Philosophy in the land: since the 1960s, Agnes Denes has been exploring the relationship between nature and culture through a variety of mediums. A show documenting her public art concludes its tour at New York's Chelsea Art Museum

Denes's first pyramids were somewhat rigid (like ancient Egyptian society), but quickly they came to life in ways that were increasingly suggestive of looser and freer types of social structures. Most of what she calls pyramids are only roughly so, in that they virtually all incorporate curves. The Predicament, for example, has shallow curves along each triangular face. The curves are more prominent in Probability Pyramid--Study for Crystal Pyramid (1976). In some pyramid drawings, the translucent framework of india ink and silver dusting becomes organic and shape-shifting.

Ancient Egyptian pyramids involved no curves. Furthermore, each triangular face is more or less equilateral, whereas Denes's versions are isosceles (with two, not three, equal sides). The ancient pyramid seems to have been in one respect a symbol of an absolutely rigid and unchanging social structure which was so vast, heavy and mighty that it represents the undying way of the cosmos. Denes's example that is closest to the Egyptian is named accordingly: The Pyramids As They Were (1075). Step by step, in Denes's work, the massive assertion of power in the ancient pyramid is softened, flexed, made curvaceous and feminine.

Tree Mountain--A Living Time Capsule (1992-96) is a massive outdoor project far larger than Rice/Tree/Burial and Wheatfield. Uniting the pyramid and earth themes, it features a conical hill or mountain measuring over 1,300 feet long, 880 feet wide and 114 feet high. It was built to Denes's specifications in Ylojarvi, Finland. Hundreds of truckloads of mining refuse were brought in, then planted with 11,000 Finnish pine trees in a complex spiral pattern. In designing the arrangement of the trees, the artist drew on the mathematics of the Golden Section, as well as the dizzying spiral growth patterns visible in sunflowers and pineapples. The piece was commissioned by the United Nations' Environment Program and the Finnish Ministry of the Environment on the occasion of the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro on World Environment Day, June 5, 1992.

Though Rice/Tree/Burial and Wheatfield had both received some small institutional funding, this was the fast time Denes's work was publicly, governmentally and internationally supported. Government involvement seems appropriate insofar as Denes dedicates pieces such as these to the idea that human groups (the 16,000 people caught in the pyramid) might be induced to act sanely if they were offered both examples and opportunities. There is a certain solemnity to Tree Mountain. Certificates appointing them "custodians" of the trees were issued to 11,000 individuals, all of whom came to the site for the planting. These documents are meant to be passed on for 400 years, the approximate life span of a Finnish pine, at which time the man-made forest should, with luck, be going strong, a habitat for birds and boasts, and perhaps for Artemis herself, roaming the moonlit groves. (15)

Tree Mountain was a giant undertaking that required five years to accomplish. Almost immediately it was followed by A Forest for Australia, realized in Melbourne in 1998. Adjacent to a water purification plant, the forest also stands for reclamation. In a site measuring 400 by 80 meters, 6,000 trees of three different species were planted in a specific configuration that Denes calls Step Pyramids (a reference to the earliest known pyramid, designed by Imhotep for King Zoser around 2650 B.C.). The three tree species, all endangered, grow to different characteristic heights, about 16 feet, 26 feet and 36 feet. Denes arranged the trees in five circular ascending platforms; in each circle the tallest species stands at the center, surrounded by those of middle height, with the shortest at the periphery. In other words, each circle rises through a series of ascending steps to a steeplelike or apexlike center. The five circles in a row form an extended Temenos, or sacred area, like the precincts around Greek temples.