No End to the End: The Desert as Eschatology in Late Modernity

Nardelli, Matilde

No End to the End: The Desert as Eschatology in Late Modernity

Resource type

Journal article

Creator (person)

Nardelli, Matilde

Date published

2014

Abstract

At the height of the Cold War, artists, writers and filmmakers in America turned to the desert as a space in which notions of ‘the end’ could be articulated. Unpacking the desert’s associations with nuclear apocalypse and environmental ruination, this paper explores works of art and film – by Jean Tinguely, Michelangelo Antonioni and Robert Smithson – in which the end is imagined to be immanent, repetitive and entropic.

Journal title

Tate Papers

Issue

22

Publisher

Tate

Place of publication

UK

ISSN

1753-9854

Official URL

https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/22/no-end-to-the-end-the-desert-as-eschatology-in-late-modernity

Rights statement

In Copyright

Licence

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/