# data[].attributes.body
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-1010/post-war-american-art/minimalism-and-earthworks/v/the-case-for-land-art
https://christojeanneclaude.net/artworks/running-fence/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Line_Made_by_Walking
https://www.theartstory.org/movement/earth-art/
https://www.theartstory.org/artist/lin-maya/
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/richard-long-1525
https://www.theartstory.org/artist/smithson-robert/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Heizer

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Summary of Earth Art

Earth art, also referred to as Land art or Earthworks, is largely an American movement that uses the natural landscape to create site-specific structures, art forms, and sculptures. The movement was an outgrowth of Conceptualism and Minimalism: the beginnings of the environmental movement and the rampant commoditization of American art in the late 1960s influenced ideas and works that were, to varying degrees, divorced from the art market. In addition to the monumentality and simplicity of Minimalist objects, the artists were drawn to the humble everyday materials of Arte Povera and the participatory "social sculptures" of Joseph Beuys that stressed performance and creativity in any environment.

Key Ideas & Accomplishments

The favored materials for Earthworks were those that could be extracted directly from nature, such as stones, water, gravel, and soil. Influenced by prehistoric artworks such as Stonehenge, Earth artists left their structures exposed to the elements. The resulting ephemerality and eventual disintegration of the works put them outside of the mainstream where works of art were typically coddled and protected in controlled environments.

Earth artists often utilized materials that were available at the site on which their works were constructed and placed, honoring the specificity of the site. Locales were commonly chosen for particular reasons. Robert Smithson, for example, picked damaged sites for his works in order to suggest renewal and rebirth. This idea of site-specificity was something introduced to the art world by Earth art, again placing the artists at the vanguard because their pieces often required wide, open spaces, meaning that many of their works were not available to the average viewer and thus questioned the very purpose of art as something to be viewed.

The rejection of traditional gallery and museum spaces defined Earth art practice. By creating their works outside of these institutions, Earth artists rebuffed the commodity status these venues conferred on art, again challenging traditional definitions of art as something to be bought and sold for profit.

Overview of Earth Art

"In my Land art dealing with astronomical phenomena, I am putting 'centers of the universe' wherever I go," Nancy Holt said. Her Sun Tunnels in the desert of Utah were meant, she said, "to make people conscious of the cyclical time of the universe."

Artworks and Artists of Earth Art

A Line Made By Walking

Artist: Richard Long

Made while Richard Long was a student in London, A Line Made By Walking documents a work he created as he walked back and forth across the same path in Wiltshire. Here, Long emphasizes the experiential factor of nature through the act of walking and the temporal factor involved in artistic practice, while also having an impact on the land. The subject matter is the interaction of the journey, marking the ground, and making a simple adjustment to the landscape. With its simple, geometric shape and minimal intervention on the site, the work is also reminiscent of - and perhaps influential to - later Minimalist works such as Richard Serra's To Encircle Base Plate Hexagram, Right Plates Inverted (1970). Like most Earthworks, the piece is site specific and ephemeral. The photographs document the work's temporary existence, but do not solely constitute the work itself. While the photographs simply mark the performance of the work, the documentation process was sometimes important to artists working in Earth art, as it was often the only way to evidence the creation of the work. The work was groundbreaking in its utter simplicity and ephemerality as it would have been invisible within hours or days as nature would have taken its course, thus also making the piece useless as a commodity object.

Documentation of performance

Double Negative

Artist: Michael Heizer

In 1969, with financial assistance from Virginia Dwan, Michael Heizer began this massive work that cut 240,000 tons of rhyolite and sandstone from cliffs to create two trenches on the eastern edges of the Mormon Mesa, northwest of Overton, Nevada. As few could visit the site after the work's completion, Heizer documented the production of the work in photographs and exhibited them at the Dwan Gallery in New York. With Double Negative, Heizer enacts a heroic gesture by removing earth from its site, forcing a contemplation of the manmade processes that constitute the artwork and the natural, physical elements that exist outside of it. He places Double Negative directly in the context of art history and architecture, touching upon megalithic ancient monuments as well as modern feats of engineering in the industrial age. Although the work required a great deal of labor, it consists of negative space; it is basically a 1,500-foot-long canyon into which a viewer would enter to be surrounded on three sides by 50-foot walls of earth. Its site-specificity and remoteness are typical of Earth art, as few viewers would be able to visit it. Its presence in the open air of the desert also means that it is subject to the environment and will eventually disintegrate. Connecting the work to Minimalism is its simplicity of design, the importance of the kinesthetic response of the viewer to its meaning, and its monumental size that was meant to overwhelm the spectator, which, much like Ronald Bladen's X (1967-68), makes them feel their smallness within the immensity of nature (and the work of art).

Two trenches dug out in the Mormon Mesa

Spiral Jetty

Artist: Robert Smithson

Realized in April 1970, Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty is one of the most recognizable works from the Earth art movement. Smithson constructed a 1,500-foot-long and fifteen-foot-wide spiral made of stones, algae, and other organic materials (6,000 tons in all) in the northeastern part of Utah's Great Salt Lake. The Ace Gallery of Vancouver and Dwan financed an earth-moving company to create the spiral out of basalt rock and earth from the surrounding area. In 1972, when the water level rose, the work became submerged. Thirty years later, as the lake's water levels changed, Spiral Jetty became visible again, revealing the basalt rock crusted over with white salt. The work was inspired by the Pre-Columbian structure Serpent Mound, which Smithson had seen on a site visit in Ohio. Spiral Jetty and Smithson's body of work as a whole were typical of Earth art in their protest against the commodification of the art market since it was impossible to buy or sell the work. The physical mutability and even invisibility of the work resulting from natural processes, such as water currents and erosion, were essential to its meaning. As a work of art that was not only remote, but also at times impossible to view because of the forces of nature, Spiral Jetty is one of the best examples of Earth art and also underscores the movement's roots in Conceptualism.

