Land art, earthworks, or Earth art is an art movement in which landscape and the
work of art are inextricably linked. It is also an art form that is created in
nature, using natural materials such as soil, rock, organic media, and water
with introduced materials such as concrete, metal, asphalt, or mineral
pigments. Sculptures are not placed in the landscape, rather, the landscape is
the means of their creation. Often earth moving equipment is involved. The works
frequently exist in the open, located well away from civilization, left to
change and erode under natural conditions. Many of the first works,
created in the deserts of Nevada, New Mexico, Utah or Arizona were ephemeral
in nature and now only exist as video recordings or photographic documents.
They also pioneered a category of art called site-specific sculpture, designed
for a particular outdoor location. History
Land art is an artistic protest against the "perceived artificiality, plastic
aesthetics and ruthless commercialization" of art in America in
the late 1960s. Exponents of land art rejected the museum or gallery as the
setting of artistic activity and developed monumental landscape projects
which were beyond the reach of traditional transportable sculpture and
the commercial art market. Land art was inspired by minimal art and Conceptual
art but also by modern movements such as De Stijl, cubism, minimalism and the
work of Constantin Brâncuși and Joseph Beuys. Many of the artists associated
with land art had been involved with minimal art and conceptual art. Isamu
Noguchi's 1941 design for Contoured Playground in New York is sometimes
interpreted as an important early piece of land art even though the artist
himself never called his work "land art" but simply "sculpture". His influence on
contemporary land art, landscape architecture and environmental sculpture
is evident in many works today. Alan Sonfist is a pioneer of an
alternative approach to working with nature and culture that he began in 1965
by bringing historical nature and sustainable art back into New York City.
His most inspirational work is Time Landscape an indigenous forest he
planted in New York City. He also created several other Time Landscapes
around the world such as Circles of Time in Florence Italy documenting the
historical usage of the land, and recently at the deCordova Sculpture Park
and Museum outside Boston. According to critic Barbara Rose, writing in Artforum
in 1969, he had become disillusioned with the commodification and insularity
of gallery bound art. In 1967, the art critic Grace Glueck writing in the New
York Times declared the first earthwork was done by Douglas Leichter and Richard
Saba at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. The sudden appearance of
land art in 1968 can be located as a response by a generation of artists
mostly in their late twenties to the heightened political activism of the
year and the emerging environmental and women's liberation movements.
The movement began in October 1968 with the group exhibition "Earth Works" at
the Dwan Gallery in New York. In February 1969, Willoughby Sharp curated
the "Earth Art" exhibition at the Andrew Dickson White Museum of Art at Cornell
University, Ithaca, New York. The artists included were Walter De Maria,
Jan Dibbets, Hans Haacke, Michael Heizer, Neil Jenney, Richard Long, David
Medalla, Robert Morris, Dennis Oppenheim, Robert Smithson, and Gunther
Uecker. The exhibition was directed by Thomas W. Leavitt. Gordon Matta-Clark,
who lived in Ithaca at the time, was invited by Sharp to help the artists in
"Earth Art" with the on-site execution of their works for the exhibition.
Perhaps the best known artist who worked in this genre was the American Robert
Smithson whose 1968 essay "The Sedimentation of the Mind: Earth
Projects" provided a critical framework for the movement as a reaction to the
disengagement of Modernism from social issues as represented by the critic
Clement Greenberg. His best known piece, and probably the most famous piece of
all land art, is the Spiral Jetty, for which Smithson arranged rock, earth and
algae so as to form a long spiral-shape jetty protruding into Great Salt Lake in
northern Utah, U.S.. How much of the work, if any, is visible is dependent on
the fluctuating water levels. Since its creation, the work has been completely
covered, and then uncovered again, by water. Smithson's Gravel Mirror with
Cracks and Dust is an example of land art existing in a gallery space rather
than in the natural environment. It consists of a pile of gravel by the side
of a partially mirrored gallery wall. In its simplicity of form and concentration
on the materials themselves, this and other pieces of land art have an
affinity with minimalism. There is also a relationship to Arte Povera in the use
of materials traditionally considered "unartistic" or "worthless". The Italian
Germano Celant, founder of Arte Povera, was one of the first curator to promote
Land Art. 'Land Artists' have tended to be
American, with other prominent artists in this field including, Carl Andre,
Alice Aycock, Walter De Maria, Hans Haacke, Michael Heizer, Nancy Holt, Ana
Mendieta, Dennis Oppenheim, Andrew Rogers, Charles Ross, Robert Smithson,
Alan Sonfist, and James Turrell. Turrell began work in 1972 on possibly the
largest piece of land art thus far, reshaping the earth surrounding the
extinct Roden Crater volcano in Arizona. Perhaps the most prominent non-American
land artists are the British Chris Drury, Andy Goldsworthy, Peter
Hutchinson, Richard Long and the Australian Andrew Rogers. In 1973 Jacek
Tylicki begins to lay out blank canvases or paper sheets in the natural
environment for the nature to create art.
Some projects by the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude have also been considered
land art by some, though the artists themselves consider this incorrect.
Joseph Beuys' concept of 'social sculpture' influenced 'Land art' and his
'7000 Eichen' project of 1982 to plant 7000 Oak trees has many similarities to
'Land art' processes. Rogers' “Rhythms of Life” project is the largest
contemporary land-art undertaking in the world, forming a chain of stone
sculptures, or geoglyphs, around the globe – 12 sites – in disparate exotic
locations. Up to three geoglyphs are located in each site.
