{"id":1189,"date":"2016-07-12T16:26:57","date_gmt":"2016-07-12T16:26:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/?p=1189"},"modified":"2016-07-12T16:26:57","modified_gmt":"2016-07-12T16:26:57","slug":"banyuls-earth-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/?p=1189","title":{"rendered":"Banyuls Earth Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

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There is a mythical hillside in the Pyrenees that is superb earth art.\u00a0 Every time I drive the serpentine path of patterned vines, I think of Robert Smithson\u2019s Spiral Jetty from 1970, and Christo\u2019s curtains.\u00a0 This anonymous collaboration in Banyuls, France, is in their astonishing ranks. \u00a0In the steep, dense and rolling Pyrenees, the slopes bump against one another, and the patterns play. \u00a0Each has a little bit of the whole. \u00a0The angles are astounding – pure vertigo.\u00a0 The vineyards hang like acrobats high above the azure stretch of Mediterranean below – with their roots deep in the ground.<\/p>\n

The vines were originally planted by Catalan farmers who patiently worked the land with their mules.\u00a0 One of the hiking paths in the mountains, Cami d’Anicet, is named after the last mule driver. \u00a0While the mules are gone, the neat vines, in the high noon sun, seem survive by themselves\u00a0 – you hardly see a person.<\/p>\n

The mountains silently hold history. \u00a0German philosopher Walter Benjamin famously took this route, hoping to reach Spain and flee the Nazis. \u00a0His death in 1940 in Port Bou, on the border, remains mysterious. \u00a0Many thousand of Spanish republicans crossed the other way into France in their flight from Franco; and the Pyrenean paths have always been treacherous smuggling routes.<\/p>\n

With the painful, anguished politics that burn \u201cback home,\u201d it seems almost indecent, such beauty.\u00a0 The sun keeps on shining with direct intensity.\u00a0 The vines hold the earth – after all, there could be eroding clay, there could be wild tangle.\u00a0 There could be absolutely nothing at all. \u00a0It\u2019s astonishing that there is, and there are still people who tend it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is a mythical hillside in the Pyrenees that is superb earth art.\u00a0 Every time I drive the serpentine path of patterned vines, I think of Robert Smithson\u2019s Spiral Jetty from 1970, and Christo\u2019s curtains.\u00a0 This anonymous collaboration in Banyuls, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[469,472,470,471,267],"class_list":["post-1189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-banyuls","tag-cami-de-anicet","tag-port-bou","tag-spanish-civil-war","tag-walter-benjamin"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4D5qU-jb","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1189"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1193,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189\/revisions\/1193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}