"East Coast, West Coast" at Texas State Galleries

Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson’s collaborative videowork East Coast, West Coast features in the exhibition 1969: East Coast, West Coast and Real Time Systems at Texas State Galleries. Located at Texas State University in San Marcos, the exhibition is on display from August 26 to September 29, 2019.

This exhibition program pairs East Coast, West Coast with an essay by the art critic and theorist Jack Burnham titled Real Time Systems, published in Artforum that same year. In Burnham’s text he asserts "There are two kinds of artists: those who work within the art system, and those few who work with the art system.” The article, a follow-up to his 1968 essay Systems Esthetics, characterizes art in terms of the artist’s production of artwork relative to the “real time systems” governing how we see and understand the world.

East Coast, West Coast was recorded in the studio of artist Joan Jonas, who appears in the film, and was filmed by Peter Campus using a rented camera. Their impromptu exchange was screened for artist-friends Michael Heizer, Richard Serra, Keith Sonnier, and Jackie Winsor the same evening. In the video Holt and Smithson improvise a conversation based on opposing — and stereotypical — positions of East Coast and West Coast art of the late 1960s, with both frequently using the term "system."

Still from Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson, East Coast, West Coast (1969)
Video, 22 min, b&w, sound

Art © Holt/Smithson Foundation, licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York
Distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix

Archived News

Nancy Holt: Circles of Light at Gropius Bau, Berlin

Holt/Smithson Foundation and Gropius Bau are pleased to announce the most comprehensive presentation of Nancy Holt in Germany to date. Taking a journey through Holt’s output, starting with her first artwork made in 1966, Circles of Light expands over the Gropius Bau’s ground floor and atrium. Paying attention to Holt’s experimental approach to the interplay between the immaterial and the material, this exhibition underscores the singularity of Holt’s oeuvre.

Chapter Six of Tuesday Texts

We are happy to announce that throughout January we will be publishing a sixth chapter of our Tuesday Text Series as part of our ongoing Scholarly Text Program, which invites thinkers to focus on a single artwork by Holt and/or Smithson. This chapter of Tuesday Texts will focus on artworks by Robert Smithson.

Every Tuesday we will publish a text to our website that includes images selected by the author, a short bibliography, citation reference, and endnotes pointing to the author’s references.