Land Art
This page is dedicated to providing a sample of some of my thoughts, presented as writing, about the discipline of Land art. I have provided a list of relevent references at the bottom of the page to support these writing excepts. There you can find links to related writings by myself and others along with some projects I have created that were inspired by this topic. I hope you enjoy, and please feel free to drop me a line if you have any questions/corrections/concerns you would like to chat about =).
Installation Art in Outdoor Natural Environments
Operating with parallel philosophies and concerns to the outdoor compositions
discussed in the previous section, this section surveys site-specific installation
artworks created specifically for outdoor exhibition. These works showcase a
departure from indoor gallery exhibition within the installation art discipline. While
outdoor installation artworks should manage their relationship with the environment,
to best align with the objectives of this thesis, special attention is paid to works
that directly demonstrate environmental reactivity.
In the mid-20th century, installation artists who previously worked predominantly
with indoor gallery exhibits along with a new generation of artists began experimenting
with installing artworks in outdoor environments. An ideologically representative
work from this era is Dennis Oppenheim’s installation series Gallery Transplant
(1969). Gallery Transplant is well-described by Matthew Hard and
David Alworth in their 2017 journal article Introduction: Site Specificity Without
Borders:
"In Gallery Transplant (1969), for instance, Oppenheim drew an architectural
outline of the Cornell University Andrew Dickinson White Museum’s sculpture
hall in the snow-covered ground outside the gallery. In drawing a line in the
earth that would disappear as the snow melted or more precipitation fell,
Oppenheim produced work that was at once fixed and transient—and which,
for both reasons, held out the potential of resisting curatorial objectification
and economic commodification [55].
Serving as a conceptual reversal to Cage’s 4’33” which invited the natural environment
into sacred performance spaces, Gallery Transplant invited artists to
challenge established views on where art installations are exhibited while hinting at
the implications of installations purpose-built for natural exhibition. The Gallery
Transplant installation series inspired many young and established artists to answer
Oppenheims’s figurative call to action by creating novel outdoor installation artworks.
The remainder of this section discusses the Land art movement starting in the
late 1960s which embraces the critiques of Oppenheim by exhibiting monumental
visual sculptures in outdoor natural environments before narrowing the focus on a
subset of land artworks often called ‘environmental artworks’ which demonstrate
particularly informative exhibition strategies for fostering environmental reactivity.
Earthworks
A review of an artistic discipline that usually does not contain any explicit cochlear
component might seem puzzling within a thesis dedicated to promoting environmental
listening. However, as Land art is one of few artistic disciplines explicitly
concerned with exhibiting art in outdoor natural environments, a review of this
practice can provide guidance for developing exhibition strategies and philosophical
paradigms that integrate in-situ conditions into the creation of novel work.
Therefore, this survey is important for supporting the thesis research focus on
environmental listening in outdoor natural locations.
Land art is a unique site-specific artistic practice that emerged in the 1960s
which is conducted exclusively in outdoor locations. The practice often includes
moving and rearranging found materials at the site including rocks, dirt, and sand
for artistic, religious, and spiritual expression. Evidence of ancient practices similar
to Land art can be found throughout human history including the South American
geoglyphs near Palpa, Nasca, and within the Atacama Desert [56]–[58].
Other influences on the emergence of Land art can be traced to the early-20th
century when works were created out of dyed sand by artists including George Braque
(1912), Andre Masson (1927), and Jean Dubuffet (1940s) thereby incorporating
mundane natural materials into visual pieces [46]. During the early to mid-20th
century, the use of natural pallets accelerated culminating with works such as Robert
Rauschenberg’s Elemental Paintings. The methodology for Elemental Paintings
varied from painting to painting where, in Dirt Painting (for John Cage) (1952-53)
the work was created from mixing soil with seeds and applying the mixture to a
large canvas which sprouted plants after being periodically watered. As
noted by the scholar Charlotte Healy:
"One of Rauschenberg’s primary goals in creating the Elemental Paintings was to
demonstrate that his chosen materials worked equally well as painting media...