Basalt rock, limestone, earth, and algae configured in a spiral off the shore of the Great Salt Lake

Sun Tunnels

Artist: Nancy Holt

Positioning four gigantic concrete hollow cylinders, each measuring nine feet in diameter, Nancy Holt arranged her tunnels at precise geographical points to correspond with the sunrise and sunset during the summer and winter solstices, much like Stonehenge. Fascinated by astronomy, Holt punctured the cylinders with holes of differing sizes to create shadows of select constellations. Like some other Earth artists, Holt had a significant interest in science and ecology, actively informed by her undergraduate work at Tufts University. Sun Tunnels closely examines the physical qualities of perception, marking accurate positions of the sun on the horizon and allowing light to filter through the starry holes according to the position of available light. Holt created preparatory light works on paper, which captured the play of sunlight in two- and three-dimensional models. Her research-based practice and interest in remote locales connected Holt not only to other artists working in this mode, but also to the Conceptual interest in the intersection of art and ideas. The work is not meant to disintegrate as the majority of Earthworks, but it draws attention to the details of nature in a site-specific and remote locale.

Four 18 foot concrete cylinders

The Lightning Field

Artist: Walter de Maria

This work consists of 400 poles that are each set 220 feet apart in a grid format. The height of the piece varies from 15 to 26 feet depending on the level of the land. While the highly polished poles are meant to visually mark the undulations of the landscape, their primary function is to attract lightning, especially during lightning storm season in late summer when lightning strikes the rods and illuminates the installation. De Maria's use of a precise grid format is drawn from Minimalism, but the viewer's experience will depend on a number of environmental factors outside of the artist's control. For example, the work's visual impact is based on fluctuations in weather and the change of seasons; the piece would lose much of its attraction at times of the year when lightning is infrequent. As with most Earthworks, the site is remote and viewing is made more difficult by the requirement for viewers to stay overnight at cabins on site; no children are allowed. Much like Nancy Holt's Sun Tunnels, De Maria's work pairs fleeting moments of nature with the heroic materials of manmade industry.

400 stainless steel poles arranged in a grid measuring 1 x 1 km

Wheatfield

Artist: Agnes Denes

Denes and her assistants cleared the Battery Park landfill and planted nearly two acres of golden wheat. The planting cycle was completed between May and August of that year, and the process involved establishing an irrigation system, weeding, fertilizing, and protecting the wheat from mildew. After much tending, one thousand pounds of wheat was eventually harvested and traveled around the world in the exhibition "The International Art Show for the End of World Hunger," which highlighted larger issues of human struggle inherent in agriculture and land use as well as the uncomplicated pleasures of nature.

Two acres of wheat planted in the Battery Park landfill

Pebbles, broken and scraped white with another stone

Artist: Andy Goldsworthy

Like his fellow countryman, Richard Long, Andy Goldsworthy seeks to establish a temporal relationship in his work. Goldsworthy manipulates nature, reworking organic materials such as stone, branches, flora, water, and snow to create fleeting impressions in a natural setting. The seemingly "final" work is recorded through documentation, but the process and the eventual disintegration of the work inform its status as well. The title of this work, Pebbles, broken and scraped white with another stone, dutifully explains the process by which the work was created, the materials that were used, and the physical properties of the work. Although Goldsworthy has documented an artwork, the work will eventually erode and lose its status as art through the passage of time. As with the work of all Earth artists, Goldsworthy's work questions the relationship that humans have with history, time, landscape, and natural processes.

Beginnings of Earth Art

Extending Minimalist and Conceptual Ideas

The late 1960s and 1970s was one of the most experimental periods in the history of Western art with many concurrent movements and artists working simultaneously in more than one style, making it sometimes difficult to definitively attach stylistic labels to works from the period. The ethos of Earth art, for example, shared certain characteristics with Minimalism, including its concerns with how objects occupied their space; the interaction of humans with works of art; and, especially, simplicity of form. However, although the adoption of the pared down Minimalist aesthetic was often central to Earth art, the artists were typically hands-on with the documentation and process of production, at times even including a performative element; these characteristics aligned Earth artists more with Post-Minimalist tendencies such as process art, installation art, and performance Art. Earthworks, largely existing outdoors and made of natural elements, were also subject to the natural degradation and erosion that would occur with time, which was antithetical to Minimalism's more industrial and urban aesthetic, making it one of the most unique elements of the Earth art movement.

Like Conceptual art, Earth art was not just about the beauty and aesthetic pleasure offered by the artwork. Almost all Earthworks stressed the rejection of commodity status and mainstream exhibition venues, focusing instead on ephemerality. So while the majority of Earth art was visually stunning, at its core, the pieces were imbued with these concepts.

