Richard Nonas: The Man in the Empty Space

“Some sculpture does what other art only implies, describes, or illustrates. Some sculpture changes the world by cutting into it, by marking it. Some sculpture is the direct manifestation of change knifed into, marked onto, the physical site on which it most surprisingly and visibly happens.

That is what the Nazca Lines in South America are, what the Carnac Stone Settings do, what the many circles of Standing Stones in northern Europe are, what the Viking burials do, what the Egyptian and Mesopotamian Obelisks are, what the great Meso-American columns do, what Inuit and other cairns are, what sacred paths and ritual circuits do, what the Australian Dreamlines are, what the long lines of Tibetan prayer flags do. And that is what some of the best contemporary sculpture is and does. All are lines. All are cuts. All are the most direct, simple, and immediate marking of human thought onto complex cultural and natural reality.

That is why the as yet unopened New Jersey Turnpike became Tony Smith’s dream of what sculpture could be, why railroad tracks became Carl Andre’s, why the great vertical line drawn by the Paris Obelisk became Brancusi’s, and why a single shallow half-mile-long irrigation ditch— scratched two inches wide and three inches deep by an Indian farmer leading water across the Mexican desert by dragging a steel bar along its surface—became mine.”

– RICHARD NONAS The Raw Edge (detail), 2012 104 blocks of Luberon limestone at 3 sites Each 17.7 × 23.6 × 7.9 inches Vière, Haut Provence, France Courtesy of the artist and Fergus McCaffrey, New York / St. Barth