Land art

Also environmental art, earth art, Earthwork, ecological art, eco-art.

Artists

Documentation online:

• Alice Aycock (1946)
• Christo and Jeanne-Claude (1935, 1935-2009)
• Walter De Maria (1935-2013)
• Chris Drury (1948)
• Hamish Fulton (1946)
• Andy Goldsworthy (1956)
• Newton and Helen Mayer Harrison (1929, 1932)
• Michael Heizer (1944)
• Nancy Holt (1938-2014)
• Ivan Kafka (1952)
• Richard Long (1945)
• Mary Miss (1944)
• Dennis Oppenheim (1938-2011)
• Andrew Rogers
• Charles Ross (1937)
• Charles Simonds (1945)
• Robert Smithson (1938-73; also on Monoskop and UbuWeb)
• Alan Sonfist (1946)
• James Turrell (1943)
• Jacek Tylicki (1951)
• Nicolás García Uriburu (1937)
• Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974, online catalogue.

Earth Works exhibition announcement, 1968. A sheet of heavy-stock cardboard flocked with sand.

Exhibitions

• Earth Works, Dwan Gallery, New York, Oct 1968. Curated by Virginia Dwan. Works by Carl Andre, Hubert Bayer, Walter De Maria, Michael Heizer, Stephen Kaltenbach, Sol LeWitt, Robert Morris, Claes Oldenburg, Dennis Oppenheim, and Robert Smithson. [1] [2] [3]

• Earth Art, Andrew Dickson White Museum of Art at Cornell University, New York, Feb 1969. Curated by Willoughby Sharp. Works by Walter De Maria, Jan Dibbets, Hans Haacke, Michael Heizer, Neil Jenney, Richard Long, David Medalla, Robert Morris, Dennis Oppenheim, Robert Smithson, and Gunther Uecker. Images, Catalogue.

• Ecologic Art, John Gibson, New York, May-Jun 1969. Works by Andre, Christo, Dibbets, Hutchinson, Insley, Long, Morris, Oldenburg, Smithson. Invitation. [4]

• Live In Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form: Works-Concepts-Processes-Situations-Information, Kunsthalle Bern, Mar-Apr 1969. Show featuring a number of land/earthworks. Curated by Harald Szeemann. Catalogue. Photographs.

• Land Art, TV-exhibition on ARD, 35 min, 15 Apr 1969. Curated by Gerry Schum. Featuring Richard Long, Barry Flanagan, Dennis Oppenheim, Marinus Boezem, Robert Smithson, Jan Dibbets, Walter de Maria, and Mike Heizer. See Sleeman 2009. [5] [6]

• Earth Air Fire Water: Elements of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2 Feb-4 Apr 1971. Curated by Virginia Gunter. Review. [7]

Recent shows and retrospectives

• Land Art. 1960-80s. Artists from Slovakia, Czech Republic and Russia, National Centre for Contemporary Arts, Moscow, Dec 2009-Jan 2010. Curated by Daniela Čarná and Natalia Goncharova. [8] [9]

• Nobody's Property: Art, Land, Space, 2000-2010, Princeton University Art Museum, Oct 2010-Feb 2011. Curated by Kelly Baum. Video from panel discussion.

• Die letzte Freiheit. Von den Pionieren der Land-Art der 1960er Jahre bis zur Natur im Cyberspace, Ludwig-Museum im Deutschherrenhaus, Koblenz, 15 Apr-16 Oct 2011.

• Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2012. Curated by Miwon Kwon and Philipp Kaiser.

• Beyond Earth Art: Contemporary Artists and the Environment, The Johnson Museum, 2014. Curated by Andrea Inselmann.

• The Green Begins To Show, Broadway 1602, New York, 2016.

• Groundswell: Women of Land Art, Nasher Sculpture Center, 23 Sep 2023-7 Jan 2024.

• Earthworks, Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, 26 Jan—7 Apr 2024. Curated by Axel Wieder and Silja Leifsdottir. Review: Jul-Larsen (Kunstkritikk).

