
EARTH TO VIJA CELMINS
“ART IS STILL AND DEAD”: such is the frostbitten assessment Vija Celmins delivers in an interview published in 1978. In the few essays that have peeked in on Celmins’ enigmatic thirty-year career, it’s conspicuous how often the artist is quoted, and how eagerly writers turn to her biography (an early childhood in Latvia dodging World War II bombing raids, a pilgrimage west in the ’60s to feed her creative development on the Zen chum of the Venice Beach art scene). It’s as if, like a spirit called by a medium at a seance, the art can only speak through her. True, something like a clairvoyant’s