Individual Blog #3

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703384204575509823111367854.html?mod=WSJ_ArtsEnt_LifestyleArtEnt_4

This article discusses an artist named James Magee, who is considered to be the "America's greatest living unknown artist." Magee is extremely eccentric and unconventional: he creates art under several alter egos, including "Annabel Livermore," a painter. Under his real name, he creates pieces of wall art, which are so elaborate and heavy that any buyer would have to build a wall or industrial space to put them on. However, his most impressive and secretive project is The Hill, which has been under construction for more than 30 years and is still unfinished. It is a combination of architecture, sculpture, art and landscape, consisting of four 14-foot-high, flat-roofed buildings sitting atop two stone causeways. All materials are either stone or metal, and each building has fiberglass panels to let in light. The article describes the Hill:

The south, north and east buildings house a variety of sculpted shapes—vertical triptychs, altars, panels—all composed of industrial materials and filled with glass, cloth, metal, something that suggests an animal's flayed body, and various other detritus. The most spectacular installation is the horizontal floor sculpture in the east building. This vast piece is capped by a glass-and-metal cover that took four men 15 minutes to raise via a set of clanking pulleys. It looks like a lunar landscape designed by Corbusier and made of iron and steel objects, broken glass, ball bearings, beads, metal shavings, all arranged into shapes that remind us of things we know (a chair? a body? a road map? a destroyed city?) but have never seen before. It is a map of the imagination.
When the chapel doors are open, you look through them and out to framed desert vistas, the same scenes you can see as an encompassing panorama once you step away from the buildings. The untended cacti, agave, yucca and delicate desert flowers seem as deliberate as anything at Versailles.

I think this is SO COOL. The article's description of The Hill says that "Nondoctrinal religion, a pervading spirituality, defines the place and the experience of being there. Mr. Magee is the creator, the servant, the priest and—for the most part—the congregation." This definitely relates with our class discussion about the Horowitz article and the properties of architecture. From the description, the feelings evoked by the architecture seem to be awe, inspiration, and a sense of being dwarfed by the space (almost like the church that we visited). It really sounds like an amazing experience, and I wish that it was more open to the public.

For more info on The Hill, visit
http://www.mageehill.org/