The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Ana Mendieta · the earth-body works of the series, scored as one work · actions and placements in the land, the artist’s body or the outline of her body set in or cut into earth, mud, sand, grass, flowers, water, fire, gunpowder and blood, and each left to the weather · 1973 to 1980, in eastern Iowa and in Oaxaca, Mexico · begun in the Intermedia programme of the University of Iowa · the unit scored is the series as made and as recorded: the pieces are gone by design, and the work now stands in 35mm colour slides, black and white photographs and Super 8 film, many of the prints met today made after the artist’s death from her slides
Mode
Earth-body work: actions and placements in the land at the scale of one body, made mostly alone and for the camera, and kept as record
Mythos
Burial and rebirth enacted on the ground; the tomb that is also a womb; the figure with arms raised, the orant and the goddess; the soul leaving the body in fire
Phase
Made 1973 to 1980 by a Cuban exile trained at the University of Iowa, where the series began, while earthworks and body art were both young; seen by almost no one until after 1985
Presentation
Each piece made in the land and left to weather, tide or fire; recorded on 35mm colour slides, in black and white photographs and in Super 8 films of a few minutes or less
Register
Still, funerary and elegiac; at intervals a flare of terror and transport; in many pieces modest and plain by design
Scale
One body, or its outline, against a tomb, a field, a riverbank or a tideline; eight working seasons in two countries
Governing Proposition
From 1973 to 1980 Ana Mendieta, a Cuban exile trained in Iowa, laid her body, or the outline of her body, into the ground: under white flowers in an open tomb at Yagul, cut into mud and grass in Iowa fields, filled with red pigment at the edge of the sea, built as a frame of fire that burned out at night. Each piece was left to weather, tide or flame, and kept on slides, in photographs and on short films. The series makes one figure at one woman’s scale the measure of the land, and shows a body present as its own absence: a shape held by the ground for a while, and then given back.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The first piece was made in 1973 at Yagul, in Oaxaca. An open tomb, cut in stone at a pre-Columbian site; in it the artist, lying on her back; over her body, white flowers. Nothing else. The tomb is a grave and a cavity that holds a body as a womb does, and the flowers are an offering, a covering and a growth from the ground at once. Burial is not shown here as a subject. It is done, for the length of the photograph, by a living woman in a place made for the dead.
That piece opened a series that ran until 1980. Over eight working seasons, in eastern Iowa and in Oaxaca, Mendieta set her body, or the outline of her body, into the land: in earth and mud, in sand and grass, in flowers, water and blood, in fire and gunpowder. Each piece was left where it was made, to rain, tide or flame. Almost all were made alone, for the camera, and almost none was seen by anyone at the time. The desk scores the series as one work, its earth-body pieces from 1973 to 1980, as made and as recorded.
What is scored is therefore a record as much as a set of acts. The pieces themselves are gone, as they were meant to be; what stands now is a body of 35mm colour slides, black and white photographs and Super 8 films of a few minutes or less. In 1973 at Yagul the body is present. Later, more and more, it is absent, and only its shape remains in the ground. The series moves from the one to the other without changing its law: a woman’s figure, at her own scale, set into the ground and given to time.
Movement II
Ana Mendieta was born in Havana in 1948 and sent from Cuba to the United States as a child in 1961. She trained at the University of Iowa, and the Siluetas began in its Intermedia programme. The blood and rape works of 1972 and 1973 stand before the series and are not part of the unit scored. What she brought to the land was a figure that had already been set loose from its birthplace, laid into ground that was not its own.
The two movements she inherited were both young. The earthwork was monumental, bulldozed, and mostly made by men in the American West; Spiral Jetty (8.5) is the kind of work her series turned from, and The Lightning Field (8.3) stands in the same line. Body art, for its part, set the artist’s body to work in the studio or the gallery. Mendieta joined the two at the scale of one body. There is no machine and no permanence; the land is the place of a self and not of a geometry; and the unit of measure is a woman’s figure.
The stake was a real one. A student and an exile, working in Iowa fields and in rural Mexico, in materials that vanished, outside the markets of both movements, she made a work that for years almost no one saw. Neither field lacked near precedents for a body laid in earth, and the turn was made from ground already moving. But the turn is hers. She described the work as “a dialogue between the landscape and the female body”, and the phrase states its terms exactly: two parties, and a conversation that the landscape, in the end, closes.
