Land art, variously known as Earth art, environmental art, and Earthworks, is an

art movement An art movement is a tendency or style in art with a specific common philosophy or goal, followed by a group of artists during a specific period of time, (usually a few months, years or decades) or, at least, with the heyday of the movement defin ...

that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, largely associated with Great Britain and the United StatesArt in the modern era: A guide to styles, schools, & movements. Abrams, 2002. (U.S. edition of Styles, Schools and Movements, by Amy Dempsey) but that also includes examples from many countries. As a trend, "land art" expanded boundaries of art by the materials used and the siting of the works. The materials used were often the materials of the Earth, including the soil, rocks, vegetation, and water found on-site, and the sites of the works were often distant from population centers. Though sometimes fairly inaccessible, photo documentation was commonly brought back to the urban art gallery.http://www.land-arts.com
Land art. Concerns of the art movement centered around rejection of the commercialization of art-making and enthusiasm with an emergent ecological movement. The art movement coincided with the popularity of the rejection of urban living and its counterpart, an enthusiasm for that which is rural. Included in these inclinations were spiritual yearnings concerning the planet

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's sur ...

as home to humanity.

Form

Eberhard Bosslet Intervention Begleiterscheinung XI Era Lanzarote 2008

In the 1960s and 1970s land art protested "ruthless commercialization" of art in

America The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

. During this period, exponents of land art rejected the

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make th ...

or gallery as the setting of artistic activity and developed monumental landscape projects which were beyond the reach of traditional transportable

sculpture Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable ...

and the commercial art market, although photographic documentation was often presented in normal gallery spaces. Land art was inspired by minimal art and

conceptual art Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art, sometimes called ins ...

but also by modern movements such as De Stijl,

Cubism Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...

minimalism In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post–World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Do ...

and the work of

Constantin Brâncuși Constantin Brâncuși (; February 19, 1876 – March 16, 1957) was a Romanian sculptor, painter and photographer who made his career in France. Considered one of the most influential sculptors of the 20th-century and a pioneer of modernism, ...

and Joseph Beuys. Many of the artists associated with land art had been involved with minimal art and

. Isamu Noguchi's 1941 design for ''Contoured Playground'' in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

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 Landscape architecture is the design of outdoor areas, landmarks, and structures to achieve environmental, social-behavioural, or aesthetic outcomes. It involves the systematic design and general engineering of various structures for constructio ...

and environmental sculpture is evident in many works today.Udo Weilacher, ''Between Landscape Architecture and Land Art''. Birkhäuser, 1999, Basel Berlin Boston 1999 Alan Sonfist used an alternative approach to working with

nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...

and

culture Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups ...

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 Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico a ...

documenting the historical usage of the land, and recently at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum outside Boston. According to critic

Barbara Rose Barbara Ellen Rose (June 11, 1936December 25, 2020) was an American art historian, art critic, curator and college professor. Rose's criticism focused on 20th-century American art, particularly minimalism and abstract expressionism, as well as S ...

, writing in ''

Artforum ''Artforum'' is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art. The magazine is distinguished from other magazines by its unique 10½ x 10½ inch square format, with each cover often devoted to the work of an artist. Notably ...

'' in 1969, he had become disillusioned with the commodification and insularity of gallery bound art. In 1967, the

art critic An art critic is a person who is specialized in analyzing, interpreting, and evaluating art. Their written critiques or reviews contribute to art criticism and they are published in newspapers, magazines, books, exhibition brochures, and catalogu ...

Grace Glueck writing in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' declared the first Earthwork to be done by Douglas Leichter and Richard Saba at the

Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture is an artists residency located in Madison, Maine, just outside of Skowhegan. Every year, the program accepts online applications from emerging artists from November through January, and selects 6 ...

. 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 A biophysical environment is a biotic and abiotic surrounding of an organism or population, and consequently includes the factors that have an influence in their survival, development, and evolution. A biophysical environment can vary in scal ...

and women's liberation movements. One example of land art in the 20th century was a group exhibition called "Earthworks" created in 1968 at the Dwan Gallery in New York. In February 1969,

Willoughby Sharp Willoughby Sharp (January 23, 1936 – December 17, 2008) was an American artist, independent curator, independent publisher (he was co-founder and co-editor of Avalanche Magazine with Liza Béar), gallerist, teacher, author, and telecom activist ...

curated the "Earth Art" exhibition at the Andrew Dickson White Museum of Art at

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

, Ithaca, New York. The artists included were Walter De Maria,

Jan Dibbets Jan Dibbets (born 9 May 1941, in Weert) is an Amsterdam-based Dutch conceptual artist. His work is influenced by mathematics and works mainly with photography. Life and career In the late 1950s and early 1960s, he started as an art teacher at th ...