The 1960s and Virginia Dwan

Earth artists were typically products of the Vietnam era, many of whom had been drafted to fight in the war and were college educated through the G.I. Bill. Most, like Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer, began their careers as painters. Smithson's first paintings evolved from figurative abstractions to geometrical canvases, and then eventually to sculpture. In 1966, Smithson began showing with the influential gallerist Virginia Dwan, who would shape the Earth art movement significantly.

At the same time, Smithson began working as a consultant for a New York City engineering firm, a position that inspired him to plan what he called "Aerial Art" for the Dallas Fort Worth airport. Aerial Art comprised monumental works to be constructed between airport runways that were meant to be viewed from above during takeoff and landing. As an art form, Aerial Art never came to fruition, but Smithson and his colleagues, such as Carl Andre, Nancy Holt, Robert Morris, and Michael Heizer, were inspired by the idea to explore various unexploited territories in nearby New Jersey and in various western states that provided large, open spaces.

Dwan, who was the heiress to the Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Company (3M) and had studied art, often accompanied artists to far-flung sites and provided generous patronage and support to produce Earth art projects that would have foundered with no funding. In 1968, Dwan exhibited a show entitled Earth Works at her gallery space in New York City, publicly identifying a group of pioneering artists. Some of the artists in the show were having a difficult time finding available land for their site-specific projects, so Earth Works exhibited the documentation of these projects by artists such as Sol LeWitt, Robert Morris, Claes Oldenburg, Dennis Oppenheim, and Stephen Kaltenbach. The show cataloged the conception of their work through maps, photographs, transparencies, and drawings. There is some irony in the fact that while these artists tried to eschew traditional institutions, they were often required to accept funding from them in order to further their projects. In addition, the remoteness of certain sites, many of which could only be viewed from private aircraft, meant that the movement was sometimes accused of elitism.

Institutional Exhibitions and Global Ambitions

In February of 1969, the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University became the first American museum to show an exhibit of Earth art, entitled simply, Earth Art. The works were displayed both at the museum and throughout the grounds of Cornell's campus in Ithaca, thus providing an institutional setting for works that would continue to question the commodity status of art, particularly those works placed on the campus which served to blur boundaries between the object and its context. Curated by Willoughby Sharp, an independent scholar and cofounder of the avant-garde art magazine Avalanche, Earth Art exhibited new works created onsite by American artists such as Robert Smithson, Robert Morris, Michael Heizer, Walter de Maria, and Dennis Oppenheim. International artists such as British artist Richard Long and German artist Hans Haacke were also included. The 1970s would usher in a new decade of extremely ambitious projects in far-flung American locales, further expanding the American contribution to Earth art.

Earth Art: Concepts, Styles, and Trends

Site-specificity and Environmentalism

Smithson delineated the concepts of "Site" and "Nonsite" to designate theoretical differences in the physical context of work produced. "Nonsite" was termed as an "indoor earthwork" and indicated a piece that could be exhibited in a gallery setting, displacing natural materials from their original sites with accompanying drawings or photographs. "Site" referred to those works created outside the gallery infrastructure in site-specific locales with materials taken from that location. Smithson's iteration of these new frameworks along with the activist mentality of the late 1960s underscored the interest of some Earth artists in socially engaged art that explored humans' relationship with the land (soon evolving into the related, but independent Environmental Art movement). For many artists, this was a conscious movement away from Greenbergian modernism that instead stressed art's lack of connection to the mundane world.

Decay

Earth artists were influenced by prehistoric and ancient monuments such as Stonehenge and Native American burial mounds that were monumental in size and scale. Heizer experienced these prehistoric sites firsthand as a child, visiting various excavations with his father, who was an archaeologist. The prehistoric monuments, by means of their continued existence incorporated the passage of time through natural decay and erosion. The entropy of the materials, which were both manmade and organic, was integral to Earthworks. The pieces created outdoors by the likes of Smithson and Heizer were naturally subjected to the depredations of the elements so that decay and disintegration were part of their meaning; preservation was understood as a conceit.

Invasive and Non-invasive

Earthworks are sometimes divided into those works that make great changes to the landscape and those that do not. Works in the former category generally require earth-moving equipment to make massive alterations to a site, such as Robert Heizer's Double Negative (1969-70). Those works that are non-invasive and are seen as more respectful to the land include Richard Long's A Line Made by Walking (1967), along with pieces by Andy Goldsworthy and Alan Sonfist.

Later Developments - After Earth Art

During the mid-1970s, the recession impacted the funding of Earth art dramatically. Many artists were dependent on patrons to purchase expensive tracts of land to complete large-scale work. In addition to the economic slump, Robert Smithson's sudden death in 1973 while surveying possible sites in Texas changed the momentum of the movement. Those who established their names through Earth art, such as De Maria, Heizer, Morris, and Andre, took their careers in other directions, reorienting their production to accommodate institutional and gallery spaces. De Maria's New York Earth Room (1977) was executed in 1977 and several international iterations were created. Heizer would also create gallery-appropriate works, reconfiguring notions of site-specificity to adapt to art world institutions. Along with other postwar Conceptual artists, Earth artists ushered in a new period of art that favored installations over discrete objects, challenging the expectations of artistic production.

