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Cultivating a Taste for the Hudson Valley
by Beth E. Wilson; photo provided

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Swiss-born artist Christian Philipp Müller began discussion of his latest project, Hudson Valley Tastemakers, in a lecture at suny New Paltz last month with a black-and-white image of a local cornfield upstaged by a sign carrying the legend “BUILDING LOTS—3 acres—all approvals—terms,” along with the requisite developer’s phone numbers. The intractable conflict between agriculture and land speculation is neatly encapsulated by this photograph, underscoring the fact that certain problems in our area are so apparent that even non-residents can recognize them with simple observation.

Müller is one of a group of 10 internationally established artists who have been invited to participate in a broad-ranging program of public art in the Hudson Valley called “Watershed”, organized by the nonprofit agency Minetta Brook in New York City. Obliquely connected to the development of the new Dia Museum in Beacon, the “Watershed” projects will publicly kick off in May 2003 with an inaugural event at University Settelment in Beacon, about the same time the museum is set to open. One of the anchor projects will be George Trakas’s creation of a new waterfront park at Beacon Landing on the site of the former ferry dock (which fell into disuse after the opening of the Newburgh-Beacon bridge); others will be dispersed through various public parks and other locations along the river, from Bear Mountain to Hudson. (More information on the various projects that comprise “Watershed” is available at www.minettabrook.org.)

In the words of Diane Shamash, executive director of Minetta Brook, the purpose of this ambitious public art program is to “bring together artists from around the world to revisit the Hudson River’s history, geography, and industries, and in doing so, to offer new narratives to discover,” bringing the artistic tradition begun by Thomas Cole and the Hudson River School painters in the 19th century full circle, translated into contemporary terms.

Müller, whose artistic resume includes appearances at prestigious venues such as the Venice Biennale, is part of a groundswell in recent years of artists whose work escapes categorization in terms of traditional genres such as painting or sculpture. His works are best described by the more open-ended term “project”, and combine various elements of sculpture, performance, documentation, and sociological analysis. Swiss-born, trained in German art schools, and now living in New York City, he is the figure of the cosmopolitan contemporary artist; in contrast to this global background, however, he attempts to incorporate specific local content and insights into his site-specific projects.

For “Watershed”, he is creating a work entitled Hudson Valley Tastemakers, for which he has found local “collaborators” including farmers, herbalists, and chefs from each of the six mid-Hudson Valley counties. The central concern of the piece is the precarious state of local agriculture, as highlighted by his photograph of the cornfield in the process of being converted into mere real estate.

Müller’s work combines an interest in what the German artist Josef Beuys called “social sculpture,” work that creates a thoughtful and sometimes productive intervention, via art, into specific human relationships (and in Beuys’s case, often with an environmental twist) and an appreciation for the restrained beauty of minimalist sculpture and its emphasis on elementary forms. Hudson Valley Tastemakers will consist of six long ramps of soil—each about four feet wide and 80 feet long, rising from one foot high to five feet high at the opposite end—lined up behind the Robbins House dorm on the Bard College campus. Each ramp will be filled with soil excavated from one of six counties (Greene, Ulster, Orange, Putnam, Dutchess, and Columbia) in order to demonstrate their wide variations in soil composition, mineral content, color, and texture. These sculptural raised beds will then be used to cultivate various plants and herbs that have local connections, producing food that will vary in taste depending upon the soil that nurtured its growth.

Müller is using the project as a means to create community and conversation between people who have been working throughout the region on issues related to agriculture and food production; at the suny New Paltz lecture, he invited Dan Guenther, a farmer and active promoter of csas in the area, to address the students as well. Müller has contacted the faculty and students at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park to create recipes based on agricultural products of the Hudson Valley, which will be assembled in a cookbook—the only permanent remainder (aside from documentary photographs) of the work once it has finished its work of growing food. The piece is contracted to remain in situ for 2003 and 2004; thereafter, it could either be adopted by the Bard campus or simply be disassembled. Müller has planned a number of public and semi-public events to focus attention on the work, which as he says “will frame the outdoor earthsculpture and hopefully leave behind in people’s minds the important environmental issues discussed during these food-events.” By creating such an immense work which ultimately will leave no physical trace, he hopes to highlight both the ongoing nature of all agricultural activity (the food is grown, harvested, and eaten, and then on to the next cycle of growth) and the precarious existence of farmland in the face of the immense pressure of real estate development.

One ironic aspect of the work is the fact that when the earth is excavated and shipped to the Bard campus, it ceases to be real estate—pointing up the slippery abstractions at play when we uncritically apply terms such as “land” or “real estate.” The ownership of land is almost as abstract as the concept of money (why is it that certain pieces of paper with pictures on them are honored in exchange for goods and services, and others are not?), a cultural practice that provided the basis for the misunderstanding between the colonists (or is that “colonialists”?) of this country and the Native Americans who had lived here for centuries without such a concept.

Given the intense nature of the real estate speculation that has steadily been creeping up the Hudson Valley, we will need to find new ways to think creatively about our relationships to the land, to our food, and to our communities as a whole. Müller’s Hudson Valley Tastemakers may provide a fruitful point of entry into that essential conversation.