Land Art Research Paper
Land Art and Land Artists
UNDERSTANDING LAND ART AND ITS IMPACTS
4/9/2014
By: Amir R. Tamadon
Land Art and Land Artists
Contents
INTORDUCTION.............................................................................................................. 2
LAND ART ORIGINS: AGENTS OF NATURE ................................................................... 2
WHAT DOES LAND ART LOOK LIKE? ............................................................................. 4
IMPACTS OF LAND ART ................................................................................................. 5
CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................. 6
REFERENCES ................................................................................................................... …show more content…
6
Page 1
Land Art and Land Artists
Abstract: As the world was heading towards commercialization and mass artificial production in the late
1960s and early 1970s, a new movement called land art was conceived in which landscapes were used to create works of art with minimalistic elements and concepts. This paper focuses on the history of Land
Art and artists and their relationship to society.
Keywords : Land Art, Earthwork, Land Artist, Michael Heizer, City, Robert Smithson, ecology movement, artistic movement and capitalism, Fredrick Law Olmsted
INTORDUCTION
Earthwork or Land Art was an art movement with political purposes that started in the late 1960s. Land artists wanted to build art pieces in open lands and visible to the public where everyone could come and appreciate it. It was at this time, when modern art had reached immense commercialization and was stripped away from context by capitalism, a new movement emerged with the goal to resolve social conflicts by taking society back to nature. Land artists had a new task at hand: instead of creating complex and expensive objects that were solely valued in museums and galleries, land artists could now use the landscape as their canvas to create, study, and experience the laws of nature within its natural context.
LAND ART ORIGINS: AGENTS OF NATURE
Land art was an Anglo-America artistic movement with political purposes that was heavily influenced by the form of the British gardens of the eighteenth century
RO BE R T S MI T HS ON 1 - PH OT O
C RE DI T : JAC K RO BI NS ON
Page 2
Land Art and Land Artists
where symmetrical and formal style was replaced by idealized view of nature1. The movement was an invitation to a different type of enjoyment proposed by an American artist Robert Smithson and his article “Fredrick Law Olmsted2 and the Dialectical Landscape” published in 1973 in an issue of
Artforum3. Smithson’s article was focused on finding a midpoint between the conflict of Capitalism, which had led to the rapid consumption of natural resource by mining companies after WWII, and the ecology movement of the late 1960s.
Smithson used the British garden as an example to design and develop a philosophical and political strategy to understand and resolve social conflicts. Smithson’s goal was to combine artistic & political values in a democratic society in order to protect the land using physical events or in other words an agent of nature.
Smithson’s article later became the manifesto of land art and coupled various fields of sociology, politics and economics with art.
His greatest work “Spiral Jetty” was the highlight of his point of view. The spiral Jetty is composed of basalt rock around the edges of the spiral. Basalt rock grows along an imaginary axis in geometrical formations through the process of nucleation, which is essentially a thermo-dynamic process4. The crystal, for Smithson was a naturally occurring system that mirrored the physical systemic of explaining the world.
1
English landscape garden is a style of Landscape garden which emerged in England in the early 18th century and usually includes a lake, sweeps of lawns, trees, classical temples and a classical chines gardening taste of layout that was
2
Frederick Law Olmsted (April 26, 1822 – August 28, 1903) was an American landscape architect, journalist, social critic, and public administrator. He is popularly considered to be the father of American landscape architecture
Artforum: An international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art.
4
A system undergoes a thermodynamic process when there is some sort of energetic change within the system, generally associated with changes in pressure, volume, internal energy, temperature, or any sort of heat transfer.
3
Page 3
Land Art and Land Artists
It is a "sediment of the mind" to use Smithson 's own words. With language, or physical propositions about the world, as well as with the submerged rock-crystals of the spiral-Jetty, the crystals decay and become lost in the great Salt Lake. In the case of propositions, they too become contaminated through time, and the meaning "decays". Time becomes a physical, occultism explanatory spiral where the propositional systems describing the world are not preserved absolutely, but undergo a process the way the basalt crystals decay.
Smithson believed that an artist first needs to prove to be a philosopher reaching consciousness and then learn to artistically express political thoughts and judgment.
By 1973, the land art movement was ready to turn a political corner, however with the sudden death of
Robert Smithson in a plane crash the movement came to a halt. After Smithson, land artists continued their practices in a new form of art called “site-specific sculptures5”.
WHAT DOES LAND ART LOOK LIKE?
Land art has been used for centuries but it was the American artists who first used it in the modern sense to protest against the commercialization of art and to address social conflicts between capitalism and the ecology movement.
Land art involves using natural material such as rocks and organic material such as leaves, branches, soil and water to create an instance of art that can be admired in its natural environment with no associated monetary value. This allows the viewer to fully appreciate the elements engaged and the artist’s intentions. Land art has four key elements:
Site-specific art is artwork created to exist in a certain place. Typically, the artist takes the location into account while planning and creating the artwork.
5
Page 4
Land Art and Land Artists
1.
It belongs to the public;
2.
It is built in open land but does not damage the natural surroundings;
3.
