Are you finding yourself in need of some meaningless work? Something deliberately unproductive? Wallace Stevens wrote of the “nothing that is not there and the nothing that is,” and the latter category is your sweet spot. A friend of mine, an undergrad when he paid a visit to The New York Review of Books, used the word “conceptual” and was told by Barbara Epstein, the Review’s co-editor, “Never use that word outside Morningside Heights.” That was a long time ago. Now you can use it anywhere, especially in Houston, where “Walter De Maria: Boxes for Meaningless Work” has just opened at the Menil Collection.
Born in Albany, California, in 1935, De Maria first trained as a musician and then, at Berkeley, as a painter. He was the drummer for a band formed in 1964—the Primitives—which in 1965 changed its name to The Velvet Underground. While the band proved too ahead of its time for immediate recognition, De Maria found 1964 was the perfect moment for the c-word, and he made it big by making big things.
