COLLECTION NAME:
Undergraduate Thesis Collection
Record
Title:
Nancy Holt: Seeing the Unseen
Creator:
Kelber, Noah
Subject:
Thesis (B.F.A.) -- Art History
Subject:
Savannah College of Art and Design -- Department of Art History
Rights:
Copyright is retained by the authors or artists of items in this collection, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.
Abstract:
“Nancy Holt (1938-2014) was an American artist largely noted for her contributions and associations to the Land Art and Earthwork movements. Throughout her career she created a variety of large-scale sculptures that can be found in remote locations of the American West, such as Sun Tunnels (1973-76), as well as public art in cities throughout the world. Although these works often find themselves at the center of discussion on Holt, she also created numerous video and film works, photographic series, auditory, and ‘System’ works that are equally engaging. Holt invites viewers to experience their surroundings and to foster a deeper connection to the unseen, largely unnoticed, aspects of the natural world. Regardless of the medium, Holt’s art functions as a lens to glimpse hidden elements, both spatial and temporal, that might otherwise go unnoticed. Although art historians and critics have discussed and focused on the way Holt employed Sightlines as a means of engagement in the varying sites, a focus that has been noticeably overlooked is the way in which Holt highlights the viewer's natural ability to see the unseen. Holt invites the viewer to reconsider their own sight and perceptual acuity. This thesis uses Nancy Holt’s interest in the camera as a lens through which to understand her sculpture, rethinking how her photo-based practices encourage us to re-perceive the unseen. The thesis also reexamines key works combined with overlooked bodies of work in Holt’s oeuvre, pairing them with new research from the artist’s journals and notebooks. Based on my own recent archival work at the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution, this thesis will be the first that I know of to include transcribed journals into digital format which will inform the scholarship connecting her lens-based work to her sculptures in new ways.” –Abstract
Keywords: Earthworks, film, Land art, Nancy Holt, perception, photography, sightlines, Sun Tunnels, video.
Keywords: Earthworks, film, Land art, Nancy Holt, perception, photography, sightlines, Sun Tunnels, video.
Publisher:
Savannah, Georgia: Savannah College of Art and Design
Date:
2024-05
Format:
1 online resource: 1 PDF (Thesis, 90 pages, color illustrations)