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The Hill of James Magee, also referred to as Jim Magee's Hill, James Magee's Hill, The Magee Hill, or simply The Hill, is an art installation located in Chihuahuan Desert, one hour and twenty minutes outside of El Paso, Texas. [1]
James Magee (1945–2024) drew on his experience performing his poetry in the piers at the end of Christopher Street in New York City, and the overall gay scene in the 1970s, when conceiving The Hill, [2] and the pieces contained therein, as well as their titles, began to take shape during this period. [3] [4]
He moved to El Paso, Texas, in 1981, [5] and in 1982 he began acquiring 2000 acres of land in the desert outside of El Paso where he would begin construction of a complex of buildings referred to later as The Hill.
Magee was also a poet; his poetry often serves as titles to specific works of sculpture, including artwork at The Hill. [6]
The Hill, located in the Chihuahuan Desert, is a “relatively short drive” from El Paso, Texas. [5] The complex “sits in a gently rolling landscape with mesmerizing views of snow-capped mountains and limitless West Texas skies”, on a rising above the rocky landscape of the desert. [1]
To get to The Hill, one must drive through the desert, “harsh, gently hilly, unremitting bright in the day, black at night, silent but for the wind and the occasional car or truck or perhaps the shriek of a mouse caught by a hawk”, as Richard Bretell put it. [5]
It is almost impossible to find the site unless guided by Magee. [6]
The complex of stone buildings consists of four identical structures with flat roofs, each building measuring forty feet long, twenty feet wide, and seventeen feet tall. [1] [3] All buildings are precisely aligned with the cardinal points, forming a compass, [5] and contains two “17-foot-tall, hand-made, rust-steel doors, which open with a screech and clang”. [7]
The east and west buildings face each other, as do the north and south buildings, all of which sit upon raised stoned walkways and pedestals that form a cross, measuring 187 feet from door to door. The construction site, in its entirety, encompasses 52,000 square feet. [1] The buildings were made using rough-cut local shale rock ranging in color from yellow to peach. [3]
According to Magee, construction of The Hill began with “no architect, no blueprints, the entire construction was laid out with me pacing and using a string and a transom”. [6] It took approximately 250 eight-ton truckloads of stone to create The Hill, [3] and the whole project was built by hand by the artist and a few aides that come and go. [4]
Each of the four buildings of The Hill contain tryptic produced by the artist as well. As Bob Ostertag writes, “the art [within the buildings] defies description. Giant works of many tons each. Steel and iron triptychs on huge ball bearings. Studies in rust and decay and debris. Acid and honey. Beeswax and burnt rubber, Paprika and cold-rolled steel. Barbed wire and pig bone.” [6]
There is no electricity in the art installation, [4] so all light in the buildings is natural light coming in through skylights. [3] According to Brettell, “light defines the interiors each day, regardless of visitors. The works, in other words, are lit not for the viewers but part of a natural cycle; when we enter each building, we know that its interior is beautifully illuminated whether or not we are there." [5]
The Hill has been recognized as one of the most important contemporary works of art in America by various art historians and critics. Richard Brettell argues that “art historians who know it [The Hill] well are a varied and fascinating group, and included (to name only five) the late Walter Hopps, Ruth Fine, Edward Lucie-Smith, Kerry Brougher, and Jonathan Katz. Each of them felt that they had been on a kind of pilgrimage — and, like all faithful pilgrims, each has returned.” [5]
In fact, Walter Hopps praised The Hill of James Magee as a “…magnificent achievement comparable in quality to Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, Heizer’s Complex I and Complex II, Turrell’s Roden Crater and De Maria’s Lighting Field.” [1]
Willard Spiegelman from the Wall Street Journal calls The Hill a “masterwork… impressive, indeed extraordinary… a map of the imagination," [4] and Pamela Petro writes “… an extremely American work… reducing articulate art historians to murmuring wonder… a work capable of making adults weep and begetting terror… whose meaning is too abstract to grasp — a sacred space that extends particularly straight to the imagination.” [3]
In 2016, the Smithsonian Archive of American Art acquired all archives focusing on The Hill and his artistic career. The collection includes “correspondence, photographs, writings, printed material, drawings, a CD of Magee's "titles" or poems, and audio visual material including audio cassettes and a reel-to-reel audio recording”. [8]
El Paso is a city in and the county seat of El Paso County, Texas, United States. The 2020 population of the city from the U.S. Census Bureau was 678,815, making it the 22nd-most populous city in the U.S., the most populous city in West Texas, and the sixth-most populous city in Texas. Its metropolitan statistical area covers all of El Paso and Hudspeth counties in Texas, and had a population of 868,859 in 2020.