The tenets of Conceptualism became dominant in the art world during this period, as many movements began to share ideas and encourage artists working in multiple institutional frameworks. Post-Minimalist movements such as Process art were strongly connected to Earth art, and many artists working between the movements would shift towards the gallery model as the economy weakened and cheap alternative spaces became available in urban locales. Conceptual art also ushered in an era of performance that translated well in gallery settings and, like Earth art, challenged traditional notions of art as a commodity because of its transitory nature. Organic materials were sometimes utilized within the gallery space, and an emphasis on the ephemeral was understood through site-specific and temporary installations.

Useful Resources on Earth Art

The books and articles below constitute a bibliography of the sources used in the writing of this page. These also suggest some accessible resources for further research, especially ones that can be found and purchased via the internet.

Similar Art

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Earth art, or Land artists, expanded their art ideas beyond the rampant commodification of gallery spaces.

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For thousands of years, mankind has shaped stone and natural materials into art, the great pyramids and Egypt and stone head sculptures on Easter Island, for example. Drawing from these ancient works of art and newer art and social movements, Land Art emerged as a style of its own in the 1960s (Khan Academy).
Land art borrows aspects of minimalism. A focus on structure, use of space, and material comes from minimalism. This art was to be experienced, not just viewed. Pieces of conceptualism that influenced land art were the rejection of societal commercialism and display of art. By forming art out of the land itself, it would not be viewed in a museum or listed for sale. Artists could focus on the experience that a viewer would have in that environment, not just what they would feel looking at an exhibit. An element that is aparent in every piece of land art is decay. This became a major concept behind many pieces of land art - natural materials decay naturally. In a rejection of this expectation of art, artists used the idea of decay to symbolize different ideas in their art.
It is not a coincidence that this movement came around the time of environmentalism. With society starting to focus more on the impact of humans on the natural world around them, artists chose to use our most beautiful and fragile resource as their exhibit and materials for sculpture (“Earth Art”).

https://www.theartstory.org/movement/earth-art/

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Summary of Earth Art

Earth art, also referred to as Land art or Earthworks, is largely an American movement that uses the natural landscape to create site-specific structures, art forms, and sculptures. The movement was an outgrowth of Conceptualism and Minimalism: the beginnings of the environmental movement and the rampant commoditization of American art in the late 1960s influenced ideas and works that were, to varying degrees, divorced from the art market. In addition to the monumentality and simplicity of Minimalist objects, the artists were drawn to the humble everyday materials of Arte Povera and the participatory "social sculptures" of Joseph Beuys that stressed performance and creativity in any environment.

Key Ideas & Accomplishments

The favored materials for Earthworks were those that could be extracted directly from nature, such as stones, water, gravel, and soil. Influenced by prehistoric artworks such as Stonehenge, Earth artists left their structures exposed to the elements. The resulting ephemerality and eventual disintegration of the works put them outside of the mainstream where works of art were typically coddled and protected in controlled environments.

Earth artists often utilized materials that were available at the site on which their works were constructed and placed, honoring the specificity of the site. Locales were commonly chosen for particular reasons. Robert Smithson, for example, picked damaged sites for his works in order to suggest renewal and rebirth. This idea of site-specificity was something introduced to the art world by Earth art, again placing the artists at the vanguard because their pieces often required wide, open spaces, meaning that many of their works were not available to the average viewer and thus questioned the very purpose of art as something to be viewed.

The rejection of traditional gallery and museum spaces defined Earth art practice. By creating their works outside of these institutions, Earth artists rebuffed the commodity status these venues conferred on art, again challenging traditional definitions of art as something to be bought and sold for profit.

Overview of Earth Art

"In my Land art dealing with astronomical phenomena, I am putting 'centers of the universe' wherever I go," Nancy Holt said. Her Sun Tunnels in the desert of Utah were meant, she said, "to make people conscious of the cyclical time of the universe."

Artworks and Artists of Earth Art

A Line Made By Walking

Artist: Richard Long

Made while Richard Long was a student in London, A Line Made By Walking documents a work he created as he walked back and forth across the same path in Wiltshire. Here, Long emphasizes the experiential factor of nature through the act of walking and the temporal factor involved in artistic practice, while also having an impact on the land. The subject matter is the interaction of the journey, marking the ground, and making a simple adjustment to the landscape. With its simple, geometric shape and minimal intervention on the site, the work is also reminiscent of - and perhaps influential to - later Minimalist works such as Richard Serra's To Encircle Base Plate Hexagram, Right Plates Inverted (1970). Like most Earthworks, the piece is site specific and ephemeral. The photographs document the work's temporary existence, but do not solely constitute the work itself. While the photographs simply mark the performance of the work, the documentation process was sometimes important to artists working in Earth art, as it was often the only way to evidence the creation of the work. The work was groundbreaking in its utter simplicity and ephemerality as it would have been invisible within hours or days as nature would have taken its course, thus also making the piece useless as a commodity object.

