Embedded Files
Updated: 17 August 2021
Land Art is always about creating with nature. If an artefact is just put there, without a close relationship to the natural place, it is not Land Art. Sculptures are not placed in the landscape, on the contrary, the landscape is the means and a integrated part of the creation.
Land Art can be done anytime, by anyone, and almost anywhere. Looking around you, in nature, you will always have access to material that can be remixed and combined into unique expressions.
Works of Land Art frequently exist in the open, often in remote locations, left to change and erode under natural conditions. Land Art evolved in the 1960s in America, as an artistic protest against the "artificiality and commercialisation" of art. 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.
Land Art is about how landscape and the artworks are linked. Land Art also pioneered a category of art called site-specific sculpture, designed for a particular outdoor location.
Land Art is about how art can be created in and by nature, using natural materials such as soil, rock (bed rock, boulders, stones), organic media (logs, branches, leaves), and water with introduced materials such as concrete, metal, asphalt, or mineral pigments.
Spiral Jetty is an earthwork sculpture constructed in April 1970 that is considered to be the central work of American sculptor Robert Smithson.
Artists working with Land Art developed monumental landscape projects that were impossible to move, and therefore unavilable to the commercial art market. Many of the artists associated with land art has also been involved with minimal art and conceptual art.Perhaps the best known land art artist was Robert Smithson. His 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.
Smithson's best known work is the Spiral Jetty (1970), for which he arranged rock, earth and algae so as to form a long (1500 ft) spiral-shape jetty protruding into Great Salt Lake in northern Utah, U.S...
Isamu Noguchi, seen here with his model for the Contoured Playground designed in 1933, combined traditional house and garden experiences with his conception of sculpture as lived space.
Photos courtesy of the Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum
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". 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. There is 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.
James Turrel 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.
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 (who are famous for wrapping monuments, buildings and landscapes in fabric) have also been considered land art by some. 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.
After the death of Robert Smithson in 1973 the movement lost one of its most important figureheads and in most respects, "land art" has become part of mainstream public art.
Resources
Smithson, Robert (1968) – "The Sedimentation of the Mind: Earth Projects"
Sørenstuen, Jan-Erik – Dancing flowers - to discover nature through art, and art through nature
https://gsareadingsociety.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/landscapesofemergency.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_art
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse