Contemporary Artists Working Outside the City Creative Retreat

This book reflects on the motivations of creative practitioners who have moved out of cities from the mid-1960s onwards to establish creative homesteads. The book focuses on desert exile painter Agnes Martin, radical filmmaker and gardener Derek Jarman, and iconoclastic conceptual artist Chris Burden, detailing their connections to the cities they had left behind (New York, London, Los Angeles). Sarah Lowndes also examines how the rise of digital technologies has made it more possible for artists to live and work outside the major art centers, especially given the rising cost of living in London, Berlin, and New York, focusing on three peripheral creative centers: the seaside town of Hastings, England, the midsized metro of Leipzig, Germany, and post-industrial Detroit, USA.

Contents List of Figures Preface Acknowledgments PART I Introduction 1 The Back to the Land Movement: from the 1840s to the 1970s PART II The Creative Homesteads of Agnes Martin, Derek Jarman and Chris Burden 2 We are Born as Nouns Not Verbs: Agnes Martin and the New Mexico Desert (1968-2004) 3 Vaster than Empires and More Slow: Derek Jarman and Prospect Cottage, Dungeness, Kent (1987-1994) 4 In a Free Spot: Chris Burden and Topanga Canyon, California (1984-2015) PART III The Rise of the Town-Country: Contemporary Creative Homesteaders 5 The Lure of the Midsize Metro: Leipzig 6 Neither City nor Country: Hastings 7 In the ruins, a garden: Detroit Conclusion Index

Sarah Lowndes is a writer and curator who lectures at Glasgow School of Art and other institutions