Movement III
In the later Iowa pieces and in the fire works a single pose recurs: the figure with arms raised. It is cut into mud, outlined on a riverbank, burned black into the grass. The pose is the orant’s, the figure at prayer, and the goddess’s, and because it is made in the ground rather than drawn on a surface, the pattern carries the weight of each piece. The figure does not stand on the land. It is of the land, its edges the edges of a cut or a scorch.
In the fire pieces an armature in the shape of a figure is built and set alight. One, a frame of fireworks with arms raised, flares at night and burns out, a soul rising as it is consumed, a moment of terror and transport. The making is load-bearing here: the frame must burn as a figure and hold its shape long enough to be seen, and a badly built fire piece is a bonfire. In others an outline of gunpowder burns into the ground and leaves a black shape in the field after the fire has gone.
How much of the archetype the pieces build and how much is brought to them is a fair question. The Great Goddess, and the Afro-Cuban and pre-Columbian sources the artist drew on, are supplied in part by interpretation and by her stated interests more than by the pieces themselves. What the actions do is not supplied: burial, burning, erasure by the tide are enacted on the ground. The risk is repetition. The raised arms recur until the figure is close to an emblem, and some of the Iowa outlines repeat a proven figure in a new material without adding to the argument.
Movement IV
On the shore the figure is made in sand at the edge of the water and filled with red pigment. The tide comes in. The record shows the sea entering the shape and taking it until the outline is gone. It is grand in the plainest way: a figure against the force that ends it. It is also the series’ clearest statement of what it knows. A body can be present as its own absence, and a ground can hold a person’s shape only for a while.
The form is the knowledge. An outline made in the land, at a body’s scale, in a material the place supplies, given to weather and recorded once: that is what the work knows, and no other form would know it. Cast in bronze, the figure would know permanence. Painted in a landscape, it would lose the ground as its bearer. Played before an audience, it would turn to theatre. The pieces end as they were meant to end, by fire, tide and rain, and the ending is part of the making.
Take the most distant elements of the series, the living body under flowers in a stone tomb in 1973 and an empty outline of burned gunpowder in an Iowa field years later, and they keep one law. The material ranges wide, from flowers and blood to smoke and water, and the law does not bend. But the range is of material and of site more than of kind: one figure, many grounds. The narrowness of the motif does part of the work of the coherence, and the condition the series discloses is stated many times rather than widened. Beside Untitled Film Stills (8.2), another series of the same years with a woman’s figure in every frame, the Siluetas build deeper and rise higher, and disclose less.
Movement V
The work is now its record. Some pieces are legible in full, through film; others survive in one or two slides. Many slides are evenly lit and centrally framed, uneven in exposure, and the films are mostly static takes. Some outlines are rough by intent, some simply rough. In places the record is a casual frame that does not carry what the event carried, and the height of a piece lies more in what happened on the ground than in the image that remains. The fabric is fragile: colour slides and Super 8 film are both fragile.
Mendieta died in New York in 1985. The death has shaped how the work is seen, and it is not a part of the work. Almost nothing of the series had been seen before it. The retrospective of 1987 at the New Museum brought the work into view, and a survey in 2004 widened it; the literature has grown since and is still growing. Many of the prints in circulation were made after her death from her slides, so that the images met today were in part chosen by others. Her later works, the Rupestrian Sculptures carved at Jaruco, in Cuba, in 1981, and the tree and leaf works, stand outside the unit.
The questions stay open: whether the goddess here is a fixed female nature or its critique through absence; whether the work is about Cuba, Latin America, exile in general, or the land; how far the slides and films are the work and how far its document. Beside I Like America and America Likes Me (7.9), an action of the same decade held in its film and photographs, the series stands a little higher on a record as fragile. The figure is still there in the slides, under the flowers, in the burned grass, at the tideline as the water comes in: lent to the ground, and given back.
Act III · The Twelve
Judged on the series as one work, where the subtractive test bites. Within each piece almost nothing could go: a figure, a material, a site, a time for weather to act. Imagen de Yagul is a body, a tomb and flowers; a burning outline is an outline and fire. But the unit is a series of variations, and many of its members repeat a proven figure in a new material without adding to the argument. Remove a dozen Iowa outlines in grass or mud and the work stands with less evidence, not broken. What resists removal is the core run of kinds: the body in the tomb, in earth as absence, in water, as fire, taken by sea. Each is a different relation of self to ground. The cap clears with room.
Score: 7.7 / 10
What the series brings into the open can be stated, and some of it as meaning. A body can be present as its own absence: the outline holds the shape of a person who is not there, and the record shows that shape filling with water, burning out, washing away. Belonging to a ground is made, not given: an exile lays her figure into land that is not her birthplace, and the ground keeps it only for a while. And the female body, so long the thing measured, can be the measure. These hold. What keeps the axis short of the gate is that much of what is given is ritual feeling, elegy and kinship with the earth, and the condition stated, though clear, is narrow and repeated rather than deepened.
