ART : The Real Death Valley : Nobuho Nagasawa has created ‘The Atomic Cowboy’--an exhibition that addresses the fatal consequences of using former atomic test sites as locations for ‘50s films

In 1954, millionaire entrepreneur and movie producer Howard Hughes embarked on what he envisioned as his cinematic masterpiece. A historical epic based on the life of 13th-Century warrior Genghis Khan, the film was to be called “The Conqueror” and would star American icon John Wayne as the ancient Asian terrorist--a peculiar bit of casting, yes, but Hughes was nothing if not a man of boundless imagination. After hiring actor Dick Powell to direct the picture, Hughes set off with cast and crew for the deserts of Nevada, where the $6-million folly was to be shot.

The disaster that befell the 220 people involved in the making of “The Conqueror” is the subject of “The Atomic Cowboy--The Daze After,” an installation by Japanese artist Nobuho Nagasawa on view at the Daniel Saxon Gallery in Hollywood through Feb. 15. As Nagasawa tells it, the filming of “The Conqueror” went relatively well--nothing more occurred than the usual fits of temperament that make movie sets the peculiar playpens they are. No one was disturbed about working in an area of Nevada that had been the site of countless atomic tests.

During the halcyon days of the ‘50s, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima was widely hailed as the miracle of science that ended World War II. Radiation? Plutonium poisoning? No problem. Just duck under a table and cover your eyes. In fact, everyone felt so secure about atomic energy then that RKO Pictures had six tons of plutonium-laced Utah earth shipped to a Culver City studio for use on a desert set--earth that was later distributed throughout Hollywood.

The gravity of this error in judgment may continue to make itself felt well into the future. What is known thus far is that 91 of the 220 crew members of “The Conqueror” contracted cancer, and the film’s stars--John Wayne, Agnes Moorehead, Pedro Armendariz and Susan Hayward--along with director Dick Powell, all died of cancer-related illnesses. Possible victims of the film also include about 300 members of the Shivwit Indian tribe who were employed as extras. Hundreds of other movies--primarily Westerns--were also shot in the region.

The subject of a book published in 1982 by Japanese writer Takashi Hirose, titled “Why John Wayne Died,” the scandal surrounding the movies shot in Nevada during the ‘50s seems to be common knowledge everywhere but in America.

“I found a Danish school textbook titled ‘The Downwinders’ that deals with this subject,” Nagasawa said during an interview at the Saxon gallery, “and Hirose’s book is well known in Japan, but when he tried to have it published here he was told it was too sensational. The Atomic Energy Commission refuses to acknowledge any of this, and the Hollywood community also seems to prefer to pretend it never happened.

“This story is included in a book called ‘Hollywood Hall of Shame’ that deals with various movie-related fiascoes, but basically it’s been completely covered up. The stars of ‘The Conqueror’ were all heavy smokers and their deaths were widely attributed to smoking. However, the children of Dick Powell, John Wayne and Susan Hayward are convinced the atomic tests killed their parents, and in 1980 they gathered together at the site to commemorate their deaths.” (This is the same region examined in the recently published book “Bravo 20,” photographer Richard Misrach’s frighteningly powerful visual essay on the grim aftermath of the tests).

Nagasawa’s inquiry into the deadly legacy of the atomic tests is a sprawling mixed-media installation that winds through all three gallery viewing areas and onto an exterior garden space where she’s erected a structure that’s a hybrid of a greenhouse and a fallout shelter.

Featured in the piece are photographic portraits of 45 stars whose deaths could be linked to the atomic tests. Using information culled from a book titled “Who Was Who in Hollywood” that lists the cause of death of Hollywood figures, Nagasawa charted deaths dating from the ‘50s through the present (the first atomic test was conducted at Los Alamos, N.M., in 1945). Her piece also includes documentation of dates and locations where tests were conducted, and a refrigerator rigged with speakers playing cowboy music and filled with motorized red sand that shifts in explosive waves.

“I find this episode in history more horrifying than the tragedy at Hiroshima because these tests were shrouded in lies and the government was aware of the danger,” says Nagasawa, whose family was not directly affected by the atomic bombings at Hiroshima or Nagasaki. “The term downwinder , coined in connection with the tests, refers to the fact that the blasts were only detonated when the wind blew east, away from the moneymaking cities of Las Vegas and California, and towards Utah and northern Arizona, which are primarily inhabited by Mormons and American Indians.”