It is ephemeral;
4.
And it has no commercial value.
In land art, the artist uses landscape as the canvas and reshapes it to create a new artistic work that is coherent with its surrounding environment. Some artists choose to go to remote areas to create their artwork and experience the wild nature. In this form of art there is no object to carry art but the nature itself becomes the meaning.
Land art sculptures vary in size, commonly immovable but not necessarily unchangeable. It can only be presented where it was built. The audience must experience the context and the spirit of the work. Some of artworks last for a short period of time. For artist the experience is to watch how law of nature reacts, evolves and eventually decays the work. Many works of land art only exist in a photograph or a video only to allow others to watch the experience.
IMPACTS OF LAND ART
A key attribute in land art was having it built in open land. To the artist, land was the medium to design. Land artists believed in the spirit of nature. Their practice aimed to design a landscape that did not damage the nature but emphasize the importance of it. City by Michael Heizer is a great example.
MICHAEL HEIZER 1 - PHOTO
CREDIT: LINDSAY
GREEN
“City”, an earth project located in Garden Valley desert in Nevada is a giant sculpture that is built on a piece of land that was formally a nuclear testing site. Before “City”, this land had lost all its liveliness. It
Page 5
Land Art and Land Artists
was completely ruined. No one would ever remember it and or think about it as anything valuable. But to the American land artists, natural environment was a primary concern. Michael Heizer built his land project on that piece and helped it to not only gain back its value but also to remind us how inappropriately we had been treating our environment.
CONCLUSION
I think the great legacy of land art from 1970 is Robert Smithson’s Olmsted essay. His point of view gives modern art a new direction. A modern artist is a mediator for social conflicts. Modern art should not be about making expensive and beautiful objects anymore but introducing the society to new meanings by developing political and philosophical understanding in order to improve human life.
REFERENCES
•
Robert Smithson. “Frederick Law Olmsted and the Dialectical Landscape”. Robert Smithson: The
Collected Writings. Jack Flam. 1996. University of California Press; Reprint edition, pp. 157
•
Martin T (2011), Robert Smithson and the Anglo-American picturesque. In: Peabody, R. ed. AngloAmerican exchange in postwar sculpture, 1945-1975. Los Angeles: Getty Publications, pp. 164-175
•
Lewis Coyne. “Heidegger and the Ethics of Land Art.” The Ethics of Earth Art. Univ Of Minnesota Press
(Sept. 2 2010). 240 pages.
•
dictionary.reference.com
•
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_landscape_garden
•
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artforum
•
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Smithson
Page 6
UNDERSTANDING LAND ART AND ITS IMPACTS
4/9/2014
By: Amir R. Tamadon
Land Art and Land Artists
Contents
INTORDUCTION.............................................................................................................. 2
LAND ART ORIGINS: AGENTS OF NATURE ................................................................... 2
WHAT DOES LAND ART LOOK LIKE? ............................................................................. 4
IMPACTS OF LAND ART ................................................................................................. 5
CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................. 6
REFERENCES ................................................................................................................... …show more content…
6
Page 1
Land Art and Land Artists
Abstract: As the world was heading towards commercialization and mass artificial production in the late
1960s and early 1970s, a new movement called land art was conceived in which landscapes were used to create works of art with minimalistic elements and concepts. This paper focuses on the history of Land
Art and artists and their relationship to society.
Keywords : Land Art, Earthwork, Land Artist, Michael Heizer, City, Robert Smithson, ecology movement, artistic movement and capitalism, Fredrick Law Olmsted
INTORDUCTION
Earthwork or Land Art was an art movement with political purposes that started in the late 1960s. Land artists wanted to build art pieces in open lands and visible to the public where everyone could come and appreciate it. It was at this time, when modern art had reached immense commercialization and was stripped away from context by capitalism, a new movement emerged with the goal to resolve social conflicts by taking society back to nature. Land artists had a new task at hand: instead of creating complex and expensive objects that were solely valued in museums and galleries, land artists could now use the landscape as their canvas to create, study, and experience the laws of nature within its natural context.
LAND ART ORIGINS: AGENTS OF NATURE
Land art was an Anglo-America artistic movement with political purposes that was heavily influenced by the form of the British gardens of the eighteenth century
RO BE R T S MI T HS ON 1 - PH OT O
C RE DI T : JAC K RO BI NS ON
Page 2
Land Art and Land Artists
where symmetrical and formal style was replaced by idealized view of nature1. The movement was an invitation to a different type of enjoyment proposed by an American artist Robert Smithson and his article “Fredrick Law Olmsted2 and the Dialectical Landscape” published in 1973 in an issue of
Artforum3. Smithson’s article was focused on finding a midpoint between the conflict of Capitalism, which had led to the rapid consumption of natural resource by mining companies after WWII, and the ecology movement of the late 1960s.
Smithson used the British garden as an example to design and develop a philosophical and political strategy to understand and resolve social conflicts. Smithson’s goal was to combine artistic & political values in a democratic society in order to protect the land using physical events or in other words an agent of nature.
