The end of July marks the tenth anniversary of the death of American artist Walter De Maria. To mark the occasion, DASMAXIMUM will present Walter De Maria's 20-minute piece "Ocean Music" on Saturday, July 29.
Walter De Maria during a flight to the Midwest, 1969, photographer unknown, Courtesy Estate of Walter De Maria archive.
De Maria is considered an important pioneer of conceptual art and land art. Few know that he was also a trained drummer. In the mid-sixties he played with Andy Warhol or Patty Smith and was a member of the "Primitives," the predecessor group of the legendary band "Velvet Underground." Close friends with avant-garde musicians, De Maria was interested not only in expanding the concept of art, but also in the renewal of music. These considerations increasingly led him out of the studio and into the open air. In 1964, the first plans for large-scale outdoor works emerged, for example in the Mojave Desert. At the same time, Walter De Maria discovered the format of "field recordings," tape recordings of everyday sounds, such as wind in the mountains, frogs, birds, or the ocean, as he noted in a sketch for music projects in 1964. In the fall of 1964, De Maria performed his piece "Cricket Music" for the first time, in which his percussion playing is overlaid with the chirping of crickets. Nature appropriates the music, breaking into the space of art. A few years later, De Maria also implemented this idea spatially: in 1968, he had the Munich gallery of Heiner Friedrich, legendary art patron and donor of the museum DASMAXIMUM, filled with 50 m3 of earth, a spatial installation that wrote art history as the "Munich Earth Room". In the same year De Maria's second piece of music "Ocean Music" was created, in which he lets the roar of the Pacific Ocean slowly fade into jazzy drum improvisation. 1968 was altogether a decisive year for the artist. He gives up his activities as a musician and concentrates, also with the support of Heiner Friedrich, on large-scale land art projects. On July 29, "Ocean Music" will be heard as a sound installation in the space of Walter De Maria's "Equal Aerea Series." The meditative quality of the piece of music and the concentrated
Atmosphere of the circles and squares of stainless steel in the room increase in their forcefulness to an intense experience. Ocean Music will be continuously experienced as a sound installation during regular opening hours from 12 - 6 pm.
The event is being held in cooperation with the Pinakothek der Moderne, which is presenting "Ocean Music" from July 25 to 30 in the historic Türkentor in the Kunstareal in Munich - where Walter De Maria's "Large Red Sphere" is located - as a temporary music intervention.