One aspect of “The Atomic Cowboy” remains incomplete; Nagasawa would like to pinpoint the whereabouts of the 60 tons of radioactive earth that were transported to Culver City in the ‘50s. “The half-life of plutonium is 24,000 years, so obviously that earth is still quite toxic,” she says, “but no one knows where it ended up.”

This unsolved mystery is but one of the real-life puzzles in a piece fraught on another level with creative questions.

“The most challenging part of this piece has been deciding how much information to give,” Nagasawa says. “I’m not an activist or an environmentalist, I’m an artist, and making a work dealing with this subject, it would be easy to drift out of the realm of art and into the realm of propaganda. I’d like to publish a booklet that lays the whole story out because I believe this story should be known, but in making the piece I tried to make it an evocative rather than a didactic work.” (Nagasawa’s research and documentation are available at the gallery upon request.)

“The Atomic Cowboy” marks a major shift for the 32-year-old artist, who’s previously leaned toward lyrically austere earthworks in the tradition of Michael Heizer. She was born in Tokyo in 1959, one in a family of three girls, and as a child lived in Holland, where her father was stationed as a diplomat. After her father’s death when she was 11, she returned to Tokyo, where she attended a Christian girls school.

“My father loved art,” Nagasawa recalls, “and I can remember drawing and going to museums with him. But when I was young my ambition was to be a cook--a skill which is not unlike the art that I make in that it’s a process that revolves around fire. There was a period when I made my living as a cook in a private home, and I still cook every day--that’s how I get my frustration out.

“During the years I was in high school I became increasingly interested in fine art. The first art that made a big impression on me was the Pyramids, and the Great Wall of China,” she continues. “Then when I was in high school I fell in love with archeology and spent a lot of time volunteering at excavation sites in Japan. I loved the idea of digging out history, which is sort of what I’m doing with ‘The Atomic Cowboy’--this piece is about a buried story.”

In 1978, Nagasawa enrolled at the State Academy of Fine Arts in the Netherlands. After graduating in 1982, she transferred to the Hochschule der Kunste in Berlin, where she majored in sculpture and received a degree in 1985. “Naturally, Joseph Bueys was an influence on me during my time in Berlin,” she says of that period in her development.

Art critic Lucy Lippard’s book “Overlay” was also an important resource. “That book was like a bible for me,” Nagasawa says. “It makes the point that art is not just for galleries and museums but should coexist with nature in a very broad sense, and that belief is central to all my work.”

In 1984, Nagasawa returned to Japan for a brief period to complete her first major environmental work, “Noyaki.” Made from 30 tons of waste tile salvaged from tile and brick factories that she sculpted into a crude dwelling then fired for a week, “Noyaki” has an unexpected link with “The Atomic Cowboy.”

“I fired that piece during a week that was very cold,” she recalls, “and the continuous flame caused a cloud to form over the piece and it rained only on the piece. This is a phenomenon similar to the black rain created by a nuclear blast.”

In 1986, Nagasawa was awarded an exchange grant that resulted in her attending CalArts for a year, during which she studied with Douglas Huebler and completed three large environmental works. Based in L.A. for the last 3 1/2 years, the artist now commutes between here, Berlin and Tokyo. “The great thing about living in L.A. is that there’s so much information available here,” she says. “However, it’s much harder to find sponsors for large exterior works here.”

Nagasawa is currently at work on a permanent public piece to be installed this year at the Knoll Anaheim Center in Orange County and a work purchased by the L.A. County Transportation Commission for the Metro Green Line. She also teaches a class in drum making at UCLA and plans to return to Japan in May to install a show at a Tokyo museum.

“I don’t feel American, but when I’m in Japan I don’t feel Japanese either,” Nagasawa says of how her peripatetic lifestyle has affected her. “When I first began working on ‘The Atomic Cowboy’ several people warned me that because I’m Japanese, people would link this piece with the anniversary of Pearl Harbor and would try to find some kind of political subtext in the piece, but those aren’t my concerns at all.

“I have no sense of national identity--rather, I feel myself a citizen of the planet. And the story I deal with here transcends the issue of national identity. Nuclear power doesn’t recognize borders or whether or not you’re a famous movie star--it’s an equal-opportunity killer.”