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Beyond Earthworks. The triumph of helping to prophesy into existence three lively minischools of art might make a lesser high priest rest on his oracles. Not De Maria, whose spring exhibition at Manhattan's Dwan Gallery takes him beyond earthworks into a new idiom that is easily the most alarming yet. During the show, more than 2,500 visitors came to titter nervously or gaze in horrified wonder at De Maria's five Indian fakir-like steel beds. Together they contain 153 upright 11-in. spikes, honed to the sharpness of a Viet Cong punji stick and arranged with the geometric precision of the crosses that stand among the poppies in Flanders field.
Each visitor had to sign a release before he entered the room, exempting the gallery and De Maria in legal terms from any responsibility for accidents. The release served to emphasize what the show was about—"The danger that exists in the world today." Says De Maria: "It's a fact that within one hour 100 million people could be killed."
Still, the most distressing aspect of The Beds of Spikes lies not in the abstract danger that they symbolize but in their creator's evident delight in endowing them with all the murderous loveliness of a well-made gun, knife or racing car. "When danger and beauty are mixed," he maintains, "the result is a heightened beauty that surpasses so-called normal beauty." If De Maria's latest ritual objects prove as seductive as his previous ones, Manhattan's with-it galleries will soon be showing a large and loathsome selection of even more horrific art.