So why were the power lines so apparently important to the New Topos? Think of them as a key link between New Topos and their West-exploring photographic great-grandfathers fo the 1870, '80s and '90s.
Some context: In his book, Rivers of Empire, Donald Worster notes that many of the first large-scale Eastern plans for the American West involved irrigation, converting arid desert into agricultural land: "In the latter part of the nineteenth century they could be found all over the West," Worster writes. "They were the brigade of hydraulic engineers, and they had more to do with making the modern West than all the fur trappers and cowboys and sheepherders there ever were."
(The other primary Eastern 'plan' for the West was mineral extraction, especially hydraulic mining. It was oft chronicled by Carleton Watkins.)
This 'brigade' and the men they employed were chronicled by many of the West's first photographers and many of the government's first photo-documentations of the West. The Library of Congress and the National Archives are chock-full of such pictures (many of which have recently been made available online for unrestricted use). [Image: Irrigation ditch under construction at San Carlos Indian Agency, Arizona, National Archives. Undated, but possibly 1886.] Those late 19th-century irrigation and hydraulics projects later gave way to the most ambitious taming of the land imaginable: The 20th century's rivers-altering hydroelectric projects. Before Americans were done damming the West, pretty much ever Western river of significance was controlled by man. (We even created some new 'rivers,' such as the California Aqueduct.)
All those power lines in all those New Topos photographs serve to remind us of how hydroelectric (and massive-amounts-of-water-requiring nuclear) power made man's incursion into the West possible. They remind us to trace the lineage of post-World War II projects to the engineering projects of the previous century. They also remind us that the history of the West and the history of American photography are closely linked.
Related: I loved the show's catalogue.
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I particularly enjoyed Salvesen's essay, which continues what is now a full-fledged art historical trend: the sourcing of much American art of the late 1960s and 1970s to an interest in environmentalism. Call it the death of the art-ism: Sometime after abstract expressionism or minimalism, artists were less likely to hitch their studios to 'isms', schools, Cedar Bars and the like, and instead increasingly looked outside art for motivation and inspiration. Given American art's centuries of preoccupation with the land and landscape, it's not surprising that artists would be prominent in the first generation of Americans to be caught up in the then-nascent environmental movement. [Image at right: Cover of the 1975 catalogue.]
Salvesen notes that the New Topos weren't reflexively anti-industry or anti-development, that they were asking questions more than they were shouting answers. She quotes Robert Adams -- whom she identifes as the greenest of the New Topos -- even finding a wee bit of romanticism in his examinations of the "man-altered landscape": "What I tried to do in The New West... was to include the objects we'd brought to the landscape and which by common consent are the most ugly, but also to suggest that light can transform even grotesque, inhuman things into mysteries worthy of attention." The undercurrent of environmental awareness in the exhibition was so muted that Salvesen notes that only one reviewer -- the Los Angeles Times' William Wilson -- wrote about the show in the context of America's emergent eco-awareness. [Image: Joe Deal, Untitled View (Albuquerque), 1974.)
UPDATE, Wednesday, 130pm EST: The bet is made and done. See below/bottom.
UPDATE, Tuesday, 2:20pm EST: SNAP! Anderson tweets back at NOMA: "We'll see the sentimental blancmange by that "China Painter" and raise you a proper trophy: [A Jean-Valentine Morel jeweled cup, which won the Grand Medal at the 1855 Paris World Fair.]"
Ouch!: I suspect Bullard knows that the Indianapolis Museum of Art actually owns a farm. (It's part of the IMA's endowment.)
"I'm glad to see that Max has gotten serious. Certainly the Turner painting in Indianapolis is a masterpiece, worthy of any great museum. Regretably the size, over ten feet high with its original elaborate frame, and the fragile condition of New Orleans' Portrait of Marie Antoinette prohibits it from traveling. I propose instead our large and beautiful painting by Claude Lorrain, Ideal View of Tivoli, 1644. [At left.] This great French artist is considered the father of landscape painting and was one of Turner's great inspirations. These two paintings would look splendid hanging together in New Orleans -- or miracle of miracles, in Indianapolis."
LACMA gave MAN a preview of several of the books it is re-publishing online. The quality is good and the powerful zoom feature make even the occasional blurry type easily readable. Complicated images -- such as photos of Kienholzes -- are crisp. I was surprised at how quickly the books loaded. (I don't have a Kindle, so no Kindle test.) The export-to-PDF feature creates a strikingly clear, clean PDF copy of each catalogue. The feature is so good (and easy-to-use) that I suspect many individual users or educators will keep LACMA digital catalogues on their computers for easy reference.