, Hans Haacke, Michael Heizer,

Neil Jenney Neil Jenney is a self-taught artist born on November 6, 1945 in Torrington, Connecticut. He attended Massachusetts College of Art in 1964. In 1966 he moved to New York City where he currently resides. His painting style was described by the ar ...

, 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 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 Modernism is both a philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, an ...

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 ''Spiral Jetty'' is an earthwork sculpture constructed in April 1970 that is considered to be the most important work of American sculptor Robert Smithson. Smithson documented the construction of the sculpture in a 32-minute color film also tit ...

'' (1970), for which Smithson arranged rock, earth and

algae Algae (; singular alga ) is an informal term for a large and diverse group of photosynthetic eukaryotic organisms. It is a polyphyletic grouping that includes species from multiple distinct clades. Included organisms range from unicellular micr ...

so as to form a long (1500 ft) spiral-shape

jetty A jetty is a structure that projects from land out into water. A jetty may serve as a breakwater, as a walkway, or both; or, in pairs, as a means of constricting a channel. The term derives from the French word ', "thrown", signifying somet ...

protruding into

Great Salt Lake The Great Salt Lake is the largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere and the eighth-largest terminal lake in the world. It lies in the northern part of the U.S. state of Utah and has a substantial impact upon the local climate, particu ...

in northern

Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to its ...

, 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. A steward of the artwork in conjunction with the Dia Foundation, the

Utah Museum of Fine Arts The Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA) is the region's primary resource for culture and visual arts. It is located in the Marcia and John Price Museum Building in Salt Lake City, Utah on the University of Utah campus near Rice-Eccles Stadium. Works ...

regularly curates programming around the Spiral Jetty, including a "Family Backpacks" program. Smithson's ''Gravel Mirror with Cracks and Dust'' (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

. 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 artists" have tended to be American, with other prominent artists in this field being Carl Andre, Alice Aycock, Walter De Maria, Hans Haacke, Michael Heizer, Nancy Holt, Peter Hutchinson,

Ana Mendieta Ana Mendieta (November 18, 1948 – September 8, 1985) was a Cuban-American performance artist, sculptor, painter and video artist who is best known for her "earth-body" artwork. Born in Havana, Mendieta left for the United States in 1961. Ear ...

, Dennis Oppenheim, Andrew Rogers, Charles Ross, 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 Roden Crater is a cinder cone type of volcanic cone from an extinct volcano, with a remaining interior volcanic crater. It is located approximately 50 miles northeast of the city of Flagstaff in northern Arizona, United States. Art project Ar ...

volcano A volcano is a rupture in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most often found where tectonic plates ...

Arizona Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is part of the Fou ...

. Perhaps the most prominent non-American land artists are the British Chris Drury, Andy Goldsworthy, 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 Textile is an umbrella term that includes various fiber-based materials, including fibers, yarns, filaments, threads, different fabric types, etc. At first, the word "textiles" only referred to woven fabrics. However, weaving is not ...

) have also been considered land art by some, though the artists themselves consider 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.

Rogers Rogers may refer to: Places Canada *Rogers Pass (British Columbia) * Rogers Island (Nunavut) United States * Rogers, Arkansas, a city * Rogers, alternate name of Muroc, California, a former settlement * Rogers, Indiana, an unincorporated communit ...

' “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 (from below sea level and up to altitudes of 4,300 m/14,107 ft). Up to three geoglyphs (ranging in size up to 40,000 sq m/430,560 sq ft) are located in each site. Land artists in America relied mostly on wealthy patrons and

private foundation A private foundation is a tax-exempt organization not relying on broad public support and generally claiming to serve humanitarian purposes. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest private foundation in the U.S. with over $38 billion i ...

s to fund their often costly projects. With the sudden economic downturn 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.Hass, Nancy
"What Happens When a Single Art Project Becomes a Decades-Long Obsession?,"
''The New York Times'', September 18, 2018. Retrieved January 27, 2022.Beachy-Quick, Dan
"Cosmic Dancer: Dan Beachy-Quick on Charles Ross’s Star Axis,"
''Artforum'', October 28, 2021. Retrieved June 10, 2022. Michael Heizer in 2022 completed his work on ''

City A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be def ...

'', and James Turrell continues to work on the ''

'' project. In most respects, "land art" has become part of mainstream

public art Public art is art in any media whose form, function and meaning are created for the general public through a public process. It is a specific art genre with its own professional and critical discourse. Public art is visually and physically acce ...

