Philosophy in the land: since the 1960s, Agnes Denes has been exploring the relationship between nature and culture through a variety of mediums. A show documenting her public art concludes its tour at New York's Chelsea Art Museum

Art in America, Nov, 2004 by Thomas McEvilley

(7.) Jack Flam, ed., Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1996, p. 186.

(8.) Ibid., p. 180.

(9.) Thomas McEvilley, "Explicating Exfoliation in the Work of Mel Chin," in McEvilley, Sculpture in the Age of Doubt, New York, Allworth Press, 1999, pp. 251 ft.

(10.) Thomas McEvilley, "If It Die: Triangulating Landfill Art," in Chris Driessen and Heidi van Mierlo, eds., Tales of the Tip: Art on Garbage, Amsterdam, Fundament Foundation, 1999.

(11.) Pascal's Pyramid refers to a series of numbers that was actually known to earlier cultures but has become attached to Blaise Pascal. In each line descending from the apex of the pyramid of numbers, 1s are put at both ends. In between them the numbers are derived from addition of the two directly above. (This rule applies to the 1s, too, since each initial or final 1 is added with zero.) The first few lines thus read:

     1
    11
   121
  1331
 14641
15101051

For details, see A.W.F. Edwards, Pascal's Arithmetical Triangle (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002). This triangle has an elementary use in probability and combinatorics, and both the series of triangular numbers and the Fibonacci series can be derived from it. Its pyramidal shape and infinite extensiveness make it suitable for Denas's pyramid of thousands of figures.

(12.) Agnes Denes, Projects for Public Spaces, A Retrospective, Lewisburg, Pa., Samek Art Gallery, Bucknell University, 2003, p. 11.

(13.) Cited by Selz, in Hartz, ed., Agnes Denes, p. 148.

(14.) Ibid.

(15.) The certificates specify that in succeeding generations responsibility for each tree can be shared equally among the children of the previous custodian. In this way, the original 11,000 will multiply into millions, according to the artist's hopes. This is another instance of the pyramid theme in Dunes's work.

"Agnes Denes: Projects for Public Space" appeared at the Samek Art Gallery of Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pa. [Jan. 26-Apr. 3, 2003], the Herron School of Art in Indianapolis [Aug. 27-Sept. 27, 2003], the Haggerty Museum of Art at Marquette University in Milwaukee [Oct. 16, 2003-Jan. 4, 2004], the Naples Museum of Art in Naples, Fla. [Feb. 14-May 6] and the Chelsea Art Museum, New York City [Sept. 6-Nov. 9].

Thomas McEvilley's latest book is The Triumph of Anti-Art: Conceptual and Performance Art in the Formation of Post Modernism (McPherson & Company).