My landlord/friend designed the biggest cottage in the Hamptons this year. Construction was finished in late August. AP invited several of his male friends for a tour of the beachfront mansion. Massive with a spectacular ocean vista over pristine dunes. The female client hated how the dune grass blocked a sliver of the Atlantic horizon. She tugged on gloves to rip out the offense of Nature. Her husband stood watching from the expansive living room.
“Women.”
None of AP’s friends said a word.
We understood every nuance of that single word.
We were all men.
The power of Mother Nature was beyond our skills, although mankind has achieved the alteration of the planet for good, bad, and in-between. Most recently the artist Maya Lin created a flow of dunes in the Storm King Art Center. Waves of earth rippling across a meadow.
One look at the artist’s earthwork and I couldn’t help but reflect how this work was the complete opposite of the director Elaine May plowing the African desert flat for a single scene of the film ISTHAR. Ten days to level a square kilometer of Moroccan sand.
Maya Lin’s WAVEFIELD is 15 acres.
Elaine May’s antithesis encompassed 300 acres.
Isthar was a flop.
WAVEFIELD is a success.
Sometimes art is better at imitating art than life.
The above photo is by Syrie Moskowitz 2010