Mt. Cotopaxi Transplant
Mt. Cotopaxi Transplant consists of both a collaged map and a small floor-based replica of the volcano’s topography executed in Cocoa mat—a type of rug made from coconut husk fibers—to simulate the color and texture of a wheat field. Though Oppenheim’s ambitious proposal to plough a map of the South American volcano into the plains of Kansas remained unrealized, he was able to produce a short-term, scaled-down version in the swampy terrain of Connecticut. Oppenheim said of the project: "Altitude lines on contour maps serve to translate measurement of existing topography to a two-dimensional surface…I create contours which oppose the reality of the existing land, and impose their measurements onto the actual site, thus creating a kind of conceptual mountainous structure on a swamp grid."
Oppenheim’s choice of site for his monumental landscape "transplant" drew inspiration from a suite of ten massive canvases depicting Mount Cotopaxi by the nineteenth-century artist Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900), thus linking the work to a grand tradition of American landscape painting and its idealized images of unspoiled wilderness. Oppenheim aimed to recreate the sublimity of Church’s awe-inspiring scenes by transporting his visions of the Ecuadorian mountain in physical form to the United States. The artist even planned to approximate its geographic location: his proposal called for the center of the volcano, situated near the earth’s Equator, to be metaphorically transferred to Smith Center, Kansas, the geographical midpoint of the United States.
Artwork Details
- Title: Mt. Cotopaxi Transplant
- Artist: Dennis Oppenheim (American, Electric City, Washington 1938–2011 New York)
- Date: 1968
- Medium:
a.Collage of found prints and white opaque matte paint with graphite on black board in artist's frame; b.cocoa mat; c. painted wood
- Dimensions: a: Collage in Artist Frame: 29 3/4 in. × 28 in. (75.6 × 71.1 cm)
b: Cocoa mat: 1 × 46 × 72 in. (2.5 × 116.8 × 182.9 cm)
c: Painted wood: 73 3/8 × 47 1/8 × 7 in. (186.4 × 119.7 × 17.8 cm) - Classification: Sculpture
- Credit Line: Anonymous Gift, 1992
- Object Number: 1992.388.11a-c
- Rights and Reproduction: © Estate Dennis Oppenheim
- Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art
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