Eduardo Sanguinetti, the latinoamerican philosopher and land-artist, presented
in 1979 his "Sculptures in Earth". They were placed in natural spaces, they
became functional as plants and animals made their homes in that particular
´topos´instalated en La Pampa desert. Later they acquired the noise of codes
capable of classifying smells and colurs, and will complete the original
idea of our artist, who was at that time absorbed by the countryside and its
specular radiation...in his Land-Art Performance "Solum", in the zoomorphy of
that horse that greatly seduce the audience of the Centro Cultural
Recoleta. "Amarillo Total" the name of the horse, not only stopped the ecologic
blow but also paraded the models who had been completely painted by our artist,
their naked painted bodies put another body to painting, with artesan colours
prepared with earth and plants pigments. In Sanguinetti's Essay "Alter Ego", he
said: "Spontaneus Activity in Nature...In nature, there is a type of
spontaneous activity. This concept does not exist in cultured man, and if it
does remain in children, it is like a faint reminiscence of the primitive
mind...Consequently I think that the survival of an awareness of the
supernatural in nature, should, in all works of Land-Art, be the thing which
´animates Everything´". Land artists in America relied mostly on
wealthy patrons and private foundations to fund their often costly projects.
With the sudden economic down turn of the mid-1970s funds from these sources
largely stopped. With the death of Robert Smithson in a plane crash in 1973
the movement lost one of its most important figureheads and faded out.
Charles Ross continues to work on the Star Axis project, which he began in
1971. Michael Heizer continues his work on City, and James Turrell continues to
work on the Roden Crater project. In most respects 'Land Art' has become part
of mainstream public art and in many cases the term "Land Art" is misused to
label any kind of art in nature even though conceptually not related to the
avant-garde works by the pioneers of Land Art.
Contemporary land artists YATOO – a Korean Nature Artists’
Association which was founded in 1981, started working with Nature equipped
with nothing but empty hands and wide open minds and seeking direct
inspirations from Nature. YATOO International Project, is a newly
organized project and is based on the idea that the Nature we live in is
seamlessly connected regardless of the human-designated borderlines.
See also Environmental art
Environmental sculpture Land Arts of the American West
Site-specific art Ecological art
Ecofeminist art Ecovention
References = Notes =
= Further reading = Lawrence Alloway, Wolfgang Becker,
Robert Rosenblum et al., Alan Sonfist, Nature: The End of Art, Gli Ori,Dist.
Thames & Hudson Florence, Italy,2004 ISBN 0-615-12533-6
Max Andrews: Land, Art: A Cultural Ecology Handbook. London 2006 ISBN
978-0-901469-57-1 John Beardsley: Earthworks and Beyond.
Contemporary Art in the Landscape. New York 1998 ISBN 0-7892-0296-4
Suzaan Boettger, Earthworks: Art and the Landscape of the Sixties. University of
California Press 2002. ISBN 0-520-24116-9
Amy Dempsey: Destination Art. Berkeley CA 2006 ISBN 9780520250253
Eduardo Sanguinetti,Alter Ego. ISBN 9780946270170
Carlos Espartaco, Eduardo Sanguinetti: The Experience of Limit Buenos Aires,
Argentina, Ediciones de Arte Gaglianone, first published 1989 ISBN 950-9004-98-7
Michel Draguet, Nils-Udo, Bob Verschueren, Bruseels: Atelier 340, 1992
Jack Flam. Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, Berkeley CA 1996
ISBN 0-520-20385-2 John K. Grande: New York, London.
Balance: Art and Nature, Black Rose Books, 1994, 2003 ISBN 1-55164-234-4
Eleanor Heartney, Andrew Rogers Geoglyphs, Rhythms of Life, Edizioni
Charta srl, Italy, 2009 ISBN 978-88-8158-712-4
Robert Hobbs, Robert Smithson: A Retrospective View, Wilhelm Lehmbruck
Museum, Duisburg / Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University,
Jeffrey Kastner, Brian Wallis: Land and Environmental Art. Boston 1998 ISBN
0-7148-4519-1 Lucy R Lippard: Overlay: Contemporary
Art and the Art of Prehistory. New York 1983 ISBN 978-0-394-51812-1
Udo Weilacher: Between Landscape Architecture and Land Art. Basel Berlin
Boston 1999 ISBN 3-7643-6119-0 Edward Lucie-Smith and John K. Grande:
Art Nature Dialogues: Interviews with Environmental Artists, New York 2004
ISBN 978-0-7914-6194-5 David Peat & Edward Lucie-Smith
Dialogues in Diversity, Italy: Pari Publishing, 2007, ISBN 978-88-901960-7-2
Chris Taylor and Bill Gilbert. Land Arts of the American West. Austin: University
of Texas Press; 2009. ISBN 978-0-292-71672-8
Gilles A. Tiberghien: Land Art. Ed. Carré 19932012
External links Monumental Land Art of the United
States. Alan Sonfist Official Website
Artist in Nature International Network Denarend.com - About land art
Land Arts of the American West Official UNM Land Arts of the American
West Program Website Land & Environmental Artists & Art
Australian land arts Roden Crater by James Turrell
Jacek Tylicki Land & Environmental Art projects
Land Art project in South Africa Broken Circle
Land Art Contemporary OBSART | Observatoire du Land Art
(French) Portail du Land Art (German) Using Land art as a form of
advertising Center for Land Use Interpretation entry
for Land Art