Land & Environmental Art
SPEAKING THROUGH THE EARTH
Surrounding islands with fabric, harnessing lightning to “perform” in a desert, filling a gallery with soil: Land or Environmental Art directly interfaces with the earth. As its many names suggest (Land Art, Environmental Art, Earthworks or occasionally Site Art), the work is usually huge in scale and sculptural.
WHEN & WHERE
c. Late 1960s–Present
USA and Europe
This movement erupted in the landscape of the United States in the late 1960s—a time when many artists were challenging the very meaning of art and its status as a commodity. Land and Environmental artists asked viewers to reconsider our human relationship with the earth itself from personal, societal, and ecological perspectives. Some artworks are ephemeral, being installed on the land or cityscape, then dismantled after showing. Others are made of biodegradable materials that will erode, or become submerged or overgrown with age. Some are permanent structures. Due to their often remote locations or temporal nature, photo and film documentation is essential.
Reminiscent of Neolithic earth structures and mounds, land artists usually manipulate the earth itself. They have cut huge trenches into canyon walls, stacked and arranged stones and boulders, weaved saplings, and grown sculptures, some requiring large scale collaborative efforts and engineering. Environmental artwork is as diverse as wrapping human-made structures like buildings with fabric to simply planting 7,000 oak trees.
Environmental and Land Art peaked in the ’70s. The ecological undertones of those movements have carried on into the concept of Sustainable Art. Much of the work still remains silently with nature. —ARR
Selected artists: Christo and Jeanne-Claude (page 105), Walter De Maria, Andy Goldsworthy, Michael Heizer, Nancy Holt, Dennis Oppenheim, Robert Smithson, James Turrell