Score: 8.0 / 10
Elevation is sought and reached, intermittently. The summits are real. The white flowers over the body in the stone tomb at Yagul give a still, funerary beauty. The fireworks figure, arms raised, flaring and burning out at night, is a moment of terror and transport, a soul rising as it is consumed. The red silhouette in the sand, the sea entering it and erasing it, is grand in the plainest way: a figure against the force that ends it. These recur across the years rather than standing alone. What holds the axis down is that many pieces are modest by design, an outline in grass seen from above in a casual frame, and the record is often small, flat and uneven in light, so the height lies more in the event than in the image.
Score: 7.8 / 10
The series’ strongest deep axis, and here the myth is largely built. The body is returned to the earth in fact: laid in a tomb, pressed into mud, outlined on a riverbank, made of flowers. Burial and rebirth are not alluded to; the work performs them on the ground. The figure with arms raised, recurring in the later Iowa pieces and the fire works, is the orant and the goddess, and it is cut or burned into the land, so the pattern bears load. The tomb at Yagul joins womb and grave in one cavity. The particular stays particular: one woman’s measure, one site, one season. Below the gate because part of the archetype, the Great Goddess and the Afro-Cuban and pre-Columbian sources, is supplied by interpretation, and repetition risks emblem.
Score: 8.3 / 10
The inheritance is double, and both halves were young. Earthworks were monumental, cut by machine and mostly made by men in the American West; body art set the artist’s body to work in the studio or the gallery. The departure joins them at the scale of one body: no machine and no permanence, the land as the place of a self rather than of a geometry, and a woman’s figure as the unit of measure. The stake was real: a student and a Cuban exile, working in Iowa and rural Mexico in materials that vanished, outside the markets of both movements, and for years seen by almost no one. Held below the gate because both fields already held near precedents for laying a body in earth. The turn is hers; the ground it turned from was already moving.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Would another form change what the work knows? Almost wholly. The knowledge is of a body as a trace held for a time by the ground, and the form is exactly that: an outline made in the land, at a body’s scale, in a material the place supplies, given to weather and recorded once. Cast it in bronze and it knows permanence, the opposite. Paint a figure in a landscape and the ground stops being the bearer. Stage it before an audience and it becomes theatre; these were made mostly alone, for the camera, and the solitude is part of what they know. The form even knows its ending: fire, tide and rain complete the piece. Held below the top because the record, the only form now met, is in places a casual slide that does not carry the knowledge as the event did, and some members could be exchanged for others without loss.
Score: 8.5 / 10
Evidence over promise: about fifty years, the first fifteen nearly silent, and since the retrospective of 1987 at the New Museum and a survey of 2004 a large and growing literature. The questions stay open. Is the work feminist essentialism, the goddess as a fixed female nature, or a critique of it through absence? Is it about Cuba, about Latin America, about exile in general, or about the land? How far are the slides and films the work, and how far a document of it? How much do the artist’s death and the trial that followed bend the reading of earlier images of vanishing bodies? The pieces yield on return, the films most. Held below the top because much of the return concerns biography, identity and theory more than single images, and because the well was opened late.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Field: body art and land art in the United States and Latin America in the 1970s. The intrinsic force is a real reorganisation: the series gave the earthwork a person and the body work a ground, and made impermanence and the outline of an absent body into a grammar recognisably its maker’s. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the reach was delayed, and is credited and discounted for that. In her lifetime it was small; after 1987 it widened through feminist, Latinx and diaspora art and writing, and the figure in the earth became a reference point. Its influence on later body and ecological art by women, and by artists of the Caribbean and Latin America, is widely claimed and real in kind, but few particular debts can be named with confidence. The force exceeds the documented reach.
