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Land art: the story on HearLore | HearLore
Land art
In 1968, a group of artists deliberately walked away from the white walls of the museum to stand in the mud, the desert, and the water. This was not a casual stroll but a calculated political act against the commercialization of art. The movement known as land art emerged from a generation of artists in their late twenties who were reacting to the heightened political activism of the year and the emerging environmental and women's liberation movements. They sought to create works that could not be easily turned into a commodity, rejecting the mass-produced cultural debris of the time. Instead of selling paintings or small sculptures, these artists built monumental landscape projects that were beyond the reach of traditional transportable sculpture and the commercial art market. The materials used were often the materials of the Earth itself, including soil, rocks, vegetation, and water found on-site. While the physical works were often distant from population centers and sometimes fairly inaccessible, photo documentation was commonly brought back to the urban art gallery to be viewed by those who could not travel to the remote locations. This paradox of creating art in the wild only to display its image in the city became a defining characteristic of the movement.
Spirals and Sedimentation
Robert Smithson, perhaps the best known artist who worked in this genre, arranged rock, earth, and algae to form a long 1500-foot spiral-shape jetty protruding into Great Salt Lake in northern Utah. Completed in 1970, the work known as Spiral Jetty is probably the most famous piece of all land art. 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, making its existence a constant negotiation with the natural environment. Smithson's 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. He believed that the earth itself was a medium that could speak to the mind in ways that traditional art could not. His Gravel Mirror with Cracks and Dust from 1968 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 curators to promote land art.
Land art is an art movement of the 1960s and 1970s that emerged in 1968 when artists deliberately walked away from the white walls of the museum to create works in the mud, the desert, and the water. The movement was a calculated political act against the commercialization of art and a reaction to the heightened political activism of the year and the emerging environmental and women's liberation movements.
Who created the famous land art work Spiral Jetty and when was it completed?
Robert Smithson created the famous land art work Spiral Jetty which was completed in 1970. The work is a 1500-foot spiral-shape jetty protruding into Great Salt Lake in northern Utah and is composed of rock, earth, and algae.
How did Alan Sonfist approach land art differently from other artists?
Alan Sonfist used an alternative approach to working with nature and culture 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 at the intersection of LaGuardia and Houston Streets which was designed to grow and change over decades.
What caused the land art movement to fade out in the 1970s?
The land art movement faded out due to the sudden economic downturn of the mid-1970s which caused funds from wealthy patrons and private foundations to largely stop. The death of Robert Smithson in a plane crash in 1973 marked a turning point for the movement as it lost one of its most important figureheads.
Who are the most prominent non-American land artists and what are their works?
The most prominent non-American land artists are the British Chris Drury, Andy Goldsworthy, Richard Long and the Australian Andrew Rogers. 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 with twelve sites located in disparate exotic locations.
Alan Sonfist used an alternative approach to working with nature and culture 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 at the intersection of LaGuardia and Houston Streets. He created several other Time Landscapes around the world such as Circles of Time in Florence, Italy, documenting the historical usage of the land, and 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. The artist's ecological message seems more timely now than ever, noted Adam Weinberg, the director emeritus of the Whitney Museum of American Art. Since the 1960s, Sonfist has continued to push forward his ideas about the land, particularly urgent right now with global warming all over the world. We need solutions to climate change not only from scientists and politicians but also from artists, envisioning and realizing a greener, more primordial future. This approach contrasted sharply with the ephemeral nature of other land art works, as Sonfist's forests were designed to grow and change over decades, requiring ongoing maintenance to prevent the surrounding vegetation from reclaiming the image.
Monuments in the Void
James 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. This project, known as Roden Crater, is a site-specific work that continues to this day, transforming the crater into an observatory for the sky. Charles Ross continues to work on the Star Axis project, which he began in 1971, creating a structure that aligns with the Earth's axis. These monumental efforts required the artists to rely mostly on wealthy patrons and private foundations to fund their often costly projects. With the sudden economic downturn of the mid-1970s, funds from these sources largely stopped. The death of Robert Smithson in a plane crash in 1973 marked a turning point for the movement, as it lost one of its most important figureheads and faded out. Despite these challenges, Michael Heizer in 2022 completed his work on City, and James Turrell continues to work on the Roden Crater project. These works stand as testaments to the endurance of the artists who dedicated their lives to creating art that would outlast them, often in the most remote and difficult-to-access locations.
The Global Canvas
Land artists in America relied mostly on wealthy patrons and private foundations to fund their often costly projects, but the movement quickly expanded to include examples from many other countries. Perhaps the most prominent non-American land artists are the British Chris Drury, Andy Goldsworthy, Richard Long and the Australian Andrew Rogers. 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. Twelve sites are located in disparate exotic locations, ranging from below sea level and up to altitudes of 4,300 meters. Up to three geoglyphs, ranging in size up to 40,000 square meters, are located in each site. The Litlington White Horse in East Sussex is a 20th-century example of an earthwork created through the subtractive method of cutting into the hillside to reveal the natural chalk beneath. As a site-specific work, its form is dictated by the slope of the downland, and it requires ongoing maintenance to prevent the surrounding vegetation from reclaiming the image. Bunjil, a geoglyph at the You Yangs in Lara, Australia, by Andrew Rogers, has a wing span of 100 meters and 1500 tonnes of rock were used to construct it. These works demonstrate the global reach of the movement, which drew on much older traditions of hill figures and geoglyphs, such as Stonehenge, the Pyramids, Native American mounds, the Nazca Lines in Peru, and Carnac stones.
The Art of the Paper
In 1973, Jacek Tylicki began to lay out blank canvases or paper sheets in the natural environment for the nature to create art. This approach challenged the traditional notion of the artist as the sole creator, allowing the elements of wind, rain, and decay to become co-authors of the work. 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, though the artists themselves considered this incorrect. Joseph Beuys's concept of social sculpture influenced land art, and his 7000 Eichen project of 1982 to plant 7,000 Oak trees has many similarities to land art processes. The movement also drew inspiration from modern movements such as De Stijl, Cubism, minimalism and the work of Constantin Brâncuși and Joseph Beuys. One of the first earthworks artists was Herbert Bayer, who created Grass Mound in Aspen, Colorado, in 1955. Isamu Noguchi's 1941 design for Contoured Playground in New York City 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.
The Fading of the Movement
With the sudden economic downturn of the mid-1970s, funds from wealthy patrons and private foundations largely stopped, causing the movement to lose momentum. The death of Robert Smithson in a plane crash in 1973 marked a significant loss for the movement, as he was one of its most important figureheads. The movement faded out, though some artists continued to work on their projects for decades. Charles Ross continues to work on the Star Axis project, which he began in 1971, and Michael Heizer completed his work on City in 2022. 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. The movement's concerns centered around the rejection of the commercialization of art-making and enthusiasm with an emergent ecological movement. The beginning of the movement coincided with the popularity of the rejection of urban living and its counterpart, and an enthusiasm for that which is rural. Included in these inclinations were spiritual yearnings concerning the planet Earth as home to humanity. The movement's legacy lives on in the works of contemporary artists who continue to explore the relationship between art and the natural environment.