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This past weekend , I function to visitDia : Beaconfor the first time . The museum , which features art from the sixties and onward in a former box printing process mill , is huge , with room after room devoted to monumental industrial plant of art that would be difficult to fit in many other museums .
pic by : Adam Kuban .
act upon that might otherwise be lose in a conventional setting is part of a greater linguistic context at the Dia , withDonald Judd ’s fifteen plywood boxes — a play on variations on a paper — remind me of Walter De Maria’sSilver Meters , a farseeing borderland of silver and gold plate down a narrow drift at the front of the museum .
I have always been awed byRichard Serra’sTorqued Ellipses , made up of giant canyon wall - like pieces of curved steel , but when I see theEllipsesafterJoseph Beuys’sBrazilian Fonds , Beuys ’s almost claustrophobic felt and metal sculptures , and the immense depths ofMichael Heizer’sNorth , East , South , and West , ( above ) I had a much a well sense of how Serra , Beuys , and Heizer were all part of the same 20th - century spectrum .
you’re able to see the tops of the cherry trees in the background of the photo . Photo by : Claire Lui .
The gardens at Dia : Beacon were design not by a landscape painting architect , but by artistRobert Irwin . After spending several hours inside Dia , I was able-bodied to see that the gardens were a direct extension of the art and the construction itself . Four quadrant of hornbeams outside the museum are a living and breathing echo of the musical rhythm and cadence of the work inside — the squared - off bod of the trees , the uncompromising repetition of the bole , and the changing sensing of Light Within and shadow when I walked through the Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree . Metal edges for the planter also were a reminder of the metal component part on Beuys’sBrazilian Fonds , art piece named for plants , but made of felt , and of the twist metal of Serra’sEllipses .
The long trilled lawn alongside the hornbeams is adjacent to a side garden of the museum , where cherry Tree forge two farsighted rows — themselves form lines parallel to the long national galleries . On the west side of the museum , Nipponese barberry * fills out tiers of planters that butt on the huge drift space for the Serra sculptures , once again a play on the boxy cubes of hornbeams and Judd ’s fifteen wooden box .
The walk to the museum is run along with concrete pavers filled in with grass that has grown to hide most of the concrete in wide swaths , but then bursts in staccato infield along the edge of the paseo , forming a rule of gray lattice work interrupted by the pointilist dots of grass . The thought of alternating opacity and clearness is iterate inside , where Irwin supersede panes of frosted glass with panes of clear glass , frame the verdant outdoors from indoors .
Irwin pronounce inan interviewwith theNew York Times , '' I exist in a little town across the river for a twelvemonth , and move there every day , '' Mr. Irwin allege . '' I work experientially . I depart in the distance and walk through it a thousand fourth dimension , just sort of running my hand over the whole affair , " and the result landscape shows the touch of a man who lived with the construction and its graphics every day and created a garden in the same spirit .
- Though Japanese barberry is considered invasive , and from a gardening perspective , rather than a design perspective , perhaps not the best selection .
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