Documentation of performance

Double Negative

Artist: Michael Heizer

In 1969, with financial assistance from Virginia Dwan, Michael Heizer began this massive work that cut 240,000 tons of rhyolite and sandstone from cliffs to create two trenches on the eastern edges of the Mormon Mesa, northwest of Overton, Nevada. As few could visit the site after the work's completion, Heizer documented the production of the work in photographs and exhibited them at the Dwan Gallery in New York. With Double Negative, Heizer enacts a heroic gesture by removing earth from its site, forcing a contemplation of the manmade processes that constitute the artwork and the natural, physical elements that exist outside of it. He places Double Negative directly in the context of art history and architecture, touching upon megalithic ancient monuments as well as modern feats of engineering in the industrial age. Although the work required a great deal of labor, it consists of negative space; it is basically a 1,500-foot-long canyon into which a viewer would enter to be surrounded on three sides by 50-foot walls of earth. Its site-specificity and remoteness are typical of Earth art, as few viewers would be able to visit it. Its presence in the open air of the desert also means that it is subject to the environment and will eventually disintegrate. Connecting the work to Minimalism is its simplicity of design, the importance of the kinesthetic response of the viewer to its meaning, and its monumental size that was meant to overwhelm the spectator, which, much like Ronald Bladen's X (1967-68), makes them feel their smallness within the immensity of nature (and the work of art).

Two trenches dug out in the Mormon Mesa

Spiral Jetty

Artist: Robert Smithson

Realized in April 1970, Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty is one of the most recognizable works from the Earth art movement. Smithson constructed a 1,500-foot-long and fifteen-foot-wide spiral made of stones, algae, and other organic materials (6,000 tons in all) in the northeastern part of Utah's Great Salt Lake. The Ace Gallery of Vancouver and Dwan financed an earth-moving company to create the spiral out of basalt rock and earth from the surrounding area. In 1972, when the water level rose, the work became submerged. Thirty years later, as the lake's water levels changed, Spiral Jetty became visible again, revealing the basalt rock crusted over with white salt. The work was inspired by the Pre-Columbian structure Serpent Mound, which Smithson had seen on a site visit in Ohio. Spiral Jetty and Smithson's body of work as a whole were typical of Earth art in their protest against the commodification of the art market since it was impossible to buy or sell the work. The physical mutability and even invisibility of the work resulting from natural processes, such as water currents and erosion, were essential to its meaning. As a work of art that was not only remote, but also at times impossible to view because of the forces of nature, Spiral Jetty is one of the best examples of Earth art and also underscores the movement's roots in Conceptualism.

Basalt rock, limestone, earth, and algae configured in a spiral off the shore of the Great Salt Lake

Sun Tunnels

Artist: Nancy Holt

Positioning four gigantic concrete hollow cylinders, each measuring nine feet in diameter, Nancy Holt arranged her tunnels at precise geographical points to correspond with the sunrise and sunset during the summer and winter solstices, much like Stonehenge. Fascinated by astronomy, Holt punctured the cylinders with holes of differing sizes to create shadows of select constellations. Like some other Earth artists, Holt had a significant interest in science and ecology, actively informed by her undergraduate work at Tufts University. Sun Tunnels closely examines the physical qualities of perception, marking accurate positions of the sun on the horizon and allowing light to filter through the starry holes according to the position of available light. Holt created preparatory light works on paper, which captured the play of sunlight in two- and three-dimensional models. Her research-based practice and interest in remote locales connected Holt not only to other artists working in this mode, but also to the Conceptual interest in the intersection of art and ideas. The work is not meant to disintegrate as the majority of Earthworks, but it draws attention to the details of nature in a site-specific and remote locale.

Four 18 foot concrete cylinders

The Lightning Field

Artist: Walter de Maria

This work consists of 400 poles that are each set 220 feet apart in a grid format. The height of the piece varies from 15 to 26 feet depending on the level of the land. While the highly polished poles are meant to visually mark the undulations of the landscape, their primary function is to attract lightning, especially during lightning storm season in late summer when lightning strikes the rods and illuminates the installation. De Maria's use of a precise grid format is drawn from Minimalism, but the viewer's experience will depend on a number of environmental factors outside of the artist's control. For example, the work's visual impact is based on fluctuations in weather and the change of seasons; the piece would lose much of its attraction at times of the year when lightning is infrequent. As with most Earthworks, the site is remote and viewing is made more difficult by the requirement for viewers to stay overnight at cabins on site; no children are allowed. Much like Nancy Holt's Sun Tunnels, De Maria's work pairs fleeting moments of nature with the heroic materials of manmade industry.

400 stainless steel poles arranged in a grid measuring 1 x 1 km

Wheatfield

Artist: Agnes Denes

Denes and her assistants cleared the Battery Park landfill and planted nearly two acres of golden wheat. The planting cycle was completed between May and August of that year, and the process involved establishing an irrigation system, weeding, fertilizing, and protecting the wheat from mildew. After much tending, one thousand pounds of wheat was eventually harvested and traveled around the world in the exhibition "The International Art Show for the End of World Hunger," which highlighted larger issues of human struggle inherent in agriculture and land use as well as the uncomplicated pleasures of nature.

Two acres of wheat planted in the Battery Park landfill

Pebbles, broken and scraped white with another stone

Artist: Andy Goldsworthy

Like his fellow countryman, Richard Long, Andy Goldsworthy seeks to establish a temporal relationship in his work. Goldsworthy manipulates nature, reworking organic materials such as stone, branches, flora, water, and snow to create fleeting impressions in a natural setting. The seemingly "final" work is recorded through documentation, but the process and the eventual disintegration of the work inform its status as well. The title of this work, Pebbles, broken and scraped white with another stone, dutifully explains the process by which the work was created, the materials that were used, and the physical properties of the work. Although Goldsworthy has documented an artwork, the work will eventually erode and lose its status as art through the passage of time. As with the work of all Earth artists, Goldsworthy's work questions the relationship that humans have with history, time, landscape, and natural processes.

