THE ART OF JAMA
Bingham Mine Jonas Lie Thomas B. Cole, MD, MPH
T
1080
he Bingham Canyon Mine, near Salt Lake City, Utah, is the largest excavation in the world. Since 1906 it has produced millions of tons of copper and a fortune in gold, silver, and molybdenum, but it has also contaminated local ecosystems with lead and arsenic; to keep the mine open its managers have agreed to clean up the mess. In the early years of mining in Bingham Canyon, the environmental hazards of open-pit extraction were unforeseen. The sole challenge was to scoop out the mine’s ore as efficiently as possible, an operation that supported thousands of workers and their families who lived in communities built into the canyon walls. In the painting Bingham Mine, by the Norwegian American artist Jonas Lie (1880-1940), the mine workers are unrecognizable, but their busy machines and the evidence of their labor is impressive. The dominant structure of this composi-
tion is a squat, clay-colored cone, terraced in a spiral pattern to provide access to the pit and stabilize its sloping walls (though landslides have occurred, most recently in 2013). The excavation spills out of the picture frame, as if seen through a wide-angle lens. The central crater is a habitation of machines, devoid of natural beauty, in contrast to the blue, snowcapped peaks in the far background and a slash of mossy green up close. Extreme distance is conveyed by the sketchy details: white squiggles for steam shovels, black squiggles for engines that run on coal. Lie was born in the town of Moss, in southeastern Norway, in 1880. His father was a civil engineer. As a child Lie took drawing lessons from the Norwegian painter Christian Skredsvig. After his father died in 1892, Lie and his mother and sisters emigrated to the United States, settling eventually in the city of Plainfield, New Jersey. He attended the Ethical Culture School,
Jonas Lie (1880-1940), Bingham Mine, 1917, American. Oil on canvas. 101.6 × 152.4 cm. Courtesy of the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, University of Utah (http: //umfa.utah.edu/), Salt Lake City; purchased with funds from the Phyllis Cannon
Wattis Endowment for Modern and Contemporary Art, from the permanent collection of the Utah Museum of Fine Arts.
JAMA September 17, 2014 Volume 312, Number 11
Copyright 2014 American Medical Association. All rights reserved.
Downloaded From: http://jama.jamanetwork.com/ by a Nanyang Technological University User on 05/26/2015
jama.com
The Art of JAMA
founded in 1878 by the social reformer Felix Adler to provide individualized instruction for working-class children. At Professor Adler’s school Lie was encouraged to develop his talent for drawing and painting. He graduated in 1897, took a job as a textile designer, and studied art at the National Academy of Design, the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, and the Art Students League. Lie’s early landscapes were country and coastal scenes; one was accepted by the National Academy of Design and another by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. In 1905 he exhibited 34 pictures at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. In 1906 Lie visited Norway and Paris and was inspired by the art of Claude Monet. On his return to the States, he gave art lessons and continued to paint. He moved to Manhattan in 1910 to sketch its streets, bridges, and other structures, and from this time on his primary interest was the built environment. Lie traveled widely in search of industrial subjects for paintings. In 1913 he was the guest of General George W. Goethals, chief engineer for the construction of the Panama Canal. In Panama Lie painted 30 landscapes of the construction zone and its earth movers, cranes, massive buckets, steam engines, and water gates. (The Panama Canal was completed 100 years ago this summer; an expansion project is due to open in 2015.) Twelve of the paintings in Lie’s Panama Canal series are held by the West Point Museum at the United States Military Academy. In 1917 Lie found another setting for his theme of deconstruction and industrialization, the Bingham Canyon Mine. A current exhibition at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, “Creation and Erasure: Art of the Bingham Canyon Mine,” features paintings and photographs by Lie and other artists. The exhibit, which
runs through September 28, 2014, also includes a conceptual piece by the American artist Robert Smithson. Smithson originated the idea that site-specific excavations could be a form of art, which he called “land art.” An example of his work is Spiral Jetty (1970) a 1,500-foot linear pile of rock, dirt, salt, and algae in Utah’s Great Salt Lake, about 70 miles northwest of Bingham Canyon as the crow flies. The title of the work is an oxymoron; the spiral is one of the most appealing forms in nature, but considering that a jetty’s function is to protect a harbor from storms and high tides, a jetty in the shape of a spiral has no practical value. Smithson never intended Spiral Jetty to be functional, and in fact the rising waters of the Great Salt Lake submerged it for many years. His plan for the Bingham Canyon Mine was similar in concept—a redesign of the mine’s cavity, after the end of its useful life, as a work of art. In 1973 Smithson submitted a plan titled “Bingham Canyon Reclamation Project” to the mine's management company to be implemented when the excavation was no longer profitable. His plan would retain the spiraling walls but modify the base of the pit by constructing four crescent-shaped jetties to collect water in pools after a heavy rain. Smithson envisioned that his jetty pools would be colored a bright yellow by acid rock drainage, a slurry of sulfide deposits and mud. The mine’s management company did not act on Smithson’s proposal before he died in 1973, and there is no indication that mining in Bingham Canyon will be concluded in the foreseeable future. The company’s license to operate the mine expires in 2019, but it is likely to stay active as long it remains profitable. The current plan is to extend the project to the mid-2030s, provided the required environmental permits can be obtained.
jama.com
JAMA September 17, 2014 Volume 312, Number 11
Copyright 2014 American Medical Association. All rights reserved.