Score: 8.1 / 10
Weighed as record, on form, presence and fabric, at forty-six to fifty-three years. Form: the made works are gone by design, and what makes the work, the figure in the ground and its undoing, is legible in the record, for some pieces fully, through film, for others through one or two slides. Presence is charged: almost nothing was seen before 1985, and wide presence came in the late 1980s and after 2000; fame since then is presence, not proof. Fabric: colour slides and Super 8 are fragile, and many prints in circulation were made after the artist’s death from her slides, so that the images met today were in part chosen by others. A further tenth is taken because the record, not the object, now carries the whole work and was in part shaped after her.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Judged to the anchors of any medium, as command of making in the land and of its record. Credited: exact choice of site and material, the tomb at Yagul, the riverbank, the tideline; armatures for fire and fireworks that burn as a figure and hold their shape long enough to be seen; outlines shaped in earth, and the raised-arm figure carved and burned into the ground; a sure sense of the moment to record. The craft bears load: a badly built fire piece is a bonfire. Charged: the record is often plain. Many slides are evenly lit, centrally framed and uneven in exposure, and the films are mostly static takes. Some outlines are rough by intent, some simply rough. A precise command of a small set of means, below the finest making in any medium.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the body itself under flowers in a stone tomb in Oaxaca in 1973, and an empty outline of burned gunpowder in an Iowa field years later. They obey one law: a woman’s figure, at her own scale, set into the ground and given to time. Every piece follows it, across flowers, mud, sand, water, blood, fire and smoke, across two countries and eight years, with the body present or only its absence. The shift from presence in the tomb to absence in the outline reads as a development of the law, not a break in it. The range of material is wide and the law never bends. Held below the top because the range is of material and site more than of kind: one figure, many grounds, and the narrowness of the motif does part of the work of the coherence.
Score: 8.4 / 10
The orders held: the body and its sex; the natural order, earth, water, fire and plant, and the seasons that end each piece; death and burial; the sacred, in the ritual cast of the actions and their pre-Columbian and Afro-Cuban sources; history, in the ancient site of Yagul; the nation and exile, in a Cuban woman’s figure laid in Iowa and in Mexico. One figure integrates them, and the integration is achieved, not listed: the tomb at Yagul holds body, death, history and the sacred in one act. What holds the axis lowest of the twelve is what lies outside the figure: no family except as the mother earth, no labour, no state except in the silence of the absent homeland, no other person. A wide field around one figure, not a world.
Score: 7.0 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.0 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Living Form at 8.5, then The Imperishable and The Inner Law at 8.4, and The Archetypal Deep at 8.3. A form that knows a body as a trace held for a time by the ground, and completes itself in fire, tide and rain; a record that still makes the figure and its undoing legible half a century on; one law, a woman’s figure at her own scale set into the ground and given to time, holding from a living body in a tomb to an empty outline burned into a field; and burial and rebirth enacted on the ground, not alluded to.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 7.0: the body, the natural order, death, the sacred, history and exile held in one figure and integrated, with no family, no labour, no state and no other person. Next above it, The Inevitable at 7.7: a series necessary in its kinds and generous in its instances. Then The Sublime and The Made at 7.8: a height reached several times, more in the event than in the image, and a precise command of small means kept in a record that is often plain.
The Necessity Cap clears at 7.7 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 8.5, The Made at 7.8, The Inner Law at 8.4, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on all five: The Unconcealment at 8.0, The Archetypal Deep at 8.3, The Swerve at 8.2, Pressure on Tradition at 8.1 and The Imperishable at 8.4 each fall short of the bar of 8.5. The Universal Minimum clears, its lowest figure The Inevitable at 7.7 against 7.5; The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.0. Four of the five summit conditions are met. The twelve sum to 96.4, an average of 8.033 that displays 8.0, in the band of Tier IV; the summit is withheld on the Epochal Gate, and the aggregate, a full point short of 9.0, would withhold it besides.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of the record as reproduced and exhibited: the work is known well in outline and in its best known images; the full roster of slides and films is not known, and where a judgment turns on it, it is held more loosely. The work scored is the Silueta Series of Ana Mendieta (born Havana 1948, died New York 1985): the earth-body works of 1973 to 1980, made in eastern Iowa and in Oaxaca, Mexico, scored as one work, as made and as recorded. The pieces were made to vanish, and what stands now is the record, 35mm colour slides, black and white photographs and Super 8 film, many prints of which were made after the artist’s death from her slides; their survival as record is weighed on survival only. The blood and rape works of 1972 and 1973, the Rupestrian Sculptures carved at Jaruco, Cuba (1981), the later tree and leaf works and the artist’s death are context and are not scored. One title of a single piece is given, Imagen de Yagul (1973). One phrase of the artist’s is quoted, from a statement of about 1981. Facts that could not be verified are not given, among them the number of pieces recorded, the titles, sites and dates of the other pieces, among them the fire and fireworks pieces and the silhouettes in sand, the localities in Iowa, the running times of the films, the title and venue of the survey of 2004, the names of earlier artists who laid their bodies in earth, the names of later artists in the series’ debt, and the artist’s own account of the work’s bond with Cuba.