“What you don’t know can hurt you. This is true not just in the case of the slow violence through which various forms of environmental toxins seep into our bones and blood. As Lucy Lippard shows in her brilliantly hybrid book, it is also true of the subterranean spaces where these toxins are often stored and, in many cases, blasted, excavated, generated, and buried. Surveying the land beneath that most iconic of American landscapes, the Southwest, Lippard traces the links between the gravel mined for roads, the coal mined for electricity, and the uranium mined for nuclear weapons in the region, just to name a few of the connections she makes. Lippard brings these hidden economies to light, describes the fight of groups such as the Zuni against the despoliation of the land, and presents striking examples of land use art that is helping to galvanize public opinion against the undermining of the West.”—Ashley Dawson, professor of English, CUNY Graduate Center |
“Lucy Lippard’s Undermining is a brilliant weaving together of the politics of land use in the West and the interventions made by artists into this landscape. Encompassing ancient petroglyphs, the land art of the 1970s, and more recent socially engaged art, and juxtaposing that art with the super-exploitation of the region’s natural resources, Lippard creates a compelling vision of an entire ecosystem under threat.”—Russell Ferguson, professor, department of art, UCLA |
“This is a marvelous slim book full of dirt: the literal dirt and gravel and other materials of the earth, and the unseen, unsung source in that earth of all the building materials of the cities, the cement and concrete, the uranium and oil. Lucy Lippard weaves, as only she can, ideas, facts, images, and histories into a whole about the rawness of raw materials and the ecology of the manmade world.”—Rebecca Solnit |
“Investigating both the ‘undermining’ of environmental sustainability by capitalist industry and the critical ‘undermining’ of normative approaches to nature by artists, Lucy Lippard offers an insightful model of how to live locally with ecological consciousness, doing so without surrendering to a narrow parochialism or losing sight of social justice imperatives.”—T.J. Demos, reader, department of art history, University College London |
“This is an intensely personal narrative of degraded ecosystems, exhausted lands, and dispirited peoples. Readers will be captivated by Lippard’s gut-wrenching identification with, and her eloquent elucidation of, accumulating hazards and diminishing resources.”—Linda Weintraub, author of To Life!: Eco Art in Pursuit of a Sustainable Planet and Art on the Edge and Over |
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“[A] brilliant and penetrating fantasia on land use and exploitation. . . . This singular book will stir the ‘creative energies’ of veteran Lippard fans and environmentalists as well as a new generation of artist-activists.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) |
“Lucy Lippard is to land abuse what Linnaeus once was to animals and plants. Undermining is a catalog of dynamite-blasted, bulldozing craziness, with every sub-species named, classed, and on display. It shows you not the Old West or the New West, just the Real West. Read it and weep.”—William deBuys, author of A Great Aridness |
“Lippard weaves a complex narrative that moves through the slow processes of ecology to the blitzkrieg of development and extraction. Thoughtful, poetic, and unflinchingly critical, she also presents a way to consider the value of art in the collaborative fight for a sustainable future.”—Nato Thompson, chief curator, Creative Time |
“Lippard’s timely book extends beyond the discourse of art history and cultural geography. It is a call for action. She guides us on a tour of the American West that is being ravaged by oil and gas interests, damaging both the environment and our collective psyche. Her critique and the numerous artists that she weaves into her narrative visualizes the destruction, as well as presenting alternatives that could direct land use toward a more just and sustainable future.”—Nicolas Lampert, author of A People’s Art History of the United States |
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