Kylie Sandt - Visual Culture

Land Art, also called Earthworks and Earth Art, is an art movement originating in the late 60's. It consists mainly of sculpture which uses the earth and nature as a medium. It is mainly sight specific and can usually not be viewed in a gallery because it is very large in size or it is ephemeral. Much of it has to be documented in photographs or video. The art created by “land artists” many times helps the artist and the viewer to better understand nature. Some are left to erode or float away. A few famous Land Artists that I am personally interested in are Robert Smithson, Andy Goldsworthy, and Nils Udo.

Robert Smithson might be one of the most influential artists of the movement. Possibly his most famous work, the Spiral Jetty, is a large spiral form located in the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Much of Smithson's work was inspired by his interest in entropy, mapping, paradox, language, landscape, pop culture, anthropology, and natural history.

Andy Goldsworthy is an artist who works with natural materials without taking them out of their own environment. He feels an intense connection and yearning to learn from the land and what it has to offer. He works ever so gently with leaves, stones, twigs, and whatever else chances upon him to create colorful and mystical forms which usually last not much longer after he creates them.

Nils Udo is much like Goldsworthy in that he also uses the natural materials in their environment. However, where Goldsworthy is especially in tune with his home in Scotland, so to is Udo so very in tune with his home in Bavaria. He centers his work on the idea of utopia which he considers to be the “remaking real what has never existed.” Though he cares much for nature and protecting it, he admits the there is a constant contradiction because humanity ultimately destroys the “virginity of nature.”

Bibliography

http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/e/earthart.html

http://www.robertsmithson.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYPWcdty7DE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCfm95GyZt4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL6b_38Ow8Y

http://www.morning-earth.org/ARTISTNATURALISTS/AN_Goldsworthy.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TWBSMc47bw

http://www.morning-earth.org/artistnaturalists/an_nils_udo.html