Agnes Denes (Hungarian, b. 1931)

Wheatfield – A Confrontation, 1982

C-print
16 x 20 in.; 22 x 28 ¼ in. framed

Hungarian-born American artist Agnes Denes is one of the pioneers of environmental art. Together with her drawings delving into mathematics, science, geography, and philosophy, Denes’s artworks combine intellectual ideas with meticulous formal execution.

In her 1982 project, Wheatfield — A Confrontation, Denes planted a two-acre field of grain in the shadow of the Twin Towers in Lower Manhattan. The location was selected based on its proximity to Wall Street and the New York Stock Exchange where commodities including wheat are traded. The empty landfill, brimming with materials left over from the construction of the World Trade Center, was an extension of the city, filled with rusted metals, garbage, boulders, and old tires that Denes cleared before laying 200 truckloads of fresh soil. After four months, the crop was harvested yielding over one-thousand pounds of grain. According to Denes, “Wheatfield was a symbol, a universal concept, representing food, energy, commerce, world trade, economics, and referring to mismanagement, waste, world hunger, and ecological concerns.” Like all temporary earthworks, the project exists today only in photographs and videos. The large tract of land later became the site for the 92-acre residential development of Battery Park City.

In 2019, Denes was the subject of a 50-year career retrospective at The Shed, two blocks south of our offices. Her work is in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Moderna Museet, Stockholm; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; the Kunsthalle Nürnberg, among numerous other international institutions.

More information about Agnes Denes can be found here:

https://theshed.org/program/6-agnes-denes-absolutes-and-intermediates