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“Instead of using a paintbrush to make his art, Robert Morris would like to use a bulldozer.” Robert SMITHSON Towards the Development of an Ari Terminal Site, 1967”. EARTHART, LAND AND ENVIRONMENTAL ART A short introduction. Spiral Jetty Robert Smithson 1970.
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“Instead of using a paintbrush to make his art, Robert Morris would like to use a bulldozer.”Robert SMITHSONTowards the Development of an Ari Terminal Site, 1967” EARTHART, LAND AND ENVIRONMENTAL ART A short introduction
Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, 1970 • This piece by Smithson is the classic example of an earthwork, or a piece of art that rejects the traditional notions of a studio space and is instead created in the natural environment. More specifically, Spiral Jetty is an example of Smithson’s interest with entropic earthworks, or the tendency of forms in nature to simplify and decay over time. Smithson specifically chose the Great Salt Lake in Utah for the site because it already expressed the increasing decay and disorganization that characterizes entropy through the residue of salt left behind after evaporation. As a site-specific installation, this piece is only able to be known by actually traveling to the piece; however, it is one of Smithson’s most well-documented works and the photographs of its creation function as a surrogate of the piece itself.
Nature is never finished.Robert Smithson • I am for an art that takes into account the direct effect of the elements as they exist from day to day apart from representation. • Objects in a park suggest static repose rather than any ongoing dialectic. Parks are finished landscapes for finished art . • Language should find itself in the physical world, and not end up locked in an idea in somebody's head. • Mistakes and dead-ends often mean more to these artists than any proven problem. • Painting, sculpture and architecture are finished, but the art habit continues.
EARTHWORKS • NAMED AFTER A DYSTOPIAN SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL BY BRIAN W. ALDISS ABOUT A FUTURE IN WHICH EVENT SOIL HAS BECOME A PRECIOUS COMMODITY, THE ‘EARTHWORKS’ SHOW DELIVERED A POINTEDLY PESSIMISTIC COMMENT ON THE CURRENT STATE OF AMERICA’S ENVIRONMENT AND IT’S FUTURE. • IN OCTOBER 1968, AT THE HEIGHT OF THE VIETNAM WAR, SIX MONTHS AFTER THE STUDENT RIOTS OF PARIS, ARTIST ROBERT SMITHSON ORGANIZED AN EXHIBITION AT DWAN GALLERY IN NYC TITLED SIMPLY • ‘EARTHWORKS.’ ALL OF THE WORKS POSED AN EXPLICIT CHALLENGE TO CONVENTIONAL NOTIONS OF EXHIBITION AND SALES, IN THAT THEY WERE EITHER TOO LARGE OR TOO UNWIELDY TO BE COLLECTED; MOST WERE REPRESENTED ONLY BY PHOTOGRAPHS, FURTHER EMPHASIZING THEIR RESISTANCE TO ACQUISITION.
"There is nothing there, yet it is still a sculpture."-Michael Heizer
MICHAEL HEIZER • Double Negative blurs the distinction between sculpture ("art") and normal objects such as rocks ("not art"), and encourage viewers to consider how the earth relates to art. The sheer size of Double Negative also invites contemplation of the scale of art, and the relation of the viewer the earth and to art itself. How does art change when it can't fit in a museum? How does one observe an artwork that's a quarter-mile long?
NEWS ... The installation of Michael Heizer's new 340-ton sculpture, Levitated Mass, at the LACMA continues to garner large amounts of press attention. [Associated Press | LA Times] ... Levitated Mass news story and slideshow in The New York Times [story | slide show] ... Heizer to be featured in Land Art show at MOCA --
Excerpt from an interview with J.W. Morson, published in Kiosk, Vol 11, Spring 1994:JWM: Do you have a muse?DO: No, I have to somehow trap this thing. I have to go after it through a sensory approach with all the senses operating in tangent- operating outside myself- sort of prowling this featureless thing until I can see it.And quite often, even with that, it's not good enough. You see, this wouldn't be an interesting profession unless it was really difficult.Parallel Stress 1970
7000 OAKS • I believe that planting these oaks is necessary not only in biospheric terms, that is to say, in the context of matter and ecology, but in that it will raise ecological consciousness-raise it increasingly, in the course of the years to come, because we shall never stop planting.Thus, 7000 Oaks is a sculpture referring to peoples' life, to their everyday work. That is my concept of art which I call the extended concept or art of the social sculpture. • I think the tree is an element of regeneration which in itself is a concept of time. The oak is especially so because it is a slowly growing tree with a kind of really solid heartwood. It has always been a form of sculpture, a symbol for this planet.
