or indeed whether she found it. But I loved the ride. In Spiral Jetta, an unashamedly honest, slyly uproarious, ever-probing book, art doesn't magically have the power to change lives, but it can, perhaps no less powerfully, change ways of seeing. As one guide tells Hogan while they look at art in Marfa, Tex., "You're supposed to draw your own conclusions."
Hogan, director of public affairs at the Art Institute of Chicago and a "recovering art historian" with decidedly urban sensibilities, set out on a road trip to visit the most significant works of land art in the American West and to make an experimental "assault" on her fear of solitude. Hogan's journey in her Volkswagen Jetta began with Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty by the Great Salt Lake; in eight more chapters she documents her visits to Michael Heizer's Double Negative in Nevada, Walter De Maria's Lightning Field in New Mexico, failed attempts to find Nancy Holt's Sun Tunnels and James Turrell's Roden Crater , along with stops in Moab, Utah; Juárez, Mexico; and Marfa, Tex., "the contemporary art pilgrim's mecca." Hogan's pilgrimage, sparsely illustrated, is part well-informed art historical travelogue and part light foray into self-discovery; her prose is lucid, energetic and expressive, and she is an affable guide. But this narrative does not convincingly convey the depth of her interior journey or the aesthetic insight that Hogan sought to experience. 26 b&w photos, 1 map. (June)
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"A chronicle of lapsed art historian and devoted urbanite Erin Hogan’s road trip through Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas, in search of firsthand experience of the monumental earthworks of the 1970s and 1980s—including Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty , Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels , and Walter De Maria’s Lightning Field . Her encounters and personal observations offer a view of twentieth-century American art at a critical moment, as well as a view of the landscape of the American West."
Blending a humorous travelogue and serious musings, in Spiral Jetta she winds her car and the reader through the complexities of 1970s earthworks and contemporary aesthetics via a varied landscape of people, places, and art. . . She is great at keeping the reader’s attention: two pages of art philosophy; ten pages of fun.”
[An] engaging and sometimes hilarious account of a 'recovering art historian' facing an early midlife crisis. . . . Hogan eloquently discusses the sublime and the intimate . . . and she makes us feel as if we're right down in the trench with her.
— Marc Vincent
Blending a humorous travelogue and serious musings, in Spiral Jetta she winds her car and the reader through the complexities of 1970s earthworks and contemporary aesthetics via a varied landscape of people, places, and art. . . She is great at keeping the reader’s attention: two pages of art philosophy; ten pages of fun.”
— Mary Parrish
I was never quite sure what Hogan was looking for when she set out . . . or indeed whether she found it. But I loved the ride. In Spiral Jetta , an unashamedly honest, slyly uproarious, ever-probing book, art doesn’t magically have the power to change lives, but it can, perhaps no less powerfully, change ways of seeing.”
— Tom Vanderbilt
