A tour of Nancy Holt’s ruins: from entropic monuments to system works

Résumé En

This article explores the evolving meaning and nature of ruins in American artist Nancy Holt’s practice. A concern with entropy and monumentality was shared by many American artists of the 1960s and 1970s, but Holt developed an original artistic reflection on ruins and the paradigms that frame their construction and interpretation, moving in directions inspired by ecology, as well as myth and ritual. Discussions of selected works (Ruin View: The Temple of the Sun, 1969; Stone Enclosure. Rock Rings, 1977-1978; and Sky Mound, 1984, unfinished) show distinct approaches over time. Site-specific sculpture and land reclamation consecrate ruins as critical and inspirational objects situated in the landscape that allow Holt to develop artworks with ramified temporalities, committed to the history of the site and aligned with celestial phenomena. Versions of contemporary ruins such as waste are embedded in an ecological approach to reclamation that relies on advanced technology to limit environmental damage and produces “system works” that connect the reclaimed site to larger ecosystems and the cosmos.