Joseph Beuys1921-1986 • The planting of seven thousand oak trees is thus only a symbolic beginning. And such a symbolic beginning requires a marker, in this instance a basalt column. The intention of such a tree-planting event is to point up the transformation of all of life, of society, and of the whole ecological system… • They are basalt columns that one can find in the craters of extinct volcanoes, where they become a prismatic, quasi-crystalline shape through a particular cooling process-which produces these shapes with five, six, seven, and eight corners. They could, and still can, be found lined up like perfect, beautiful organ pipes in the Eifel region. Today, most of them are protected. But we didn't have to have these particular splendid organ pipes, we just wanted a material with basalt characteristics from the environs of Kassel. So there we found basalt columns which are part crystalline, that is to say, they have sharp corners, but at the same time tend toward amorphousnessMy point with these seven thousand trees was that each would be a monument, consisting of a living part, the live tree, changing all the time, and a crystalline mass, maintaining its shape, size, and weight. This stone can be transformed only by taking from it, when a piece splinters off, say, never by growing. By placing these two objects side by side, the proportionality of the monument's two parts will never be the same. • The Dia Art Foundation provided the initial financing for 7000 Oaks in Kassel. • In regard to the extensive urbanization of the setting the work was an extensive artistic and ecological intervention with the goal of enduringly altering the living space of the city. The project, though at first controversial, has become an important part Kassel's cityscape. • After five years, the project ended in 1987 on the occasion of documenta 8. It is still alive.
"It is a very desolate area, but it is totally accessible, and it can be easily visited, making Sun Tunnels more accessible really than art in museums . . . A work like Sun Tunnels is always accessible . . . Eventually, as many people will see Sun Tunnels as would see many works in a city-in a museum anyway.” Nancy Holt • Sun Tunnels is located in the Great Basin Desert outside of the ghost town of Lucin, Utah. The work is a product of Holt’s interest in the great variation of intensity of the sun in the desert compared to the sun in the city • The work consists of four massive concrete tunnels (18 feet long and nine feet in diameter), which are arranged in an “X” configuration to total a length of 86 feet (26 m). Each tunnel reacts differently to the sun, aligned with the sunrise, sunset, of the summer or winter solstice. Someone visiting the site would see the tunnels immediately with their contrast to the fairly undifferentiated desert landscape. Approaching the work, which can be seen one to one-and-a-half miles away, the viewer’s perception of space is questioned as the tunnels change views as a product of their landscape.The tunnels not only provide a much-needed shelter from the sweltering desert sun, but once inside the dazzling effect of the play of light within the tunnels can be seen. The top of each tunnel has small holes, forming on each, the constellations of Draco, Perseus, Columba, and Capricorn, respectively.The diameters of the holes differ in relation to the magnitude of the stars represented]These holes cast spots of daylight in the dark interiors of the tunnels, which appear almost like stars. Holt has said of the tunnels, "It’s an inversion of the sky/ground relationship-bringing the sky down to the earth.”Thisis a common theme in Holt’s work. She sometimes creates this relationship with reflecting pools and shadow patterns marked on the ground, like in her work Star Crossed1973-76
Richard LongA LINE MADE BY WALKING • In the nature of things:Art about mobility, lightness and freedom.Simple creative acts of walking and markingabout place, locality, time, distance and measurement.Works using raw materials and my human scale in the reality of landscapes.
The Lightning Field (1977) is De Maria’s best-known work. It consists of 400 stainless steel posts arranged in a calculated grid over an area of 1 mile × 1 km. The time of day and weather change the optical effects. It also lights up during thunder storms.The field is commissioned and maintained by Dia Art Foundation.