Publications

Robert Smithson, The Collected Writings, 1996, Log.

Artists' writings

• Robert Smithson, "Entropy and the New Monuments", Artforum 5:10, Jun 1966, pp 26-31; repr. in The Writings of Robert Smithson, ed. Nancy Holt, New York University Press, 1979, 9-18; repr. in Smithson, The Collected Writings, ed. Jack Flam, University of California Press, 1996.
  • "Entropía y los nuevos monumentos", in Smithson, Selección de escritos, Alias, 2009, pp 15-30. (Spanish)

• Robert Smithson, "A Sedimentation of the Mind: Earth Projects", Artforum 7:1, Sep 1968, pp 44-50; repr. in The Writings of Robert Smithson, ed. Nancy Holt, New York University Press, 1979, pp 82-91; repr. in Smithson, The Collected Writings, ed. Jack Flam, University of California Press, 1996.

• Gyorgy Kepes (ed.), Arts of the Environment, New York: G. Braziller, 1972.
  • El arte del ambiente, trans. Nely Coarasa, Buenos Aires: Victor Leru, 1978. (Spanish)

• Douglas Davis, "Environmental Space and Time: The 'Living' Work of Art", in Davis, Art and the Future, New York and Washington: Praeger, 1973, pp 92-95. [10]

• The Writings of Robert Smithson, ed. Nancy Holt, New York University Press, 1979; rev. & exp. ed. as Robert Smithson, The Collected Writings, ed. & intro. Jack Flam, University of California Press, 1996, xxviii+389 pp.

• Alan Sonfist, Nature, the End of Art: Environmental Landscapes, Florence, Italy: Gli Ori, 2004.

Journals

• Interfunktionen 3: "Land Art / Eart Works", Cologne, 1969. [11]
• Avalanche, 13 issues, eds. Willoughby Sharp and Liza Béar, New York: Kineticism Press, 1970-76. Magazine Index. CCIndex. [12]
• Interfunktionen 7: "Land Art / Eart Art", Cologne, 1971. [13]

Anthologies

• Alan Sonfist (ed.), Art in the Land: A Critical Anthology of Environmental Art, New York: Dutton, 1983, xii+274 pp.
  • Di jing yi shu [地景藝術], trans. Meirong Li, Tai bei shi: Yuan liu, 1996, 434 pp. (Chinese)
• Baile Oakes (ed.), Sculpting with the Environment: A Natural Dialogue, New York: Wiley, 1995, OL. Essays by 33 artists about their ecological work.
• Jeffrey Kastner (ed.), "Documents", in Land and Environmental Art, ed. Jeffrey Kastner, Phaidon Press, 1998, pp 190-287, OL

Earth Art catalogue, 1970, Log.

Catalogues

• Land Art Fernsehgalerie Gerry Schum Television Gallery, eds. Fernsehgalerie Gerry Schum and Ursula Schum-Wevers, Berlin, 1969; repr., Hannover, 1970. [14] (German)/(English)
• Earth Art, ed. Nita Jager, New York: Cornell University, 1970. For the 1969 exhibition.
• Earth Air Fire Water: Elements of Art, 2 vols., Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1971, 117 pp. [15]
• Természetesen: természet és művészet Közép-Európában / Naturally: Nature and Art in Central Europe, eds. Anna Bálványos and Johanna Bárd, Budapest: Ernst Múzeum, 1994, 294 pp. Excerpts. (Hungarian)/(English)
• Jeffrey Kastner (ed.), "Works", in Land and Environmental Art, ed. Jeffrey Kastner, Phaidon Press, 1998, pp 44-189, OL.
• Nobody's Property: Art, Land, Space, 2000-2010, ed. Kelly Baum, Princeton University Art Museum, 2010, 144 pp. [16]
• Die letzte Freiheit. Von den Pionieren der Land-Art der 1960er Jahre bis zur Natur im Cyberspace / The Last Freedom: From the Pioneers of Land Art in the 1960s to Nature in Cyberspace, ed. Beate Reifenscheid, Milan: Silvana, 2011, 191 pp. (German)/(English)
• Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974, eds. Philipp Kaiser and Miwon Kwon, Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2012, 264 pp. Exhibition website, (archived). Exh. held at Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 27 May-20 Aug 2012; and Haus der Kunst, Munich, 12 Oct 2012-20 Jan 2013. (English)
• Groundswell: Women of Land Art, ed. Leigh A. Arnold, Delmonico Books, and Nasher Sculpture Center, 2023, 256 pp. Text by Leigh A. Arnold, Scout Hutchinson, Jana La Brasca, Anna Lovatt, Jenni Sorkin, Anne Thompson. Exhibition. (English)

