Just outside Joshua Tree, California, and Joshua Tree National Park, the Noah Purifoy Desert Art Museum is set off against the mountains of the National Park and the Joshua Tree yuccas.1 Here, on ten acres of land owned by his friend the artist Debbie Brewer, Noah Purifoy created more than 120 junk assemblages and “environmental sculptures” between 1987 and 2004, the year of his death (Purifoy 2015, 15).2 Prior to his move to Joshua Tree, Purifoy had lived in Los Angeles for twentyfive years. He was the artist responsible for the landmark post– Watts Rebellion junk sculpture exhibition 66 Signs of Neon, the focus of this essay, and he was also a social worker, one of the first African American students to attend The Chouinard Art Institute (now CalArts), a furniture designer, the first director of the Watts Towers Arts Center, and a founding member of the California Arts Council. In interviews Purifoy said that he was hesitant to move to the desert; however, he came to embrace the environment and its possibilities.3 Reflecting on his experience there, he said that he came to “recognize nature as an intricate part of the creative process” and that he also considered returning to school to learn about El Niño and the Santa Ana winds in order to understand how they would affect his sculptures (Purifoy 2015, 12; Sirman and Lipshutz 2015, 105). As critics have noted, Purifoy’s sculptural practice in the desert resembles the work of the Land Arts movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Given both these resemblances, as well as the environmental processes at work, it would be easy, and not entirely misplaced, to situate his sculptures in terms of the geologic epoch the Anthropocene.4 Yet, in contrast, Purifoy’s sculptures, which are constructed entirely out of recycled “junk” materials, demonstrate not only his investment in

中文翻译：

---

Noah Purifoy 的种族资本新世美学：阅读 66 个霓虹灯标志

就在加利福尼亚州约书亚树和约书亚树国家公园外，Noah Purifoy 沙漠艺术博物馆与国家公园和约书亚树丝兰的群山相映生辉。1 在这里，在他的朋友艺术家黛比拥有的 10 英亩土地上Brewer, Noah Purifoy 在 1987 年至 2004 年，也就是他去世的那一年（Purifoy 2015, 15）之间创作了 120 多件垃圾组合和“环境雕塑”。2 在搬到约书亚树之前，Purifoy 已经在洛杉矶生活了 25 年. 他是负责具有里程碑意义的后-瓦茨叛乱垃圾雕塑展66霓虹灯的艺术家，是本文的重点，他也是一名社会工作者，是第一批就读于乔伊纳德艺术学院（现加州艺术学院）的非裔美国学生之一)，家具设计师，Watts Towers 艺术中心的第一任总监，和加州艺术委员会的创始成员。在采访中，Purifoy 说他对搬到沙漠犹豫不决。然而，他开始拥抱环境及其可能性。 3 回顾他在那里的经历，他说他开始“认识到自然是创作过程中错综复杂的一部分”，他还考虑回到学校学习厄尔尼诺现象和圣安娜风，以了解它们将如何影响他的雕塑（Purifoy 2015, 12; Sirman and Lipshutz 2015, 105）。正如评论家所指出的，Purifoy 在沙漠中的雕塑实践类似于 1960 年代和 1970 年代大地艺术运动的作品。鉴于这些相似之处以及工作中的环境过程，将他的雕塑置于人类世地质时代是很容易的，而且并非完全放错了地方。