Visible change due to natural processes of growth and decay became essential
aspects of these works. Both their appearance and material makeup have
altered over time." [59]
These visual artworks are historically significant as they demonstrate a paradigm
shift that can be observed in several artistic disciplines in the mid-20th century
where components of the natural environment began to be literally integrated into
the creation of works. In this way, these examples that use natural materials in their
construction serve as a critical bridge to practices that address the role of nature in
their creations by exhibiting work outdoors at remote and exposed locations. Land
artworks follow this paradigm and are often constructed from natural materials while
being exhibited in outdoor environments. The Land art movement incorporated
Rauschenberg’s use of natural materials with outdoor exhibition and emerged as a
movement in the 1960s, with Claes Oldenburg’s Placid Civic Monument (1967),
often cited as the first land artwork [60].
The Land art movement questioned established notions of material and venue
by creating site-specific outdoor artworks, often called monuments by the artists,
that cannot be traded or sold. In support of this ideology, one of the movement’s
most influential figures, Robert Smithson is known to have asserted “the world is
a museum” [61]. This distinction helped these works forge a deeper connection
with the locations they are located as their physical removal is impossible without
destroying the piece. In this manner, the landscape augmentations of the artists
can be considered a component of the landscape that is “owned” by nature. While
Rauschenberg’s Elemental Paintings utilised raw natural materials for constructing
a painting palette, the land artists expanded this methodology to incorporate the
natural environment as canvas, pallet, and gallery. Furthermore, by asserting how
everyday materials are worthy of the same attention as marble, gold, and glass,
these works can be regarded as visual art realisations of John Cage’s belief that
familiar everyday sounds are worthy of the same attention as orchestral concert
performances.
Land artworks typically focus on creating static visual landscape augmentations
which eventually decay and erode over extended periods. For these works, the natural
environment provides the site a source of dynamism through weather conditions
while the sculptures are immobile visual augmentations of the landscape. The sitespecific,
static approach to exhibiting these works where they are not repositioned
or removed from their initial location was developed by these artists to ensure the
natural landscape is an artistic focus which cannot be replaced without destroying
the installation.
Land artworks are typically created using materials found at or near their installation
location, such as rocks, soil, leaves, and branches. Notable exceptions which
do not adhere to this tendency include Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels (1973-76), Walter
De Maria’s Lightning Field (1977), and Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Surrounded
Islands (1980-83). More commonly, when locally sourced building materials are
utilised, they are often physically moved or rearranged using subtractive and additive
processes. In the case of one of the most well-known land artworks, Robert Smithson’s
Spiral Jetty (1970), an additive process is used to form tons of stone and
rock into a 460 m long, 15 m wide pathway that forms a spiral shape protruding
into Utah’s Great Salt Lake. Like most land artworks, as it is hard to imagine Spiral
Jetty removed from the Great Salt Lake and planted in a London Gallery, these
types of land artworks usually follow a site-specific exhibition strategy where the
work is tied to the never-ending erosion of the landscape it augments.
Land artworks like Spiral Jetty are created using heavy earth moving machines
which deploy an additive process and are intended to last for decades. Alternatively,
a subtractive method can be used instead, with Richard Long’s Dusty Boots Line
(1988) serving as a representative example of this approach. For Dusty Boots
Line, Long walked back and forth while kicking rocks to clear a straight path in the
Sahara Desert. For this work, Long’s sculpture is the absence of natural material
that would have otherwise occupied the space. In contrast, Dusty Boots Line as a
work of art in its entirety consists of the completed sculpture as well as the process
of its creation and natural destruction.
When describing Long’s Where the Walk Meets the Place (1988), Michael Archer
noted how the work “emphasised both the transient effects of Long’s presence and
the importance of the location as a designated point of focus within the continuum
of the journey” [62]. As noted by Archer, land artworks can encourage environmental
awareness in participants as ignoring the landscapes the works are installed within
is tricky. This quality contrasts with typical gallery exhibition, where visitors are
expected to ignore the gallery walls and venue’s physical layout in favour of the art
contained within the space.