The Southwestern United States, also known as the American Southwest or simply the Southwest, is a geographic and cultural region of the United States that includes Arizona and New Mexico, along with adjacent portions of California, Colorado, Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas, and Utah. The largest cities by metropolitan area are Phoenix, Las Vegas, El Paso, Albuquerque, and Tucson. Before 1848, in the historical region of Santa Fe de Nuevo México as well as parts of Alta California and Coahuila y Tejas, settlement was almost non-existent outside of Nuevo México's Pueblos and Spanish or Mexican municipalities. Much of the area had been a part of New Spain and Mexico until the United States acquired the area through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 and the smaller Gadsden Purchase in 1854.
Guadalupe Mountains National Park is a national park of the United States in the Guadalupe Mountains, east of El Paso, Texas. The mountain range includes Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas at 8,751 feet (2,667 m), and El Capitan used as a landmark by travelers on the route later followed by the Butterfield Overland Mail stagecoach line. The ruins of a stagecoach station stand near the Pine Springs visitor center. The restored Frijole Ranch contains a small museum of local history and is the trailhead for Smith Spring. The park covers 86,367 acres in the same mountain range as Carlsbad Caverns National Park, about 25 miles (40 km) to the north in New Mexico. The Guadalupe Peak Trail winds through pinyon pine and Douglas-fir forests as it ascends over 3,000 feet (910 m) to the summit of Guadalupe Peak, with views of El Capitan and the Chihuahuan Desert.
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Sotol is a distilled spirit from the Chihuahuan desert sourced from the plants of the genus Dasylirion, most commonly: Dasylirion wheeleri, Dasylirion durangense,Dasylirion cedrosanum, and Dasylirion leiophyllum, less commonly with Dasylirion texanum and Dasylirion lucidum, plants that grow in the Chihuahuan desert of northern Mexico, New Mexico, Arizona, and west and central Texas. Sotol liquor is known as the state spirit of Chihuahua; however, the drink is also consumed in Durango and Coahuila. Sotol has its own appellation of origin since 2002, and may be produced only in Chihuahua, Coahuila and Durango. There are dozens of commercial examples available. Production of sotol spirits exists outside the Sotol Denomination of Origin in several regions such as Sonora where it is known as Palmilla, Oaxaca (Cucharillo), and the Texas Hill Country. With Sotol on the rise in terms of its popularity, more brands are beginning to come onto the scene.
Franklin Mountains State Park is a state park in El Paso, Texas, United States. The park is named after the Franklin Mountains, a mountainous range that extends 23 mi (37 km) from El Paso to New Mexico. Its headquarters are located at an elevation of 5,426 feet (1,654 m) with the highest peak, North Franklin Mountain, reaching 7,192 feet (2,192 m). Covering 24,247.56 acres (9,813 ha), it is one of the largest urban parks in the U.S. lying completely within city limits. The park is open year-round for recreational activities such as hiking, mountain biking, picnicking, and scenic driving.
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Audley Dean Nicols was an American artist, illustrator and muralist. Born and raised in Sewickley, Pennsylvania; he studied in New York and Europe, and worked as an illustrator for various national magazines in the United States. He moved to El Paso, Texas in the early 1920s, where he painted desert landscapes of the American Southwest. Nicols achieved national recognition during his lifetime; his style and choice of subjects gathering followers who became known as the "Purple Mountain Painters".
James Robert Magee was an American artist from Fremont, Michigan. Prior to his death, he was based in El Paso, Texas, where he developed most of his artistic career. His main artistic focus was The Hill of James Magee, an art installation located in the Chihuahuan Desert, one hour and twenty minutes outside of El Paso.
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