Interviews

• John K. Grande, Art Nature Dialogues: Interviews with Environmental Artists, forew. Edward Lucie-Smith, SUNY Press, 2004, 273 pp. [17]
• John K. Grande, Art, Space, Ecology: Two Views, Twenty Interviews, forew. Edward Lucie-Smith, Montréal: Black Rose Books, 2018, 190 pp. [18] [19]

References

• Brian Aldiss, Earthworks, Faber & Faber, 1965, OL. A dystopian science fiction novel. in 1967, Robert Smithson took a copy of Earthworks with him on a trip to the Passaic River in New Jersey (where he created The Monuments of Passaic, 1967); he reused the title to describe some of his works. [20]

Literature

• Antje von Graevenitz, "Land Art", in Kunstübermittlungsformen: vom Tafelbild bis zum Happening : die Medien der bildenden Kunst, ed. Lucie Schauer, Berlin: Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, 1977. (German)

• Rosalind Krauss, "Sculpture in the Expanded Field", October 8 (Spring 1979), pp 30-44, ARG; repr. in The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, ed. Hal Foster, Seattle: Bay Press, 1983, pp 31-42, PDF; repr. in Krauss, The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths, MIT Press, 1985, pp 276-290, PDF.
  • translations

• John Beardsley, Earthworks and Beyond: Contemporary Art in the Landscape, New York: Abbeville Press, 1984, 144 pp; 2nd ed., 1989, 176 pp; 3rd ed., 1998, 224 pp, OL; 4th ed., 2006, 240 pp. [21]

• Allen Carlson, "Is Environmental Art an Aesthetic Affront to Nature?", Canadian Journal of Philosophy 16:4, Dec 1986, pp 635-650.

• Gilles A. Tiberghien, Land Art, Carré, 1993, 312 pp; new ed., exp., Carré, 2012. [22] (French) Review: Rinuy (1995).
  • Land Art, Princeton University Press, 1995.

• John K. Grande, Balance: Art and Nature, Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1994, 250 pp; new ed., 2004, 266 pp. [23].
  • Art, nature et société, pref. Guy Sioui Durand, trans. Claude Frappier, Montréal: Écosociété, 1997, 265+[10] pp. (French)

• Udo Weilacher, Between Landscape Architecture and Land Art, Birkhäuser, 1996, 247 pp.

• Marga Bijvoet, Art As Inquiry: Toward New Collaborations Between Art, Science, and Technology, Peter Lang, 1997. See esp. Part II.
  • Kunst-Forschung, n.d. (German)

• Brian Wallis, "Survey", in Land and Environmental Art, ed. Jeffrey Kastner, Phaidon Press, 1998, pp 18-43, OL.

• Malcolm Andrews, Landscape and Western Art, Oxford University Press, 1998, 256 pp. [24]

• Sue Spaid, Ecovention: Current Art to Transform Ecologies, Cincinnati, OH: Contemporary Arts Center, 2002.