While most prominent land artworks do not utilise technology outside of earthmoving
machinery during their construction, a small subset of Land artworks do rely
on technology during their exhibition process. One such work is Bruce Nauman’s
imagined installation Untitled Piece (1970) that removes earth by drilling a hole
one mile deep into the ground where a microphone is placed to transmit audio in
real-time into an empty room. Nauman’s Untitled Piece is one of the few land
artworks that can be categorised as a sound art installation due to its cochlear focus
on listening to the sounds emanating from the earth instead of looking into the dug
hole. Simultaneously, Untitled Piece’s use of cochlear augmentations showcases
conceptual and methodological similarities between Land art and the disciplines of
sonic installation art and soundwalking.
The land artworks surveyed in this section provide examples of an influential and
recognised artistic practice centred on site-specific outdoor exhibition in natural
locations. Instead of integrating natural components into pieces that are exhibited
inside typical galleries and performance venues, as with Rauschenberg’s Elemental
Paintings, land artworks provide an alternate exhibition strategy that moves the
consumption of the work into exposed natural locations. The artists’ embrace
of the locations where these works are installed is an important takeaway for the
hyper-soundwalk research project, as these strategies can be applied to the cochlear
domain to create hyper-soundwalks where the in-situ sonic environment is the
primary artistic focus. The process of adding or subtracting from the landscape
as a strategy for creating work indicates potential methods that can be applied
within the cochlear domain when applied to the soundscape. Furthermore, a crucial
component of these land artworks is their perceived ability to use the visual sense
to direct attention to the broader environment. As a final takeaway, the strategy of
not interfering once an installation begins its exhibition can likewise be adapted to
hyper-soundwalks to limit the artist’s ability to intervene once installations begin to
grant greater determinacy to the natural environment.
While these discussed characteristics of land artworks align well with the research
goals of this thesis, due to their often enduring and permanent construction, many
land artworks exhibit limited perceivable real-time environmental reactivity apart
from their eventual decay. In support of these artists’ intent, these works are
figuratively fused with the environment to become landscape fixtures. This attribute
contrasts with our research objective target in-situ sonic environments, which are
inherently moving, evolving, and are not indefinitely tied to landscapes. As sonic
environments are not physically tied to specific locations and require an alternative
approach to appropriately target, our focus in the following discussion narrows
to a minority of land artworks that operate on shorter time frames. Therefore,
these works can exhibit deeper real-time integration with environmental conditions
and provide greater promise for informing an exhibition strategy for creating novel
environmental listening experiences.
Environmental (Land) Artworks
This discussion focuses on a category of land artworks which exist for shorter
duration than the permanent, long-lasting, earth-moving land artworks. While these
works have been referred to as Land art, Nature art, Naturalist art and many other
terms, this document uses the term Environmental art to describe the category of
land artworks which exclusively utilise materials found in situ and which prioritises
the process instead of focusing on the end result. To provide an example, Richard
Long’s Dusty Boots Line, introduced in the previous subsection, is a land artwork
that meets this definition and is considered a work of Environmental art as the
installation is not intended to last for an extended period but instead is erased by
natural conditions shortly after its creation.
One of the first, and most influential artists to create environmental artworks is
NILS-UDO who began creating sculptures in 1972 where “no other materials are
used than those found in each natural space” [63]. NILS-UDO is well known for
his construction of nest-like structures and carefully arranged tree plantings [64].
Using his tree planting technique as illustration, NILS-UDO has
described his layering process: “by installing plantings or by integrating them into
more complex installations, the work is literally implanted into nature. As a part of
nature, the work lives and passes away in the rhythm of the seasons” [65].