Smithson’s article later became the manifesto of land art and coupled various fields of sociology, politics and economics with art.
His greatest work “Spiral Jetty” was the highlight of his point of view. The spiral Jetty is composed of basalt rock around the edges of the spiral. Basalt rock grows along an imaginary axis in geometrical formations through the process of nucleation, which is essentially a thermo-dynamic process4. The crystal, for Smithson was a naturally occurring system that mirrored the physical systemic of explaining the world.
1
English landscape garden is a style of Landscape garden which emerged in England in the early 18th century and usually includes a lake, sweeps of lawns, trees, classical temples and a classical chines gardening taste of layout that was
2
Frederick Law Olmsted (April 26, 1822 – August 28, 1903) was an American landscape architect, journalist, social critic, and public administrator. He is popularly considered to be the father of American landscape architecture
Artforum: An international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art.
4
A system undergoes a thermodynamic process when there is some sort of energetic change within the system, generally associated with changes in pressure, volume, internal energy, temperature, or any sort of heat transfer.
3
Page 3
Land Art and Land Artists
It is a "sediment of the mind" to use Smithson 's own words. With language, or physical propositions about the world, as well as with the submerged rock-crystals of the spiral-Jetty, the crystals decay and become lost in the great Salt Lake. In the case of propositions, they too become contaminated through time, and the meaning "decays". Time becomes a physical, occultism explanatory spiral where the propositional systems describing the world are not preserved absolutely, but undergo a process the way the basalt crystals decay.
Smithson believed that an artist first needs to prove to be a philosopher reaching consciousness and then learn to artistically express political thoughts and judgment.
By 1973, the land art movement was ready to turn a political corner, however with the sudden death of
Robert Smithson in a plane crash the movement came to a halt. After Smithson, land artists continued their practices in a new form of art called “site-specific sculptures5”.
WHAT DOES LAND ART LOOK LIKE?
Land art has been used for centuries but it was the American artists who first used it in the modern sense to protest against the commercialization of art and to address social conflicts between capitalism and the ecology movement.
Land art involves using natural material such as rocks and organic material such as leaves, branches, soil and water to create an instance of art that can be admired in its natural environment with no associated monetary value. This allows the viewer to fully appreciate the elements engaged and the artist’s intentions. Land art has four key elements:
Site-specific art is artwork created to exist in a certain place. Typically, the artist takes the location into account while planning and creating the artwork.
5
Page 4
Land Art and Land Artists
1.
It belongs to the public;
2.
It is built in open land but does not damage the natural surroundings;
3.
It is ephemeral;
4.
And it has no commercial value.
In land art, the artist uses landscape as the canvas and reshapes it to create a new artistic work that is coherent with its surrounding environment. Some artists choose to go to remote areas to create their artwork and experience the wild nature. In this form of art there is no object to carry art but the nature itself becomes the meaning.
Land art sculptures vary in size, commonly immovable but not necessarily unchangeable. It can only be presented where it was built. The audience must experience the context and the spirit of the work. Some of artworks last for a short period of time. For artist the experience is to watch how law of nature reacts, evolves and eventually decays the work. Many works of land art only exist in a photograph or a video only to allow others to watch the experience.
IMPACTS OF LAND ART
A key attribute in land art was having it built in open land. To the artist, land was the medium to design. Land artists believed in the spirit of nature. Their practice aimed to design a landscape that did not damage the nature but emphasize the importance of it. City by Michael Heizer is a great example.
MICHAEL HEIZER 1 - PHOTO
CREDIT: LINDSAY
GREEN
“City”, an earth project located in Garden Valley desert in Nevada is a giant sculpture that is built on a piece of land that was formally a nuclear testing site. Before “City”, this land had lost all its liveliness. It
Page 5
Land Art and Land Artists
was completely ruined. No one would ever remember it and or think about it as anything valuable. But to the American land artists, natural environment was a primary concern. Michael Heizer built his land project on that piece and helped it to not only gain back its value but also to remind us how inappropriately we had been treating our environment.
CONCLUSION
I think the great legacy of land art from 1970 is Robert Smithson’s Olmsted essay. His point of view gives modern art a new direction. A modern artist is a mediator for social conflicts. Modern art should not be about making expensive and beautiful objects anymore but introducing the society to new meanings by developing political and philosophical understanding in order to improve human life.
REFERENCES
•
Robert Smithson. “Frederick Law Olmsted and the Dialectical Landscape”. Robert Smithson: The
Collected Writings. Jack Flam. 1996. University of California Press; Reprint edition, pp. 157
•
Martin T (2011), Robert Smithson and the Anglo-American picturesque. In: Peabody, R. ed. AngloAmerican exchange in postwar sculpture, 1945-1975. Los Angeles: Getty Publications, pp. 164-175
•
Lewis Coyne. “Heidegger and the Ethics of Land Art.” The Ethics of Earth Art. Univ Of Minnesota Press
(Sept. 2 2010). 240 pages.
•
dictionary.reference.com
•
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_landscape_garden
•
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artforum
•
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Smithson
Page 6