Troublemakers: The Story of Land Art
Directed, Written & Produced by James Crump
First Run Features, 2015
72 minutes

Whatever it may be called ? land art, earth art, environmental art ? think of the large-scale artworks of the American West and most likely a trio comes to mind: Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty in Utah, Michael Heizer's Double Negative in Nevada, and Walter De Maria's Lighting Field in New Mexico. Smithson, Heizer and De Maria, as well as Nancy Holt, James Turrell and Charles Ross, among other artists, would appear to be the heroes of the land art movement in the 1970s, but in Troublemakers, the second documentary from James Crump (it opens Friday at the IFC Center), the hero of the story is Virginia Dwan, a gallerist and art collector who enabled some earth artworks to be realized and introduced their creators to a wider audience through her New York gallery.
In Crump's hands the story of land art starts in New York, in places like Max's Kansas City and the Dwan Gallery, where Smithson, Heizer and other artists talked, drank and obtained Dwan's resources for art that would explode outside of the gallery's ? any gallery's ? walls. Land art would eventually become as much about the American West as minimalist expression on a large scale, but early efforts started closer to home, such as Smithson's explorations in New Jersey in the 1960s. At the end of the decade Dwan held the "Earth Works" exhibition at her gallery, which ...