• Suzaan Boettger, Earthworks: Art and the Landscape of the Sixties, University of California Press, 2002, 316 pp. Covers the period 1967-74. [25] [26]. Reviews: Linsley, Brady. [27]

• Artforum: "Art's New Terrain", Summer 2005. Special section on land art. [28]

• Ben Tufnell, Land Art, London: Tate Publishing, 2006, 144 pp. [29]

• Max Andrews (ed.), Land, Art: A Cultural Ecology Handbook, London: Royal Society of Arts/Arts Council England, 2006. [30] Review: Dillon (2007). A compendium of essays, dialogues and commissioned pages by artists, new and reprinted texts and interviews by ecologists, cultural theorists, activists and curators.

• Ethics, Place & Environment: A Journal of Philosophy & Geography 10(3): "Environmental and Land Art", ed. Emily Brady, 2007. [31]

• Dominique Chateau, Herman Parret, Pere Salabert (eds.), Esthétiques de la nature, Paris: Sorbonne, 2007. [32] (French)

• Suzaan Boettger, "Excavating Land Art by Women in the 1970s, Discoveries and Oversights", Sculpture, Nov 2008; exp. as "Looking at, and Overlooking, Women Working in Land Art in the 1970s", Women Eco Artists Dialog (WEAD), 2015.

• Joy Sleeman, "Land Art and the Moon Landing", Journal of Visual Culture 8:3, 2009, pp 299-328. (English)

• Amanda Boetzkes, The Ethics of Earth Art, University of Minnesota Press, 2010, 248 pp. [33]

• Joy Sleeman, "“Like Two Guys Discovering Neptune”: Transatlantic Dialogues in the Emergence of Land Art", in Anglo-American Exchange in Postwar Sculpture, 1945-1975, ed. Rebecca Peabody, Los Angeles: Getty, 2011, pp 148-163.

• Jeffrey Kastner (ed.), Nature, London: Whitechapel Gallery, 2012. Review: Vogel (2012).

• Linda Weintraub, To Life! Eco Art in Pursuit of a Sustainable Planet, University of California Press, 2012, 384 pp. [34] [35]

• Andrew Brown, Art and Ecology Now, Thames & Hudson, 2014, 256 pp. [36]

• James Nisbet, Ecologies, Environments, and Energy Systems in Art of the 1960s and 1970s, MIT Press, 2014, 280 pp. [37]

• Lucy R. Lippard, Undermining: A Wild Ride Through Land Use, Politics, and Art in the Changing West, The New Press, 2014, 208 pp. [38]

• Maja Fowkes, The Green Bloc: Neo-Avant-Garde Art and Ecology under Socialism, Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2015, viii+299 pp. Reviews: Cseh-Varga (Springerin), Debeusscher (Critique d'art).

• James Nisbet, "Contemporary Environmental Art", in The Routledge Companion to the Environmental Humanities, eds. Ursula Heise, Jon Christensen, and Michelle Niemann, London: Routledge, 2017, pp 301-312.

• Mark Cheetham, Landscape into Eco Art: Articulations of Nature Since the ’60s, Penn State University Press, 2018, 256 pp. [39]

• Revista ARTA 33: "Eco Art", ed. Marilena Preda-Sânc, Bucharest: Revista Arta, 2018. Excerpt. [40] (Romanian)/(English)

• Christopher Heuer, Rebecca Zorach (eds.), Ecologies, Agents, Terrains, Williamstown, MA: Clark Art Institute, and New Haven: and Yale University Press, 2018, 334 pp. [41]

• Ondřej Navrátil , Řečiště a vlna: České umění a environmentální problematika na počátku 21. století, Dexon Art, and Brno: Masarykova univerzita, 2021, 320 pp. Review: Špinková (Artalk). (Czech)

Documentary film

• Troublemakers: The Story of Land Art, dir. James Crump, 2015, 72 min. [42]

Research projects, Resources

• Land Art Contemporary, an initiative of LACDA foundation in Drenthe, the Netherlands
• Observatoire du land art blog
• Women Eco Artists Dialog (WEAD) directory

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