Beginnings of Earth Art

Extending Minimalist and Conceptual Ideas

The late 1960s and 1970s was one of the most experimental periods in the history of Western art with many concurrent movements and artists working simultaneously in more than one style, making it sometimes difficult to definitively attach stylistic labels to works from the period. The ethos of Earth art, for example, shared certain characteristics with Minimalism, including its concerns with how objects occupied their space; the interaction of humans with works of art; and, especially, simplicity of form. However, although the adoption of the pared down Minimalist aesthetic was often central to Earth art, the artists were typically hands-on with the documentation and process of production, at times even including a performative element; these characteristics aligned Earth artists more with Post-Minimalist tendencies such as process art, installation art, and performance Art. Earthworks, largely existing outdoors and made of natural elements, were also subject to the natural degradation and erosion that would occur with time, which was antithetical to Minimalism's more industrial and urban aesthetic, making it one of the most unique elements of the Earth art movement.

Like Conceptual art, Earth art was not just about the beauty and aesthetic pleasure offered by the artwork. Almost all Earthworks stressed the rejection of commodity status and mainstream exhibition venues, focusing instead on ephemerality. So while the majority of Earth art was visually stunning, at its core, the pieces were imbued with these concepts.

The 1960s and Virginia Dwan

Earth artists were typically products of the Vietnam era, many of whom had been drafted to fight in the war and were college educated through the G.I. Bill. Most, like Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer, began their careers as painters. Smithson's first paintings evolved from figurative abstractions to geometrical canvases, and then eventually to sculpture. In 1966, Smithson began showing with the influential gallerist Virginia Dwan, who would shape the Earth art movement significantly.

At the same time, Smithson began working as a consultant for a New York City engineering firm, a position that inspired him to plan what he called "Aerial Art" for the Dallas Fort Worth airport. Aerial Art comprised monumental works to be constructed between airport runways that were meant to be viewed from above during takeoff and landing. As an art form, Aerial Art never came to fruition, but Smithson and his colleagues, such as Carl Andre, Nancy Holt, Robert Morris, and Michael Heizer, were inspired by the idea to explore various unexploited territories in nearby New Jersey and in various western states that provided large, open spaces.

Dwan, who was the heiress to the Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Company (3M) and had studied art, often accompanied artists to far-flung sites and provided generous patronage and support to produce Earth art projects that would have foundered with no funding. In 1968, Dwan exhibited a show entitled Earth Works at her gallery space in New York City, publicly identifying a group of pioneering artists. Some of the artists in the show were having a difficult time finding available land for their site-specific projects, so Earth Works exhibited the documentation of these projects by artists such as Sol LeWitt, Robert Morris, Claes Oldenburg, Dennis Oppenheim, and Stephen Kaltenbach. The show cataloged the conception of their work through maps, photographs, transparencies, and drawings. There is some irony in the fact that while these artists tried to eschew traditional institutions, they were often required to accept funding from them in order to further their projects. In addition, the remoteness of certain sites, many of which could only be viewed from private aircraft, meant that the movement was sometimes accused of elitism.

Institutional Exhibitions and Global Ambitions

In February of 1969, the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University became the first American museum to show an exhibit of Earth art, entitled simply, Earth Art. The works were displayed both at the museum and throughout the grounds of Cornell's campus in Ithaca, thus providing an institutional setting for works that would continue to question the commodity status of art, particularly those works placed on the campus which served to blur boundaries between the object and its context. Curated by Willoughby Sharp, an independent scholar and cofounder of the avant-garde art magazine Avalanche, Earth Art exhibited new works created onsite by American artists such as Robert Smithson, Robert Morris, Michael Heizer, Walter de Maria, and Dennis Oppenheim. International artists such as British artist Richard Long and German artist Hans Haacke were also included. The 1970s would usher in a new decade of extremely ambitious projects in far-flung American locales, further expanding the American contribution to Earth art.

Earth Art: Concepts, Styles, and Trends

Site-specificity and Environmentalism

Smithson delineated the concepts of "Site" and "Nonsite" to designate theoretical differences in the physical context of work produced. "Nonsite" was termed as an "indoor earthwork" and indicated a piece that could be exhibited in a gallery setting, displacing natural materials from their original sites with accompanying drawings or photographs. "Site" referred to those works created outside the gallery infrastructure in site-specific locales with materials taken from that location. Smithson's iteration of these new frameworks along with the activist mentality of the late 1960s underscored the interest of some Earth artists in socially engaged art that explored humans' relationship with the land (soon evolving into the related, but independent Environmental Art movement). For many artists, this was a conscious movement away from Greenbergian modernism that instead stressed art's lack of connection to the mundane world.

Decay

Earth artists were influenced by prehistoric and ancient monuments such as Stonehenge and Native American burial mounds that were monumental in size and scale. Heizer experienced these prehistoric sites firsthand as a child, visiting various excavations with his father, who was an archaeologist. The prehistoric monuments, by means of their continued existence incorporated the passage of time through natural decay and erosion. The entropy of the materials, which were both manmade and organic, was integral to Earthworks. The pieces created outdoors by the likes of Smithson and Heizer were naturally subjected to the depredations of the elements so that decay and disintegration were part of their meaning; preservation was understood as a conceit.

