The Lightning Field—a vestige of the conceptual, minimalist, and earthwork movements of the mid-20th century by Walter De Maria—provides visitors with multiple, discrete ways of encountering the art object.
Standing in the center of Walter De Maria’s The Lightning Field, I couldn’t help but think of the well-trod William Butler Yeats quote “the centre cannot hold.” Nothing marks the central coordinates of the earthwork, which made locating and occupying the space feel particularly frivolous. The precisely spaced and elevated stainless steel poles are rooted in systematic, gridded repetition—an unnatural uniformity in a desolate and seemingly untamed natural environment—not a central point from which a pattern emanates. The center serves no particular purpose other than to accommodate whimsical curiosity.
“The centre cannot hold,” of course, speaks less to the meaninglessness or non-existence of a central position, and more to Yeats’s recognition that Western traditions, ideological foundations, and belief systems crumbled in the wake of World War I. He wrote of dissolution far more than absence.
More appropriate might be Jacques Derrida’s claim in “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences” that “the center is not the center.” The French philosopher argued that the center is an arbitrary designation that artificially provides “certitude,” assuaging “anxiety.” To his mind, the center is merely a culturally subjective idea constructed to bring order, meaning, and comfort to people in a world that constantly shifts, confuses, and frightens. It exists only in relation to people’s terror of that which is outside of their understanding.
Locating the artwork’s center seemed, well, a futile if not meaningless endeavor.
Indeed, my search for the center of the Dia Art Foundation-run The Lightning Field (1977)—counting stainless steel poles along its east-west and north-south axes, then counting footfalls between the two most central of them—was mostly a subconscious and failed search for meaning that is both mythological and commonplace. With boots and pant cuffs caked in mud, and surrounded by nothing but scrub brush, ant hills, and intermittent metal poles, locating the artwork’s center seemed, well, a futile if not meaningless endeavor.
My first impulse upon arriving at The Lightning Field, though, was not to find and walk to the center of the array. Instead, I traversed the artwork’s periphery, beginning at the site’s lodging quarters (i.e. an old homesteader’s log cabin situated roughly two-thirds of the way down from the artwork’s northern edge in an easterly direction) and walking west along the northern edge, then cutting south, then east, then north, and, finally, making a westward turn back to the cabin. Based on the foot-worn path I followed, this route is no doubt the preferred course for most visitors.
Circumscribing The Lightning Field by walking its margins provides viewers with an appreciation of the artwork’s size. When we were dropped off at De Maria’s sculpture, it was approximately 3 pm. With flat light shining down upon the poles, they rapidly vanished from sight as I looked out toward the horizon. Viewing the entirety of the artwork at this time of day isn’t possible; the act of encircling the piece by foot is the only way to gauge its magnitude during the middle of the day.
Circumscribing The Lightning Field by walking its margins, though, suggests that one walks the artwork’s perimeter—remaining near, but always outside of it: a detached viewer, rather than an integral or enmeshed component. This, of course, isn’t quite true. The footpath created by hundreds of yearly visitors, in fact, weaves in and out of the field: a permeable boundary that wanders into and out of the earthwork. Scanning the serpentine path ahead of me, the arbitrary power of boundaries—and their inherent porousness—evidence themselves quite clearly.
We often associate the margins with segregation or the ostracized—that which or those who reside outside of community. But even in these isolated environs, the perimeter path is a tacit acknowledgment of a belonging to a community along and among the margins. Of travelers, art lovers, and the curious connecting through the imprint of their footfalls. Perhaps searching. Perhaps wandering. Perhaps escaping. Perhaps forgetting. Perhaps enjoying. Perhaps meditating. Perhaps losing themselves in the high New Mexican desert and leaving the trodden remnants of their perambulations for those who have yet to come.
There will be distant mountains. There will be changes in the weather. There will be companions or strangers.
Unlike their midday disappearing act, the poles of The Lightning Field glow bright pink-orange at sunrise and sunset. If you look at the artwork during these moments with your back to the sun, the illuminated poles appear in stark relief against the dark backdrop of the receding or approaching night sky. At these moments, visitors can view the entire mile-long expanse. What is lost during the afternoon can be found along the edges of the day.
At dawn, I wandered through The Lightning Field without a conscious or systematic approach to my movements. I intuited my path. An antelope entered the grid, grazed on scrub brush, then exited by way of the southwest corner. Somewhere in the southeast, a band of coyotes howled, absent to the eye. Low-lying clouds rolled over the high desert, partially obscuring the Sawtooth Mountains. The western sky was a deep, dark blue. The sun peaked over the eastern mountain range. The poles glowed. My friend Eric, the only other visitor walking through the field during that time, paced near its center. Approximately a half-mile away from me, his presence was but a small, silent figure on the horizon.
There was something meaningful about this moment, which, I believe, words fail to capture. Or more likely, my mind fails to fully grasp. Perhaps it is best not to over-analyze these fleetingly, ineffabilities of life—as such scrutiny often leads to self-important moralizing or the construction of facile emblems used to explain the world.
Yes, indeed, it would be easy to argue that my less-determined morning path somehow facilitated my experience or recognition of the natural beauty surrounding me. But I don’t think this is true. To argue as much would serve mostly as a pat, rhetorical gesture, not reality. In truth, whether searching for a center, ambling about the periphery, or wandering without intent through The Lightning Field, one experiences the world, the artwork, and the moment in whatever way is available to them. Whatever way seems fit or best suited for the time. Neither better, nor worse.
What can one say of The Lightning Field, then? What can one tell those who have not yet visited this relic of the conceptual, minimalist, and earthwork movements of the mid-twentieth century? What I can say is this:
There will be ant hills. There will be mud. There will be clouds and there will be stars. There will be rotund lizards and strange bugs. There will be distant mountains. There will be changes in the weather. There will be companions or strangers. There will be an enchilada casserole. There will be walking and there will be silent staring. There will be laughter that erupts from nowhere and disappears just as suddenly. There will be poles and there will be light. There may even be some lightning and an intermittent internet connection.
But among it all, there you will be—you at The Lightning Field.
Walter De Maria completed The Lightning Field in 1977. Today, the artwork is in the collection of the Dia Art Foundation, which commissioned the artwork and maintains the site. Reservations are made in February each year, and from May 1 through October 31, six people a day visit the site and stay overnight in a refurbished log cabin. The lucky few that secure reservations are shuttled to and from the site by a Dia representative from the nearest town of Quemado, New Mexico. According to De Maria’s wishes and copyright law, visitors cannot photograph The Lightning Field or the adjoining cabin.