Downloaded From: http://jama.jamanetwork.com/ by a Nanyang Technological University User on 05/26/2015
1081
Bingham Mine Jonas Lie Thomas B. Cole, MD, MPH
T
1080
he Bingham Canyon Mine, near Salt Lake City, Utah, is the largest excavation in the world. Since 1906 it has produced millions of tons of copper and a fortune in gold, silver, and molybdenum, but it has also contaminated local ecosystems with lead and arsenic; to keep the mine open its managers have agreed to clean up the mess. In the early years of mining in Bingham Canyon, the environmental hazards of open-pit extraction were unforeseen. The sole challenge was to scoop out the mine’s ore as efficiently as possible, an operation that supported thousands of workers and their families who lived in communities built into the canyon walls. In the painting Bingham Mine, by the Norwegian American artist Jonas Lie (1880-1940), the mine workers are unrecognizable, but their busy machines and the evidence of their labor is impressive. The dominant structure of this composi-
tion is a squat, clay-colored cone, terraced in a spiral pattern to provide access to the pit and stabilize its sloping walls (though landslides have occurred, most recently in 2013). The excavation spills out of the picture frame, as if seen through a wide-angle lens. The central crater is a habitation of machines, devoid of natural beauty, in contrast to the blue, snowcapped peaks in the far background and a slash of mossy green up close. Extreme distance is conveyed by the sketchy details: white squiggles for steam shovels, black squiggles for engines that run on coal. Lie was born in the town of Moss, in southeastern Norway, in 1880. His father was a civil engineer. As a child Lie took drawing lessons from the Norwegian painter Christian Skredsvig. After his father died in 1892, Lie and his mother and sisters emigrated to the United States, settling eventually in the city of Plainfield, New Jersey. He attended the Ethical Culture School,
Jonas Lie (1880-1940), Bingham Mine, 1917, American. Oil on canvas. 101.6 × 152.4 cm. Courtesy of the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, University of Utah (http: //umfa.utah.edu/), Salt Lake City; purchased with funds from the Phyllis Cannon
Wattis Endowment for Modern and Contemporary Art, from the permanent collection of the Utah Museum of Fine Arts.
JAMA September 17, 2014 Volume 312, Number 11
Copyright 2014 American Medical Association. All rights reserved.
Downloaded From: http://jama.jamanetwork.com/ by a Nanyang Technological University User on 05/26/2015
jama.com
The Art of JAMA
founded in 1878 by the social reformer Felix Adler to provide individualized instruction for working-class children. At Professor Adler’s school Lie was encouraged to develop his talent for drawing and painting. He graduated in 1897, took a job as a textile designer, and studied art at the National Academy of Design, the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, and the Art Students League. Lie’s early landscapes were country and coastal scenes; one was accepted by the National Academy of Design and another by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. In 1905 he exhibited 34 pictures at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. In 1906 Lie visited Norway and Paris and was inspired by the art of Claude Monet. On his return to the States, he gave art lessons and continued to paint. He moved to Manhattan in 1910 to sketch its streets, bridges, and other structures, and from this time on his primary interest was the built environment. Lie traveled widely in search of industrial subjects for paintings. In 1913 he was the guest of General George W. Goethals, chief engineer for the construction of the Panama Canal. In Panama Lie painted 30 landscapes of the construction zone and its earth movers, cranes, massive buckets, steam engines, and water gates. (The Panama Canal was completed 100 years ago this summer; an expansion project is due to open in 2015.) Twelve of the paintings in Lie’s Panama Canal series are held by the West Point Museum at the United States Military Academy. In 1917 Lie found another setting for his theme of deconstruction and industrialization, the Bingham Canyon Mine. A current exhibition at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, “Creation and Erasure: Art of the Bingham Canyon Mine,” features paintings and photographs by Lie and other artists. The exhibit, which
runs through September 28, 2014, also includes a conceptual piece by the American artist Robert Smithson. Smithson originated the idea that site-specific excavations could be a form of art, which he called “land art.” An example of his work is Spiral Jetty (1970) a 1,500-foot linear pile of rock, dirt, salt, and algae in Utah’s Great Salt Lake, about 70 miles northwest of Bingham Canyon as the crow flies. The title of the work is an oxymoron; the spiral is one of the most appealing forms in nature, but considering that a jetty’s function is to protect a harbor from storms and high tides, a jetty in the shape of a spiral has no practical value. Smithson never intended Spiral Jetty to be functional, and in fact the rising waters of the Great Salt Lake submerged it for many years. His plan for the Bingham Canyon Mine was similar in concept—a redesign of the mine’s cavity, after the end of its useful life, as a work of art. In 1973 Smithson submitted a plan titled “Bingham Canyon Reclamation Project” to the mine's management company to be implemented when the excavation was no longer profitable. His plan would retain the spiraling walls but modify the base of the pit by constructing four crescent-shaped jetties to collect water in pools after a heavy rain. Smithson envisioned that his jetty pools would be colored a bright yellow by acid rock drainage, a slurry of sulfide deposits and mud. The mine’s management company did not act on Smithson’s proposal before he died in 1973, and there is no indication that mining in Bingham Canyon will be concluded in the foreseeable future. The company’s license to operate the mine expires in 2019, but it is likely to stay active as long it remains profitable. The current plan is to extend the project to the mid-2030s, provided the required environmental permits can be obtained.
jama.com
JAMA September 17, 2014 Volume 312, Number 11
Copyright 2014 American Medical Association. All rights reserved.
Downloaded From: http://jama.jamanetwork.com/ by a Nanyang Technological University User on 05/26/2015
1081