Invasive and Non-invasive

Earthworks are sometimes divided into those works that make great changes to the landscape and those that do not. Works in the former category generally require earth-moving equipment to make massive alterations to a site, such as Robert Heizer's Double Negative (1969-70). Those works that are non-invasive and are seen as more respectful to the land include Richard Long's A Line Made by Walking (1967), along with pieces by Andy Goldsworthy and Alan Sonfist.

Later Developments - After Earth Art

During the mid-1970s, the recession impacted the funding of Earth art dramatically. Many artists were dependent on patrons to purchase expensive tracts of land to complete large-scale work. In addition to the economic slump, Robert Smithson's sudden death in 1973 while surveying possible sites in Texas changed the momentum of the movement. Those who established their names through Earth art, such as De Maria, Heizer, Morris, and Andre, took their careers in other directions, reorienting their production to accommodate institutional and gallery spaces. De Maria's New York Earth Room (1977) was executed in 1977 and several international iterations were created. Heizer would also create gallery-appropriate works, reconfiguring notions of site-specificity to adapt to art world institutions. Along with other postwar Conceptual artists, Earth artists ushered in a new period of art that favored installations over discrete objects, challenging the expectations of artistic production.

The tenets of Conceptualism became dominant in the art world during this period, as many movements began to share ideas and encourage artists working in multiple institutional frameworks. Post-Minimalist movements such as Process art were strongly connected to Earth art, and many artists working between the movements would shift towards the gallery model as the economy weakened and cheap alternative spaces became available in urban locales. Conceptual art also ushered in an era of performance that translated well in gallery settings and, like Earth art, challenged traditional notions of art as a commodity because of its transitory nature. Organic materials were sometimes utilized within the gallery space, and an emphasis on the ephemeral was understood through site-specific and temporary installations.

Useful Resources on Earth Art

The books and articles below constitute a bibliography of the sources used in the writing of this page. These also suggest some accessible resources for further research, especially ones that can be found and purchased via the internet.

Similar Art

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Earth art, or Land artists, expanded their art ideas beyond the rampant commodification of gallery spaces.

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One thing is abundantly clear about land art - there needs to be some incorporation of land in order for it to qualify in this category. Many artists use natural materials and keep their art as a part of the landscape it was created from, while others move their pieces into indoor spaces while preserving the natural materials they used to make their work.  Many land artists also started out as painters before they began creating environmental art.
All land art experiences decay, as it is made of materials that decay over time, and often exposed to natural elements that do a lot of decaying (“Earth Art”.) Land art cannot be preserved the way that other kinds of art are, which is the way that land artists want it to be.
A final important common element in land art is site specificity. Land art is made purposely on a specific site chosen by the artist for the materials at the site, the landscape, symbolism found there, etc. Artists would not create the same piece of art at different sites the same way they could create the same painting on different canvases.

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Michael Heizer is an influential artist of the land art movement who used land removal to form art. Creating site specific art on a very large scale his works challenged the limits of art (“Michael Heizer”). While we usually think of art as adding something or shaping something that is out of place, art can be removing, chipping away, or etching into something that is already there. In this way Micheal Heizer was onto something that many had left in the age of hieroglyphs and stone tablet carving.
With a different approach to art than Micheal Heizer, Richard Long created art that stand out despite its small scale minimalism. Rather than extracting material or building up stone and dirt, Long created his A Line Made by Walking by doing just that - walking. On a field near his home he walked in a straight line, his feet pressing down the grass. His photograph of the line after showcases a very minimalistic but beautiful piece of earth art that certainly shows how art can be different from what we originally expect it to be. His work also raises the question of what the real art is in - the finished result or the process (Tate.org). In this way he joins the concepts that Jackson Pollock showcases in his art. The movement and the process is important, not just what you look at in the end. To me this is also encouraging to aspiring artists around the world, or those who just might enjoy to spend time in creativity. If the process of writing a poem or making a sculpture, the experience you have while creating it, is important, what is stopping you from creating? Land art teaches us that we do not need to be expert artists or even be able to draw a circular looking circle to create something that is worth creating.

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Those who have spent time hiking may be familiar with cairns - the small stacks of stones found on trails. These little towers mark trails that are not well defined or are easy to get lost on. Though they may not have been intended to be art, this is some of the first exposure I have had to land art. Essentially a sculpture made of natural materials in a natural environment, cairns fit the bill for unintended land art.  A cairn can be as easy to make as stacking two or three stones, or a complex and precariously tall tower made of many stones. On a recent trip home while driving along Pacific Coast Highway in Southern California, I got to see the rows and rows of cairns that people have been building on the edge of Thornhill beach. While different from the setting that hikers are used to seeing cairns in, this beautiful scene is unmistakably land art.

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MALIBU, Calif. (KABC) -- The Pacific Coast Highway has some of the most breathtaking stops on the drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco, but a unique spot may be Malibu's best-kept secret.

Just off PCH on Thornhill Broome Beach near Malibu, one can find a scene of serenity, one that catches the attention of those driving by like L.A. residents Daniel Fielding and Dawson Boese.

"Yeah, this is one of my favorite spots. I come out to Point Mugu a lot," said Fielding.

Found across from the large sand dune hill stamped with footprints of recent visitors, Daniel and Dawson stumbled across these rock cairns, some stacked high, others low. They too gave it a shot.

"These rocks are just really easy to stack...I think someone started doing it and then it just became, like, a thing," Boese said.

