sometimes reading books about artists or their work ik wonder how much work they had to do before their work could be realised. i remember that robert irwin once did an installation in a very well known new york museum, on his own initiative and without mentoning doing so. some recognized his work, others did not. i like that kind of work where you do something without mentioning your name or without telling everyone that you did it.
doing the work is one thing, getting publicity is another. i have to think of the broken kilometer by walter de maria: app. 1 km of steel tubes is driving into the ground, at least that is what is told and that is what the plate on top tells us. it is difficult to check and see if everything is really there, but knowing other works by walter the maria, for example in the desert ( the dia foundation) with all those steel poles in an area where lightning often strikes, i guess that there is a broken kilometer.
but i also think of an permanent installation by richard serra somewhere in a big city in the us, which had to be taken down allthough it was commisioned and all permits were ok. and course i think of the work christo and jeane claude had to do tranform the reichstag. most of that work has been preparation, part of it was the real work, the wrapping.
with the tulips and the windmill it is the same: lots of owrk, lots of meetings, lots of emails and phonecalls and the real "artwork" is only a small part of that. i know that people wonder what an artist is doing, but as far as i know it is the only way nowadays to get projecvts realised. the golden period of buckets with gold seems to be over. at least here in the netherlands large sums of money are an illusion: many small ones are more ikely. but so what, the statue of liberty was paid for with money collected in france, included in the price of milbottles. anyhow many small ones together create one big one.