Another influential environmental artist who implants sculptures into nature
in a similar manner as NILS-UDO is Andy Goldsworthy who began his practice
in the mid 1980s. In much of his work, Goldsworthy expresses keen interest in
facilitating interactions with the in-situ environment within short time frames through
sculptures that are constructed on-site using leaves, ice, branches, and other nearby
materials [66], [67]. Sometimes his creations only maintain their form for seconds
before being consumed by the environment [68]. In this way,
Goldsworthy pushes the Environmental art philosophy to its limits by playing with
time, ageing, and decay in his sculptures.
Goldsworthy articulates this methodology in the biographical film Rivers & Tides:
Andy Goldsworthy Working With Time (2003), “when I make a work, I often
take it to the very edge of its collapse, and that is a very beautiful balance” [69].
For his Environmental art installations, Goldsworthy frequently deploys an ad hoc
installation methodology where he lets the environment instruct his actions. In the
documentary, Goldsworthy emphasises process and the meditative components of
the work as much as the physical existence of the sculpture itself:
The energy and space around a material are as important as the energy and
space within. The weather–rain, sun, snow, hail, mist, calm–is that external
space made visible. When I touch a rock, I am touching and working the space
around it. It is not independent of its surroundings, and the way it sits tells
how it came to be there [69].
Through this installation methodology and artistic philosophy, Goldsworthy’s work
and other environmental artworks are environmentally reactive as in-situ conditions
determine the sculptures’ location, form, and duration. Goldsworthy’s installations
can be interpreted as an ocular parallel to David Dunn and Pauline Oliveros’s mid
1970s environmentally reactive performances. Where Dunn and Oliveros allocated
composition and arrangement decisions to the in-situ sonic environment, Goldworthy
sourced the in-situ natural environment for all his sculpture materials, to guide his
process, and to determine the sculpture’s exact location.
As the founder and leader of TICKON (Tranekaer International Center for Art
and Nature), Alfio Bonanno is another notable figure within the Environmental art
movement. TICKON is an institution that supports and provides venues for artists
working within the Environmental art paradigm. In addition to his crucial work
with TICKON, Bonanno created several influential Environmental art installations,
including West Coast Relics (1995) and Where Trees Grow on Stone (1996). The
Environmental art movement has persisted through the decades into contemporary
times as demonstrated by works such as Ana Mendieta’s Silueta Series (1973-77),
Patrick Dougherty’s Holy Rope (1992), Bronwyn Berman’s Wind Spiral II (2006),
and Olafur Eliasson’s Ice Watch (2015).
The environmental artworks introduced in this discussion were exhibited following
site-specific installation methodologies that provided flexibility to install works in
locations well-suited to the installation at the day of exhibition. These ad hoc
installation methodologies allowed the artists to forge environmentally reactive
installations whose specific location, construction materials, form, and duration are
determined by in-situ conditions.
Some of the environmental artworks introduced in this discussion demonstrated
high levels of in-situ reactivity and interactivity as their very existence could often
be erased by a single adverse weather event. Due to their physical fragility and short
lifespans, these works are often documented using photography. It is through this
documentation, facilitated by the use of technology, that the public most commonly
experiences these works.
Some environmental artists regard the documentation of the installation to be
as artistically important as the installation itself. For example, the Andy Goldworthy
Digital Catalogue states on their website, “Goldsworthy does record his permanent
projects photographically, he does not do so systematically or consistently as with
the photographic documentation of his ephemeral work. He will photograph the
making of a permanent work or commission, and then photograph the completed
state. However, these are not necessarily photographed upon completion” [70].
Alternatively, for NILS-UDO, the documentation of the installation serves as the
artwork itself. This is well illustrated in part of NILS-UDO’s conditions for granting
copyright permission for using an image of his work in my Ph.D. thesis, “do not crop my image, my
photography is my art!”