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 The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretica ...

works by the pioneers of land art. The Earth art of the 1960s were sometimes reminiscent of the much older land works,

Stonehenge Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England, west of Amesbury. It consists of an outer ring of vertical sarsen standing stones, each around high, wide, and weighing around 25 tons, topped by connec ...

, the

Pyramids A pyramid (from el, πυραμίς ') is a structure whose outer surfaces are triangular and converge to a single step at the top, making the shape roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be trilateral, quadrilate ...

, Native American mounds, the Nazca Lines in Peru, Carnac stones and Native American burial grounds, and often evoked the spirituality of such archeological sites.

Contemporary land artists

* Betty Beaumont (born 1946) *

Milton Becerra Milton Becerra (born 1951) is a Venezuelan artist who pioneered land art in Venezuela in the 1970s. Early works He graduated from the Cristóbal Rojas School of Arts (1972) under the Jesús Soto promotion. From 1973 to 1980 Milton Becerra wa ...

(born 1951) * Marinus Boezem (born 1934) *

Chris Booth Chris Booth (born 30 December 1948) is a New Zealand sculptor and practitioner of large-scale land art. He has participated in numerous land art projects and exhibitions internationally and created significant public sculpture commissions in N ...

(born 1948) * Eberhard Bosslet (born 1953) *

Alberto Burri Alberto Burri (12 March 191513 February 1995; ) was an Italian visual artist, painter, sculptor, and physician based in Città di Castello. He is associated with the matterism of the European informal art movement and described his style as ...

(1915-1995) * Mel Chin (born 1951) *

Christo and Jeanne Claude Christo Vladimirov Javacheff (1935–2020) and Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon (1935–2009), known as Christo and Jeanne-Claude, were artists noted for their large-scale, site-specific environmental installations, often large landmarks and ...

Christo (1935-2020) Jeanne (1935-2009) * Walter De Maria (1935-2013) * Lucien den Arend (born 1943) * Agnes Denes (born 1938) *

(born 1941) * Harvey Fite (1903-1976) * Barry Flanagan (1941-2009) *

Hamish Fulton Hamish Fulton (born 1946) is an English walking artist. Since 1972 he has only made works based on the experience of walks. He translates his walks into a variety of media, including photography, illustrations, and wall texts. His work is containe ...

(born 1946) * Andy Goldsworthy (born 1956) * Michael Heizer (born 1944) * Nancy Holt (1938-2014) * Peter Hutchinson (born 1930) * Junichi Kakizaki (born 1971) *

Dani Karavan Daniel "Dani" Karavan ( he, דני קרוון, 7 December 1930 – 29 May 2021) was an Israeli sculptor best known for site specific memorials and monuments which merge into the environment. Biography Daniel (Dani) Karavan was born in Tel A ...

(1930–2021) * Maya Lin (born 1959) * Richard Long (born 1945) * Robert Morris (1931-2018) * Vik Muniz (born 1961) * David Nash (born 1945) * Ugo Rondinone (born 1964) * Dennis Oppenheim (1938-2011) *

Georgia Papageorge Georgia Papageorge (born 1941) is a South African installation artist active in the field of earth art. Life A native of Simon's Town, Cape Province, Papageorge earned her bachelor's degree in fine arts from the University of South Africa in Pret ...

(born 1941) * Beverly Pepper (1922-2020) *

Tanya Preminger Tanya Preminger ( he, טניה פרמינגר), is an artist working in various media: environmental art, site-specific art, ephemeral art, sculpture, installation and photography. She is mostly known for her land art projects and large-scale st ...

(born 1944) * Andrew Rogers (born 1947) * Charles Ross (born 1937) * Richard Shilling (born 1973) *

Nobuo Sekine was a Japanese sculptor who resided in both Tokyo, Japan, and Los Angeles, California. A graduate of Tama Art University, he was one of the key members of Mono-ha, a group of artists who became prominent in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The ...

(1942-2019) * Robert Smithson (1938-1973) * Alan Sonfist (born 1946) * James Turrell (born 1943) * Jacek Tylicki (born 1951) *

Nils Udo Nils is a Scandinavian given name, a chiefly Norwegian, Danish, Swedish and Latvian variant of Niels, cognate to Nicholas. People and animals with the given name * Nils Bergström (born 1985), Swedish ice hockey player *Nils Björk (1898–1989) ...

(born 1937) * Bill Vazan (born 1933) * Strijdom van der Merwe (born 1961)

References

Notes

External links

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

Broken Circle

OBSART , Observatoire du Land Art
*

Center for Land Use Interpretation entry for Land Art

The Case for Land Art , The Art Assignment , PBS
{{Authority control Contemporary art movements Installation art Art Environmental design

Form

Contemporary land artists

See also

References

Notes

Further reading

External links