It's the outdoor activity they needed, despite how it ended, like the waves, crashing down.

"We were trying to stack it as high," said Boese about their attempt to stack a pile of rocks.

"We could've stopped...yeah we could've stopped, but we wanted to keep going," added Fielding.

It's this time outdoors that will bring Daniel and Dawson, and others, back for more.

Copyright © 2022 KABC Television, LLC. All rights reserved.

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Thornhill Broome Beach: One of the best-kept secrets along PCH near Malibu

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The Pacific Coast Highway has some of the most breathtaking stops on the drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco, but this unique spot may be Malibu’s best-kept secret.

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With a experience in architecture after designing a Vietnam War memorial, Maya Ying Lin has made unique and beautiful pieces for people to enjoy. Pictured here is her work The Wave Field which is a part of the University of Michigan campus. Maya created this after studying the scientific properies of waves, making it both scientifically accurate and fun to look at. Though well mended grass does not decay as do materials in other landscapes, the experience of the viewer does change based on weather and time of day. Shadows, wind, moisture, and lighting all change the experience of both the person admiring from a distance, and the person using this land art as a place to study, take a nap, or sommersault (“Maya Lin”).
This piece is very site specific, as it represents her learning and studies in the place where she learned and studied, and a place where thousand of students go for higher learning. It is created by natural materials manipulated into a kind of sculpture, and is not something that would usually be displayed in an indoor museum. Focus is placed on structure, texture, and use of space. Her layout is very geometrically even and exact. Maya Ling Yin not only challenges people’s concept of art, but their concept of beautiy and interest in landscaping (“Maya Lin”). Beauty and creativity in landscaping does not come from flowers and trees only, but also from the shapes we choose to make with the materials that we have been given and the things that we have seen and observed in the world.

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This dynamic duo boldly made their name in the land art world. One of their iconic works is called Running Fence, a large fence made of white fabric and metal poles that stretches through two counties in Northern California and goes over 24 miles. Taking years to construct and deconstructed after 14 days, many permits and environmental reports went into the construction of this art (“Christo”). Rather than constructing art out of the materials that were already in this landscape, Christo and Jean-Claude used ready made materials to form art that was designed to be in nature, and meant to be experienced. A cross over between minimalism, modernism and land art, this piece certainly pushes the bounds of what people consider art. This piece plays on the community aspect of art, and is a rejection of consumerism that is found in art in the 20th century. Expensive to produce and not sold to high bidders, this art comes at a stark contrast to years of tradition before it. Through photographs showing the effect of the wind on the fence and the vastness of the fence’s size, Christo and Jean-Claude drive home the idea that you can experience land art without being there in reality, and that even within land art there are boundaries that can be pushed and expectations that do not need to be met. One can see how works like this paved the way for later artists to use materials in land art that are not naturally found in their site, and to use material that does not decay as does the earthy material used in more classic land art. If you are ever driving to California, you can see how this influence is present in a work in the desert along the highway Seven Magic Mountains.

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Land art is a unique form of art that is related to sculpture, but not sculpture alone. Rather than sculpting a material that is man made and showcasing it in a museum for anyone to see, land art utilizes nature itself to create sensory experiences for viewers who are able to come and see it. At times this means using naturally occuring objects to create a sculpture in nature.  Other times it means manipulating what is already found in a landscape without adding anything, and sometimes bringing in materials to create art in an outdoor environment. In any case, land art uses nature itself to convey feelings and ideas (Khan Academy).
Unprotected from the elements as museum art is, land art is subject to decay and change overtime. Land art is specific to the site it is created in, playing off of the landscape or raw materials of that spot. That being said, land art can be transported to be viewed in a museum setting, as seen with some of Robert Smithson’s work (“Earth Art”).
Though it can be commissioned, land art is not bought or sold the same way traditional art is, and is less accessible than traditional art (“Earth Art”). As much as I would like to, it is not likely that I will be going to visit Christo and Jean-Clause’s massive land are in the UAE. The only way I will experience this art is through drawings, pictures, and videos. Unless I can make it to the site where it has been built, my chances of seeing land art are pretty low. However, land art can be considered to be more accessible to create than other kinds of art. Though not all people are able to get their hands on paint and canvas, anyone can go outside and shape mud, stack rocks, or create a drawing in the sand. Come to find out, many more of us are land artsits than we probably knew!

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A famous example of land art in action is Smithson’s Sprial Jetty created out of rocks, mud, and salt crystals in the Salt Lake (“Smithson”). As discussed in class during an art project, this work is very site specific. Smithson chose this site because of the colors in the water caused by damage that appealed to his interest in sci-fi. Robert Smithson wanted to use this site because of specific and unique qualities it had, not just any canvas would do. By creating art in nature and creating that art out of nature, there is no doubt that this is pure land art. Robert Smithson’s work gives good guidelines to what it is to create land art. Inspired by entropy his works are simple yet complex and active at the same time (“Smithson”). He does not define himself by straight lines or curves only. The simplicty of his works inspire complex thoughts and takeaways. As I admire his Spiral Jetty I think of taking up space. Smithson took up a large amount of space in a public area for a simple swirl. Some might not like it, and he must have known that. However, he thought it was worth expressing himself. Although there are many different interpretations of his art, that is one we can learn from.
More of his play on entropy, simplicity, and dynamics can be seen in his unique piece in a quarry in Italy called Asphalt Rundown.