This approach freed artists from addressing logistical concerns related to supporting
planned in-situ installation access to the public while simultaneously allowing
anyone within an internet connection to view the work. This novel technologicallyfacilitated
exhibition strategy can be compared to the work of outdoor sonic installation
artists who frequently rely on technology, depend on in-situ environmental
conditions, and forge novel relationships with the locations they augment. To aid in
synthesising the impact of all the related works discussed in this literature review,
the influence of the environmental artworks’ artistic philosophy, design strategy, and
exhibition methodology on the research projects introduced in this thesis is covered
in detail within Chapter 3’s discussions concerning the exhibition strategy, design
considerations, and aesthetic guidelines adopted by thesis research projects.
References and Suggested Readings
This writing has been adapted from prior informal and published works including my PhD thesis from Victoria University of Wellington and my Master's thesis from California Institute of the Arts. The reference numbers have been carired over from this document to ease my personal workload. I am planning on expanding this section to include more in-depth dicussions that are not restrained by the limitations imposed by writing a PhD thesis. Stay tuned for future writings! If you are interested in reading my formal published works from which most of this writing originates, you can find it on this page HERE. Meanwhile, for easier reference, below are the in-text references (with links to some sources).
[55] M. Hart and D. J. Alworth, “Introduction: Site specificity without borders,” ASAP/
Journal, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 483–493, 2017.
[56] I. H. Woodhouse, “The geoglyphs of palpa, peru: Documentation, analysis and
interpretation: Book reviews,” The Photogrammetric Record, vol. 22, no. 120, pp. 362–
363, Dec. 2007.
[57] M. Reindel and G. A. Wagner, New Technologies for Archaeology. Springer Berlin
Heidelberg, 2009.
[58] L. Briones-M, “The geoglyphs of the north chilean desert: An archaeological and
artistic perspective,” Antiquity, vol. 80, no. 307, pp. 9–24, 2006.
[59] C. Healy, “A radical disregard for the preservation of art: Robert rauschenberg’s
elemental paintings,” interventions, vol. 4, p. 17, 2015.
[60] J. Kastner, “Books: Excavating earthworks,” Art Monthly (Archive : 1976-2005), no. 271,
pp. 35–36, Nov. 2003.
[61] B. G. Paskus, A. Reinhardt, B. Rose, and D. Judd, “Art as art: The selected writings of
ad reinhardt,” Art Journal, vol. 36, no. 2, p. 172, 1976.
[62] M. Archer, “Exhibitions: Richard long; glenys johnson,” Art Monthly (Archive :
1976-2005), no. 122, pp. 27–28, Dec. 1988.
[63] Nils udo, Biography of nils udo, Portfolio, 2021. [Online]. Available:
https://www.nilsudo.com/biography-2/?lang=en (visited on 05/28/2022).
[64] Artist/naturalist nils udo, Jul. 2010. [Online]. Available:
https://web.archive.org/web/20100707075535/http://www.morning-earth.org/ARTISTNATURALISTS/ANNilsUdo.html (visited on 05/29/2022).
[65] Jenny Zhang, Spectacular works of land art celebrate the beauty of nature, Blog,
Feb. 2015. [Online]. Available: https://mymodernmet.com/nils-udo-land-art/
(visited on 05/29/2022).
[66] artincontext, Andy goldsworthy - a look at nature artist andy goldsworthy, Mar.
2021. [Online]. Available: https://artincontext.org/andy-goldsworthy/ (visited on
06/03/2022).
[67] Andy goldsworthy biography - children, story, school, son, old, born, college, time,
career, sidelights - newsmakers cumulation. [Online]. Available:
https://www.notablebiographies.com/newsmakers2/2007-Co-Lh/Goldsworthy-Andy.html
(visited on 05/27/2022).
[68] Andy goldsworthy - land art. [Online]. Available:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPDH8yCnlk0 (visited on 08/21/2020).
[69] A. Goldsworthy, T. Riedelsheimer, and F. Frith, Rivers and tides: Working with time,
2004.
[70] Andy goldsworthy digital catalogue: Photography. [Online]. Available:
https://www.goldsworthy.cc.gla.ac.uk/photography/ (visited on 08/30/2022).